Tom Humphries talks to former members of the Derry side that defeated Dublin by one point in the All-Ireland football semi-final in 1993.

Where the story begins is anyone's guess. In a spare corner of Eamon Coleman's cluttered head perhaps. In a dressing-room in Lavey when Derrymen decided they could be kings. In the laments of 1958 when Derry came to Dublin and got blown away by the local sharpies. The story began somewhere in there. Somewhere in the collective imagination of the football people of east Derry. It ended in an All-Ireland title 10 years ago but as a drama it climaxed weeks previously.

Derry came to Dublin and slayed the hosts, 0-15 to 0-14, in one of the defining games of the era. Hard to believe that the team they came to town with won just two Ulster titles in their pomp. They had rare skills and big-boned men but remained somehow a blue-collar outfit. Down, who wrapped two All-Irelands into that period, were more fragile but somehow more brilliant. Down believed from the start. Derry worked until they had earned their belief.

It took till that day against Dublin before they knew the sort of team they were and by then they were half spent. Still. It was perfect.

They had a sports psychologist in the bus with them that year. He never got near Tony Scullion.

"Listen," says Scullion, "if putting on that county jersey doesn't motivate you what will? There was nothing intimidating about that day. It was brilliant. Such a lift. Coming out. Seeing the Hill. Seeing those sky blue shirts. The place stuffed. Hill 16 all Dublin. Their supporters are unbelievable. I loved it."

Scullion loved it. As was to be expected. He was the rapscallion of the team. The oldest member, the most talented defender, the most idiosyncratic of an odd bunch. He'd watch his team-mates doing stretching before training, he'd have his arms folded and a grin on his face: "Any old-timer will tell you there was no hamstrings 40 years ago. The hamstring is in the head boys."

They still love him.

"Scullion and McKeever," says Joe Brolly. "You just let them off. Especially Scullion. You just let him do what he wanted. Scullion hated training. He'd just stand there grinning at us when we'd be doing training. I used liken him to Serge Blanco. He was a chain smoker. He'd have one at half-time. Yet he's still in astonishing condition."

Scullion was to become a central figure in Derry's semi-final success. Dublin opened up the way Derry had expected them to.

"We'd seen Donegal beat them the year before," says Johnny McGurk, "and Dublin were all at sea that day. They could look good in some games and look poor when it was put up to them. They never had enough forwards and never seemed to know who their best six were. They always opted for the biggest players there.

"You don't tend to get the most free-flowing football with such big players. We knew they wouldn't score a lot. We fancied our chances because they had a few individuals up front but not a pattern of play that was tough to defend against."

So it proved. Dublin lined out with Pat Gilroy and Eamonn Heery in their half-forward line. Derry were relieved. Then the ball started raining into the full-forward line. Derry scored three early points but Dublin hit a string of wides. The Derry bench shuffled the deck quickly. After 19 minutes full-back Danny Quinn was called ashore. Dublin in Croke Park was to be Quinn's last championship game.

The high watermark and the low point rolled into one. A crowd of 62,358 - he said goodbye to them early. "Vinny Murphy was a big strong bustling fella," says Quinn "He went for the ball. You went for the ball. Straightforward. I always enjoyed playing against him. He was totally right-footed, not that hard to mark, not a speed merchant. No matter who the full forward is if they get good ball in. Gary Coleman was corner back on Dessie Farrell and Dessie won plenty of ball early on.

"I remember very little. I remember walking off and saying to myself that I thought there were boys around me that were playing as badly as me. We were under severe pressure for the first 10 or 15 minutes. I was marking Vinny and he'd won a few possessions but nothing had come off him. Karl Diamond came on for me. I remember thinking well at least Karl is from Bellaghy it's not so bad but then thinking 15, 20 minutes? He didn't give me long.

"I walked past Eamonn Coleman and he looked at me and looked away. I felt he'd planned it. There was a big part of me wanted to have it out with him there and then, but that wasn't the time."

Hardly surprising Quinn was sore. His sacrifice for his county was unique that summer. For the Ulster final, against Donegal, he was named in the side without any intention of being played. Soon after he went on honeymoon and trained twice a day for the duration just to be ready for Dublin. He'd played on Murphy in the league a few months earlier and had been man of the match.

"I started corner back," says Scullion of the semi-final, "and moved into full back on Vinny Murphy. We were slow off the blocks and it just didn't work out for Danny. He was a great servant. In the Ulster final I'd played full back. It didn't bother me to play there. I enjoyed playing there at different times. I knew it was a possibility. Early on though we were loose and all the ball was coming on top of Vinny Murphy. So I went in to give it a try."

Scullion's best efforts made little difference. Derry's problem was the amount of ball and the quality of ball that was coming in. Midfield was in trouble. Dublin's half backs were doing well.

"Danny came off," says Johnny McGurk. "Karl went on. We were struggling. The whole defence was struggling in fairness. I struggled for a while. I was marking Pat Gilroy and usually I'd prefer to mark a bigger man but Pat was about at the limit.

"Pat Gilroy kicked two points from play in the first half. He snapped up breaks off the full-forward line and ticked them over the bar. They'd kicked a few wides and then got a few points in a row and were getting away from us. We weren't winning at midfield and we were all under pressure."

Derry got to half-time five points behind. The dressing-room was confusion and mayhem. Then a surprising thing happened.

"Half-time was amazing," says Quinn. "After I went off things got worse for the team. Me, going off didn't make a big change. At half-time Eamon was nearly dead on his feet. He did his wee bit but you could see he thought we were in bother. And then suddenly Mickey Moran took things by the scruff of the neck. Mickey gave the bit of inspiration.

"He said very little usually. Eamonn was always the motivator. Mickey was just on fire that day. Even for me. I went in disappointed and came out all fired up. Just sitting on the bench thinking that we'd win it. The second-half performance was the best half hour we played as a team."

Brolly had spent the first half getting angrier and angrier at the amount of ball which was coming into the Derry full-forward line. At half-time he was surprised to have an ally in Moran, normally solemn and earnest.

"I remember at half-time seeing Coleman and thinking that he was resigned to it. The game was lost. Mickey just lost his temper. He shouted and roared. He could see that we could do it. He could sense the Dublin defence was flakey."

"Apparently," says McGurk, "at half-time Mickey Moran did all the talking. I was sick. I went into the toilet, missed everything. Don't know if it were nerves or what. Don't usually suffer that bad. I came out and the lads were sitting there looking strange. I gathered afterwards it was Mickey. I just thought Eamonn must have given one of his performances."

So they rejoined the battle. McGurk had evacuated his stomach. Brolly had got things off his chest. Henry Downey had said a few words. Moran had burned something into their brain, a folk memory of Derry sides who'd come and lost. Derry thought too much of themselves to see themselves as just another Derry side.

"Some of us had played under Jim McKeever, Phil Stuart and Tom Scullion from the 1958 side," says Danny Quinn. "We'd heard about 1958 but it didn't hang over us too much but suddenly just the thought of 1958 to 1993, such a long wait, so many Derry teams. That's what Mickey Moran put up to us."

The second half brought the thunder. "The question was, did we have enough time to catch them. You had to be deadly careful. No doubt that panic set in. You could smell the panic. We turned over the Dublin full-back line when I got in. We had more weapons all around than they had. They were very reliant on Charlie Redmond.

"I remember early in the second half Brian McGilligan hitting Jack Sheedy a terrible shoulder. Boom! Everyone in the stadium could feel it. Not long after I went out for a ball and reached out and Sheedy poleaxed me. He hit me so hard it went right through me. I stayed on my feet and laid it off. I hadn't seen him coming but I pretended it didn't bother me. I just played on but he'd hit me like a truck."

"The second half was marvellous," says Scullion. "It seemed as if it was point for point but we were drawing them in. The second half was when all the football was played. Every time we scored, they scored and we'd go and score again."

Derry scored the first two points of the second half and then it went tit for tat for 10 minutes. Heery. Coleman. Redmond. McGilligan. Clarke. Gormley. The spell was broken when Enda Gormley added a second minutes later. Just two points in it. There were 18 minutes left. Dublin were only going to score twice more.

"I can remember," says Brolly, "saying to Heery with about 15 minutes to go, 'you're not even going to get a draw here ya fools'. You could smell it. The Dubs played terribly well, they didn't capitulate, but they just hadn't enough. Derry just threw caution to the wind. We went at them from every position on the field."

Brolly's job in that Derry team was to forage. The typical attack involved Brolly coming out in search of ball, tossing it over his shoulder to full forward Seamus Downey and Downey laying it off to any one of the three half backs who would be streaming past by then. As the game wore on Brolly found the foraging became easier.

"They'd started off with Paul O'Neill, who we'd never heard of, in the defence. Then Paddy Moran came in and then the worst thing they could have done - they put Mick Deegan in at corner back. I knew then. Mick had been doing damage further up and I saw him coming in and I remember saying to myself "oh goody". With 10 minutes to go Brolly scored a point which should have been goal. It had the same impact on Dublin though.

"It could have been a goal alright," says Brolly. "Gormley delayed passing it. Enda Gormley was slow but strong as a bull. He had the ball ahead of me and I was pumped up and I caught up with him in about three strides and that took him by surprise. He gave it and (John) O'Leary was right out to it. I chipped it up and it went over."

That left Derry a point behind. Gormley had a free three minutes later. Level! Then Downey and McGurk sandwiched points around a Redmond free.

Derry were free, free at last. Looking back nobody is surprised at two half backs from Lavey scoring the final Derry points.

"Henry (Downey) at that time ate and slept football," says his friend and clubmate, McGurk. "A few of us would have eased off after matches but nothing escaped Henry. If we won a game well, there were always a few points he would bring up the next night. He was always going to step up at the end of a match like that."

And McGurk's own point, the most famous score in Derry football history. He talks it through like a man who's been asked about it a million times and expects to be asked a million more times.

"I knew the game was very close to ending. I turned onto my right, I knew there was no chance of scoring on the right, turned left. It wasn't bothering me to kick on the left. That was the only option. It seemed as if we had been playing for days. I saw it going over the bar and I just ran like hell back up the field. I ran straight into Pat Gilroy to let him know I was back. "

The minutes ticked away quickly and ended with Dublin attacking.

"I remember them coming at us," says Scullion. "I think Keith Barr had the ball and it went out of play under the Hogan and suddenly Tommy Sugrue just blew the whistle and ended it. It was the most amazing feeling."

"I remember at the end being one of the first onto the pitch over to Henry," says Danny Quinn. "The county was into the All-Ireland final. That was more important than Danny Quinn being taken off. It was about fellas who would do anything for Derry."

"The old Croke Park had more atmosphere," says Brolly. "The place was heaving. In the second half you couldn't hear anything. Just roaring and screaming. The last 10, 15 minutes just people screaming. It must have been a terribly exciting match. I remember in The Hill one of the Dubs had a blow-up doll and as the game went on the doll began to sag. I meant to look to see how she was at the end."

McGurk was about to enter into folklore. He is reputed to have sold the magic left boot at a couple of dozen impromptu auctions in the US. Over and over again.

"Aye," he says. "There's always that problem when you get Brolly involved. That was a bit of crack. I still have the boot. What Brolly never says is how he got the boot he scored his point with sprayed gold for his mantelpiece. I have the boot and I have Pat Gilroy's jersey. He gave it to me and I suppose he thought I was entitled to it - I'd been grabbing it all day long."

They went back to Derry and like the county in general the fact Cork annihilated Mayo in the other semi-final never registered. Derry knew they would win the final.

"For the final there was an atmosphere of inevitability," says Brolly. "Tony Davis cods me these days if he hadn't been sent off Cork would have won. We felt it was inevitable. The big game was the semi-final. The dressing-room for the final was completely different. We were quiet and tense before we went out. We knew what we were going to do."

They celebrated. Spent a while in the following years at war with the county board. They were never quite the same again. Looking back, the summit was that grey day against Dublin and that second half when they melded into one unit and found inside themselves the best Derry performance ever.