It was just a lark. A promising bunch of Irish youngsters, up to Dublin for the weekend to showcase for the Aussies. What the hell? Jim Stynes bussed it into town from Rathfarnham, grinning mischief and expecting little else.

Those other faces he can still see but names are hazy now. Emmet Durney from Ros. Paul Clarke was asked along. One of the Crowleys, who played full forward. A serious lad from Cork.

"There were guys from all over the country and I didn't know them, but when we got together, we just had brilliant craic. A lot of them hadn't been to Dublin before, so on the Saturday we just had a great night. Y'know, we really didn't expect to be picked. No one took it that serious to be honest," he remembers.

This was 1984. Stynes was 17 and all he cared for was Dublin football and minding his feet while dancing the odd slow set to Spandau Ballet. The other stuff was optional.

"Dad was always saying I had to finish school and stuff. All I wanted to do was play senior football for Dublin. He said I had to get my priorities right, with school at the top, then sport, and women, I guess, were right down the bottom. I ended up placing them at the top from time to time."

Even then, Stynes was possessed of an astonishingly smooth athleticism, lean and rangy with a distinctive gait and light brown mop. Sport was all he really craved

But that Autumn, real life tapped his shoulder in the guise of St Patrick's teacher training college.

"I was the last one accepted on the third round offers," he laughs. "Someone pulled out and I got in and it was a big, big hassle all through the summer and I was like, oh God, no, I don't need this."

And then Melbourne football club fluttered a contract before him. In his heart, he knew immediately.

"I was given a week. It was more of a decision that was made for you, because of the opportunity to travel the world and having your education paid and being developed into a better person, a better athlete. I spoke with my folks and we threw it all up in the air and I said yes."

The decision forced him to pause for the first time, to sit in the stillness of the moment and think of what might have been. Rathfarnham had been an idyllic home place, a wondrous haunt of familiar streets, designed purely for a gang of them to "hang out playing soccer and Gaelic footie, or whatever was going".

Brian Stynes senior brought his lads a long to the Hill to watch their heroes, Brian Mullins and Bobby Doyle. Their father took a keen interest in Jim and young Brian. He was always on the sidelines at the Ballyboden St Enda's club, coaching them and other youngsters at under-age level. Guided Jim's under-16 team to a Dublin championship and on to the following season's League. That September brought him and Dublin a minor title.

Life, all the peripheral stuff aside, was sweet. Not easy to walk away from.

"The hardest thing for me was leaving my girlfriend at the time. Family I had been away from before, at Gaeltachts and summer camps, for up to eight weeks. But, obviously, when you are in a relationship, as I had been for over a year, it was tough. My girlfriend encouraged me to go and we tried to hold on to it, but 12,000 miles is a long way."

So on a glum November morning he travelled them alone, utterly unknowing.

Jim Stynes is a superstar in his twilight now. He is still blessed with a youthful grace unnatural to most guys of 6' 7". At 32, he looks, in truth, less a veteran footballer than an aspiring pro-hoops player, strong and loose-limbed.

It is lunch-time on Thursday and he is stretching his back in the opulence of a Dublin hotel. The touring Australian party are just back from the Galway and intend limbering up out at UCD. As a team, they want to end this tour with a win and Stynes dearly hopes it will be afford him a memorable ending to life in professional sports.

"We were so proud to win last Sunday. And for me, it's just the perfect way to finish up, back at Croke Park, with Brian involved as well. I . . . you couldn't ask for more really."

Not that he ever demanded much. Melbourne in the mid'80s appealed to him. Despite his traumatic jousts over St Pat's, he found himself back in teacher training college, living with a family associated with Melbourne FC. Barbecues and steak nights beefed him up. Savage endurance training all but broke him.

"They offered me $50, like £20, per game on a Sunday, as well as paying my tuition. I was amazed, thought this was a brilliant deal, to get paid for something you loved. After travelling and all, though, you only had enough for a few beers on a Friday night."

The early years were relentlessly tough. On one occasion, he had to fight off unconciousness on pre-training runs and canoeing sessions. All to test their mental strength.

Summer lapsed into winter and bloomed again and still Stynes was nowhere near the first team. They doubted this lively Irish kid, dropped him off the roster and sent him out to play with Prahran.

In the forgotten leagues of Aussie football, he flourished, came of age. A senior debut with Melbourne followed in 1987 and since then it seems his career his been charmed.

Stynes's name is sporting lore in Melbourne. One of the five men in Melbourne club history to win the coveted Brownlow award (in 1991). Four times an AFL Best and Fairest recipient. But durability will be his ultimate legacy; he played 244 consecutive games in the AFL, a record streak stretching back to 1987. It ended in April because of injury and he has since decided to draw the curtain on his career.

"I feel it's time. I'll always wish I'd won an AFL title, but it's tough, it's like here in Ireland. But I feel I was very lucky. I had a lot of good years. I got to see the game evolve into a national sport, with big money involved. We had great times."

Now, he intends to throw himself into Reach, the help group he founded, aimed at kids.

"It's an organisation going for five years and we run classes for kids to raise their self-esteem. I'm lucky in that I have something to move on to. . . All athletes would love to play forever, but that just doesn't happen."

Stynes is a dual citizen now and will base himself in Australia. He gets back to Rathfarnham each Christmas and has two sisters in Melbourne.

Dreams of home wash over him occasionally. Sometimes he thought of resurrecting his life as a blue, but contented himself to watch his brother Brian win a senior All-Ireland in 1995. Watched from the Hill, pride coursing his veins.

Funny that. All those childhood Sundays with his family on the Hill and he had imagined himself out there. Just wasn't to be. For 10 seasons, he has sparkled away on parched Australian fields, a hero to expatriates, yet hardly causing a ripple in this, darker hemisphere. Our loss. But for chance, we'd know him well.