August 17th. No mega-watt smiles. No clenched fists. No chest beating. No histrionics. No champagne. Just the sort of cool focus which might easily have been mistaken for gloom if you had missed the preceding 70 minutes of hurling.

John Leahy moved silently about the room. An ugly swelling had forced his left eye shut and his cheek was frozen into a puffy mess. He was naked save for the towel he had tied about his waist. He hugged his teammates. They hugged him back. Leahy's embraces betrayed the real message. The heart of the Tipp team was beating loudly. Elsewhere Wexford lay dying.

Leahy had been taken off, looking like elephant man, in the 51st minute. He had scored 1-4 by then. Tipperary were back in the All-Ireland final. Back in debt to Leahy.

In the lean years Tipp missed his exuberance like they missed nothing else. His return to form this year has been faltering, but timed nicely to coincide with Tipperary's needs. From a cameo against Limerick, to top billing in the All-Ireland final. Leahy is a marquee name again. An old dog, with some new tricks too. He has, for instance, learned to harness himself, channel the energies a little.

"I'd say that the John Leahy of 1997 is a little different," says Galway's Tom Helebert, who spent several roiling afternoons in his proximity. "He seems more assured of himself, more certain of the importance to the team of him being right."

Leahy will be 28 next Tuesday. Self-realisation took a while. Fulfilment of promise came early though. Reared in a footballing outpost, hard by the Kilkenny border, he became the first Mullinahone man to hurl for the county. By his early 20s Mullinahone was holding an annual street carnival to coincide with Leahy's birthday. Kilkenny's Fan Larkin once noted that in Leahy Tipperary had found their "new Jimmy Doyle". In Mullinahone they see Doyle as being history's answer to John Leahy.

At 16, he was playing for the club's best team. His derring-do eventually dragged a junior side to the senior ranks.

Leahy became accustomed early to Croke Park on All-Ireland final days. Lost a minor final in '87. Played on Peter Finnerty in the senior final a year later. Finnerty, gnarled as any veteran on the field that day, noted him down as "being very aggressive". Not disparagingly, either.

He won senior and under-21 All-Ireland medals in 1989. His input was low in 1990 when Tipperary succumbed to Cork. The following summer his contribution prised Tipperary free of the province. Conor O'Donovan played in the Tipperary full back line those afternoons. He reckons that Leahy's greatness places any flaws into damning perspective. "The Munster final replay of 1991, I remember him as being awesome in the final 20 minutes. Just in the right place at the right time all through. He made a series of interceptions and clearances which lifted the team. He would be very quiet in a dressing-room, but would have a passion about the jersey."

Yet, even in the time of his greatest triumph, Leahy couldn't free himself from the need to rub salt into a loser's wounds. Offered water by a Tipp mentor, he drank while his Cork marker stood panting beside him. The mentor offered the drink to Leahy's rival. Leahy turned and splashed water in the Corkman's face. Doubtless the Cork player dwelled on the incident longer than Leahy did. That was the point. Always looking for the edge.

"The public would have the wrong perception of Johnny Leahy," says O'Donovan. "There is the idea that he is a bit of a boyo, he must be a bit of a pup. I think it's unfair. He has an aggressive side, but every hurler needs what he has. He'd live by the sword or die by the sword, yet I don't think he's ever been sent off for Tipp."

"His temperament is his main problem," says Mick Minogue, a Tipperary mentor who has played a part in shaping Leahy. "He has to be playing physically to be playing well. He can't take it handy, there has to be aggro in his game. Then he has to control it."

Tom Helebert suffered more acutely than most under the sweep of the Leahy broadsword when the Mullinahone man chose to impose himself on the League final of 1994. Leahy had seven points. Helebert's own day of splendour had come the previous summer when he limited Leahy's input to a single point in the All-Ireland semifinal.

"Leahy moves very well. He has good wrists. When you are in possession he works very hard. Hooks and blocks well. He gets under your skin in a variety of ways. On the days when he's on song the ball seems to find him, he's like a magnet for the ball."

The league final of 1994 was perhaps his last truly great exhibition. Indomitable as a force of nature on the field, he was scarcely containable off it. Afterwards he shrivelled Galway in a couple of salty sentences. "All their talk. They have no All-Irelands. We have two All-Irelands. When they learn how to win All-Irelands they can talk."

There has been relatively little talk from Leahy himself since then. Last week he was spirited away from the Tipperary press night by one publication much to the chagrin of invited journalists who sought a word with a man whose resurrection is a topical work in progress.

On the field, though, he has picked up a reputation for being quick with the bitter word whispered into an opponent's ear. In the hurling community, it seems to be taken as part and parcel of Leahy. "He talks, but that's OK," says Tom Helebert. "You go for any advantage you can get. If it's part of your make-up, you go for it. I would have great respect for him. He'll always shake you hand at the end. You notice the abuse coming in over the wire and in fairness to him he gets on with it."

Injuries and controversies have been his company for a few seasons. He lost the hurling season of 1994 with a football injury. He was involved in a highly-publicised contretemps with a Limerick supporter, Steven Downey, in a pub in Manchester in 1996. The weight of it seemed to diminish him briefly and he was substituted in each instalment of last year's Munster final.

Off the field his life has become more settled, though. Having left school at the age of 16, he held down a variety of jobs in his early days on the Tipperary team. Plasterer. Seed company worker. Creamery operative. He now works as a sales rep with Finches, the sponsors of the Tipperary team. His natural affability makes him a natural salesman.

On the field the acute hurling brain which had him virtually running Mullinahone's senior team from his late teens onwards ensures that he remains a threat. His habit of ghosting into spaces might have secured Tipperary a draw in this summer's Munster final. Uncharacteristically Leahy fluffed a ground pull in front of goal.

"I thought when he was picked at midfield for the Munster final he might take it by the scruff of neck," says Conor O'Donovan, "but he never came into it until he went to wing forward. He's showed some of the old form, but not everything."

Twenty-eight on Tuesday, entering maturity with a fine young side growing around him. John Leahy. The kid who grew up in the shadow of Fox and English and Bonner might yet cast the longest shadow.