Tommy Breheny is a New Yorker. Born and rared in the Bronx by a father from Sligo and a mother from Killarney . . . he insists the football didn't just come from Kerry though, honestly. They returned home when he was eight to a culture shock. From a borough public school to the Marist Brothers, from a watch-your-back sort of neighbourhood to rolling fields under bare Ben Bulben's head.

Lesson two. Football. Started his career with Sligo in 1986 and though that decade was bad, what followed was God awful. The '90s arrived and so did his lowest moment, a beating by Galway in Salthill the likes of which even Sligo had never known. Himself and John Kent were hobbling out the gates that evening and both considered lumping in the towel. Youth and pride kept Breheny going for a few more years though, the high points being the odd promotion to Division Three, the norm being relegation to Division Four the following season and clattering into the first hurdle in Connacht pretty much every other summer. By 1997 he was coming to an end and was injured for their provincial final appearance. They lost that day, he never played and quietly slipped out the back door.

A decade on and he sits in a Sligo hotel, well dressed but unprepared.

After all, he thought his chance had passed and he's taken aback by the congratulations and thank yous offered in abundance. The media attention unnerves him too. "I never expected this sort of thing. Thought that had all passed when the playing days came to an end, and they were a disaster. There were good players all the way along, despite what people say.

But there was seeding here in the province, no qualifiers, no belief and no hope. By the time I was leaving there were young guys, Eamonn O'Haras and Paul Taylors, coming through. It was too late for me though and I went back to the club [St Mary's] but everything was slowing down at that stage. My time was up."

By then he'd married Eamonn O'Hara's sister, John Clifford was chairman of Mary's, sponsoring the county team and would soon be development officer in Sligo, all a brief glance into the confined circle in which football in the county operated.

It was Clifford who first took him aside in 2001 and shoved him towards management. "We were just talking one day and he asked me to manage the club seniors. I had no real intentions or ambitions of ever doing it so I just told him that was there was no way I could play and manage. I was off the hook in my mind but he told me that suited everyone fine. I could manage. I guess it showed where my football was at that stage but I took over and we went on and won a Sligo title straight away."

Now a past once written off has been bathe in light, we can move on to the meaty stuff. In 2005 county board chairman John Queenan asked Breheny to be a selector under Dom Corrigan. He knew the club scene, had won that county title as manager but having been eliminated by Cork in the last 12 he stepped down. He'd long planned it, even when Sligo got the better of Longford, Kildare and Clare in the qualifiers, finding his time becoming ragged, dragged in too many directions by too many commitments. The following February brought Corrigan's departure but it wasn't a clean cut.

"Now that's not an area I like getting into because it was so messy. Dominic worked very hard on the job and when things turned and the side lost to Tipperary and Waterford early in the league it was unfortunate for a lot of people. The players had a terrible time of it. It wasn't easy for the county board as they came in for a lot of stick and the same for Dominic. The county board asked me to take over and I absolutely refused because there was no way that was going to happen.

But it is my county and I felt sorry to see the way things were going. In truth, everything was on a precipice.

Players could have walked and you only have to look at Carlow and what happened there this season. It would have been a catastrophe. So I told the board I'd keep training the team for a week, two weeks, up to a month so they could find a manager. And all the while we had good players and this was hugely disruptive and I wondered if they felt like I did coming out of that Galway game back at the start of the '90s."

You didn't have time to be a selector under Dom. You didn't have time to take the job. How come, all of a sudden, everything changed and you said I'll take this and run with it?

"Well, I went in temporarily and I found huge belief there which may seem strange to people looking in. I remember the first time I sat down with them and my words to the players were, 'If you are looking for excuses, you will find them and if you find them you will believe them'. Now wasn't the time for blame but it was an easy route they never took. I was still temporarily in charge and we lost to Louth and Cavan but I saw signs against Cavan that made up my mind for me. There was something there and it was on that basis I took it on full time."

They sat and talked about not being rolled over so easy, that they could no longer be the small kid in the playground. They went on to beat tabletoppers Westmeath and entered the championship gushing with confidence. And even if they left the game to Galway behind them, there was still memories of qualifier wins over Kildare and Tyrone. They went with that and ran. Beat Down and Leitrim and should have beaten Westmeath.

They were two points up in injurytime and conceded a goal but still took it to extra-time. They had their two most experienced players, O'Hara and Padraig Doohan, sent off . . . cards that were subsequently rescinded . . .

and they still only just lost. Breheny had never felt intensity like it and said little to the players afterwards.

Why would he? He was out of contract and they were out of luck and out of the championship.

"In a way it was a similar story to before. The county board were pleased, I wasn't interested in going again for much the same reasons as before. I'd done my best, the players had put in a huge effort and I was so proud of them. But in a way, and this will sound stupid, I was convinced 2007 was for me when we drew New York in the Gaelic Grounds. I saw a kind of symbolism in it. We could start the championship back there where I'd spent many Sundays as a kid, more fascinated by the crisps and coke than the football, and it would be the start of a journey that would end up where we wanted."

His mind was made up, but the building blocks had yet to arrive. The first task was getting back Michael McNamara, Ciaran Quinn, Derek McGarrity, Brendan Phillips, Pat Naughton, Johnny Martin. Job done, he had to get them fit and it's why Breheny says their league form was so bad. A rock and a hard place, with some of those names not championship fit, and with wins needed against Antrim and Wicklow to avoid Division Four, they not so much wriggled free, but blasted their way out.

The stage was now set. Bring out the actors. "I remember Liam Hayes saying that 95 per cent of football management ends in failure but I felt there was something right about this season.

Even when we went six points down to Roscommon, it's hard to overstate the belief that was there. I turned to John Kent at that point and said to him, 'This will tell us what we are made of now'."

Had Lee Harvey Oswald been from Sligo, you'd have fancied JFK's chances but Breheny and his side got away with it having kicked 15 wides in that semi-final. Next up, Galway. "They were close to winning a Connacht championship but it was going to take a bigger effort than any of us had put in before but I have to keep stressing this belief that is there. It's why we are in an All Ireland quarter-final and it's going to be difficult, even more so since we don't know our opponents until six days before the game which is really shocking. You'd expect two weeks. But I've told the lads not to miss this great opportunity. There's no point in stopping here, we've to keep going. Like we never had a civic reception or any of that because that would signify an end. It's not. We can't let it be, even if things have started to be patronising. For instance, before Galway played Meath they were still shorter odds than us to win an All Ireland and that's based on history."

He's already helped rewrite some of that same history, now it's time to keep going.