If, at sunfall in Belfast tomorrow, the airwaves are bustling with the exploits of Canavan and Cush and the routes back to Omagh and Pomeroy are languorous and beery, you'll find little change in Pete McGrath.

The Down man has seen it all too often. If his team lose to Tyrone tomorrow, he'll meet his questioners with that same serene countenance and respond with a courtesy which never fails him.

Down are out of season these days. Names such as McCartan and Linden, they strike images of another epoch. Pete McGrath too, his benign features seem to belong to that time when, for once, the rest of the Gaelic world was forced to look north. When we hear of Down these days, it is through rumour of unrest and mediocre results. Of fading stars getting truculent and soft-bellied.

Thing is, when the dust settles on this decade and analysts sift through the archives searching for the team that best defined those years, it will be difficult not to rest on Down.

So maybe tomorrow's Ulster semi-final in Casement Park is less about the revival of Tyrone football than the final stand of the championship team of the decade.

"I suppose if people look at the statistics which show that we won two All-Irelands, we would be up there alright. But as for being singled out as the team of the decade, well, that's a claim that I'd be much too modest to make," said McGrath this week, embarrassed at even having to address the issue.

But there remains a familiarity about the Down dressing-room which stretches back to the start of the '90s. When Pete McGrath stands up to implore them yet again, old faces will stare back at him, lads that were there for the unlikely 1991 odyssey.

"The notion of Down being this county who could mount raids went back as far of the '60s, but I suppose 1991 kind of cemented it," said McGrath.

"We had done nothing in seasons previous to that to suggest that we could go on to win an All-Ireland. What I will say is that we had a nice mix. Lads like Paddy O'Rourke and Ambrose Rodgers, God be good to him. And (Liam) Austin had been playing championship as far back as 1976. So these lads mixed with younger stars like James McCartan and Peter Withnell just gave us the right blend. I think that after the Ulster semi-final against Derry that year, we knew there was a dynamism about our game."

And that's precisely what it was. Down ran at teams in glorious, untethered waves, with breathtakingly direct assaults. McGrath still remembers which sequence of play made his heart beat fastest.

"I think in the 15 or 20 minutes after half-time in the 1991 All-Ireland final against Meath we achieved a certain standard that you aspire to. It was one of those few moments when you stand on a sideline and see all the concerns and efforts of the previous months falling into place. That's where the satisfaction in management comes from."

To those following Down's fortunes from a distance, it was as though that victory sated them for a few years before they stretched themselves, annexing the silver again three years later.

(That they would get beaten by Donegal in their first defence of that 1994 title the following May just seemed typical of the team's perverse nature).

But their steel and impudence spawned a new verve across the province and after 1994, Down found their neighbours, imbued with a new belief, taking turns to cut them down. Donegal, Derry, Tyrone, all have scalped them so much so that nowadays Down aren't on anyone's short list for the Ulster title.

But wasn't it always going to be difficult to sustain for Pete McGrath? Isn't two All-Irelands in four years enough to satisfy any county's need?

"It's certainly true that the task or motivation and rediscovering that natural hunger is a factor," he offers. "But there are other issues as well. Players can begin to think that they know it all and that they don't need to be told anything or don't need to be dealt with in the same way as they were before we won All-Irelands. That can be difficult to cope with," he admits.

And thus, on the back of a mediocre league, came word of an empire on the cusp of ruin, centring on an apparently disastrous training attendance just six weeks before the team were due to line out in the championship. Peter Withnell returned and walked away again.

McGrath, it was said, was grasping at ghosts.

"Look, it is true we had low attendances for a while but there were a number of factors - exams, club championships, injuries. It was perhaps blown out of proportion but a problem existed then. Peter Withnell came back in at a time when we were crippled with injuries. He gave it a go and decided it wasn't for him. It caused no acrimony. Ross Carr returned and he's staying with us. The spirit is good now."

McGrath has never been totalitarian in his approach to management anyway.

He believes that successful teams need burning on-field personalities, strong-willed people who require leeway to exercise their will.

"You have to remember you are dealing with adults. It is good to have a healthy forum for an exchange of views. I don't feel threatened by that. It's a matter of encouraging that without losing the reins of power."

But McGrath, he clutches those strings in his sleep. He readily admits that Down football, along with the teaching profession, has taken his life along a fairly streamlined path. Some days, he sees friends doing, well, things which don't involve football and he wonders. But he has no regrets.

"It is an all-embracing way of life, I am aware of that. But I do this because I get satisfaction out of it. I can't put it any simpler than that."

So tomorrow he'll pace the sideline, this unassuming man who has in many respects shaped the pattern of the game in the '90s, willing another Sunday out of it.

"This is such an important game," he says.

"If we lose, I don't think anyone will be expecting anything other than a few quiet years for Down. But I remember back to 1991 and nobody expected a thing of us then either."

Casement Park, then, is where it has led to. Sundown on a shining legacy or one last rush for the boys of summer?