Kieran Donaghy, December 2006

THERE'S no point in saying otherwise. Life has changed. This time last year, when they were playing in a semi-final, he was still working as a shop assistant for his old friend Wayne Quillinan in the Q Sports shop in Tralee. These days there's no tracksuit bottoms or Tshirt, or spinning basketballs in his little sojourns from the floor to the register; these days he's in a shirt and tie, working for Ulster Bank as a business development officer in the town.

He has an agent, Eddie O'Donnell, the same guy who helps Sean Og O hAilpin say the word that their obliging nature probably finds the hardest in the whole dictionary to say . . . No.

Before, when he was solely a Tiger, he'd be able to eat a big steak in the Brogue and sink a few pints without a care in the world; now, he says, you'd nearly be afraid to have a Coke for fear "someone might say there was vodka in it".

On the field things have changed too. He's shot a wide or two this summer. Balls haven't fallen into his hands.

He's still Star and he's still winning and smiling but, yeah, that second album has been a grind.

Strange though; the year started like the last one ended . . . like a dream, winning the national cup with Tralee Tigers and becoming the first man to be both a reigning AllIreland winner and national basketball cup winner. There was another reason he forsook the sand and sun of Dubai with the All Stars for another bleak late January in Tralee. He wanted to be sharp for the start of the league. All autumn and winter he'd been itching to play some football, instead of just talking about it.

In the lead up to the opening game against Mayo, Donaghy was training four nights in a row. In hindsight, he admits, he was maybe overzealous, even if his two yellow cards that first day out in Castlebar were rescinded; "It was more harmless than the one in Killarney last year [in the drawn Munster final], if you can believe that".

The one high from the league was the home game against Cork. It was, as Donaghy puts it, "a shitty, wet night" when he won "every kind of ball, high or low" to set up all but three of Kerry's points. The following game against Fermanagh though he was sent off. Again. Only months after proclaiming some day he might be a villain, here he was now, auditioning strongly for the role.

"I was livid about that [sending off ]. It was my own fault. I kicked a wide and was a bit frustrated when some [Fermanagh] lad poked me going past. I flicked out with my boot, a bit like Beckham in '98 [World Cup against Argentina]. He didn't even fall over, I thought it was yellow card, max, but the ref sent me off and he was probably right.

"I came off the pitch effing and blinding and had a right little chat with the dressing room door. I stormed out to my car, all ready to leave Breffni Park there and then but decided to come back inside. After the game then Pat [O'Shea] came in and told me the time had come for me to cop myself on and that sort of carry-on had to stop. He was right too. I could have cost us that game and if I was going to keep going on like that I was going to cost us games in the championship."

At the start of the year Donaghy had hoped to see out the basketball season and help Tralee in their bid for the double, but by the time the league semi-final wheeled around, he knew he didn't have any leverage with Pat O'Shea, as much as a basketball man O'Shea himself was. "I could hardly say to Pat after being sent off twice and missing the next game, 'Pat, can I have the next one off now too?'" So off to Donegal it was, and Donaghy chose to relish it. "I was looking at it as a championship match. Dry day, dry ball, good team."

And early on, he was flying, just like he had against Cork, just like he had in '06 . . . setting up a rake of scores for others and taking the odd one himself. Then he fell and had to go off. A game that Kerry were winning by five points ended up being one they'd lose by five. His collarbone was broken and it would take more than two months for that AC joint to heal. Truth be told, he's only getting over it now.

"I got back in time for the Waterford game, but I wasn't happy with my own game.

You're telling yourself that you're alright, knowing full well it's not 100 per cent right.

I've done a lot of weights since to build it back up. It's still not as strong as it was last year, but it's a while now since I thought about it out on the pitch."

Today it will be tested. So will his fuse. He knows that. It's a balancing act. It was very apparent that Monaghan tried to rile him, "poking" into him at every chance. Donaghy didn't raise to the bait but he wonders now was he too passive.

While he's not proud of his "Who's crying now, baby?"

retort to Paul Hearty last August, he now senses maybe he shouldn't be ashamed of it either. "Maybe I need to be a bit more aggressive again.

Controlled aggression, like.

Get that bit of an edge back."

It's beginning to come together now. The shoulder.

His form. The league, his game against Waterford and Monaghan mightn't have gone to plan but he's not panicking.

He was pleased with his display in the Munster final, even though he was marshalled for long periods by Graham Canty, one of the best full backs in the country ("There's no 'one of the best' about it, " interrupts Donaghy. "He's the best"). That point he kicked near the end to put Kerry back in front; last year he couldn't have done that. Not from that range, not with a game like that on the line. He's taking a lot of confidence from that.

All week everyone's talking about Dublin's greater "hunger" but Donaghy doesn't buy it; they wouldn't have beaten teams as ravenous as Monaghan and Cork at the death if they still weren't hungry themselves. People still don't realise how tricky that Monaghan game was. The sixweek lay off ("It's nearly a punishment for winning your provincial title. The authorities will have to review that;

four weeks is nearly too long even, living like hermits and then expected to explode out of the blocks"), the ferocity that then awaited them ("Everyone's saying we were too predictable, going with route one, but lads hardly had a choice, looking up and only seeing a sea of white. We're not going to face that every time in a big pitch like Croke Park. No team can sustain it").

But now the rust and dust have been wiped away. Yeah, at times, himself and Kerry have struggled, but they're not robots. They're human.

Above all, they're performers.

Himself and Gooch; days like this is what they live for. What they were born for. The Dubs in Croker. In the summer of 2004 Donaghy was considering taking up a basketball scholarship in the States before Jack O'Connor drafted him into the senior panel and gave him a spot on the bench for the All-Ireland quarterfinal against the Dubs. "When I saw Croke Park packed that day, " remembers Donaghy, "I said, 'This is what it's all about.'" Today it's the same. The Dubs in Croker . . . this is what it's all about.

"People keep talking to me about this difficult second season-album thing. I don't take any notice of it. Seriously. As long as Kerry are winning, I couldn't give a shit. I played well against Cork. I wasn't far away from getting two goals against Monaghan and if I had, everyone would be saying I'm great again. There is another level in my game and I think I'm ready to go there. Last summer we were playing games week in, week out. It was like basketball and that suited me. This year, it's been a game every six or seven weeks. But Monaghan was only two weeks ago. Dublin are putting up serious numbers but if we're there with 10 minutes to go, we fancy our chances. A part of me just wants to explode on Sunday, to get back to where I was."

Last year he said he was due a wide.

This year he's due something else.

"Back me for the first goal on Sunday, " he says, winking.

He smiles when he says it.

But he's not joking. He's waited almost a year for this Sunday.