All-Ireland Club Football Championship semi-finals: Keith Duggantalks to some of those involved with Ballina Stephenites ahead of tomorrow's semi-final

The drama in Cork led to intense speculation for the last few weeks about the summer senior All-Ireland championships. It was almost forgotten that February and March are supposed to be the months where the elite club footballers shine. Tomorrow, Ballina Stephenites meet Nemo Rangers in Ennis in the semi-final.

Both clubs are the undisputed powerhouses in Mayo and Cork respectively.

While Nemo have continued to train throughout the weeks of stormy talks, the Ballina club have battled the sheer longevity of this competition. Their last competitive game was the Connacht final victory against St Brigid's, Roscommon, when they were flying on a soft November day. Since then they have tried to keep busy for what is notionally the same competition.

"It is a problem but you can't change it," admitted Colm Leonard, the team's centre back. He was sitting in the Stephenites clubhouse bar on official duty on a desolate night at the Ballina ground. After the Stephenites October county final win, the team had a long night in the bar-room. But that was a different season.

"You wind down. You have to. Do a bit of gym work and then gradually try and peak again. At least if lads have knocks, there is that recovery period. But you do almost have to treat it as two separate competitions.

"There has been almost a three-months gap since the Connacht final. We played Mayo seniors and under-21s and Sligo IT in challenge games but they are all just starting off their training."

The travails of the club player are largely undocumented because complaints, if even voiced, are rarely heard. Paul McGarry is one of the few remaining senior players from Ballina's All-Ireland final loss to Crossmaglen. He played at all levels for Mayo and he believes the club demands have probably reached the same intensity as would have prevailed at county level seven or eight years ago.

"People don't understand that club football in Mayo is probably the toughest in Ireland. If you get out of Mayo, you are halfway there; you are nearly guaranteed an All-Ireland semi-final at least. Teams like Crossmolina, Knockmore and Charlestown are always there, always strong.

"I suppose the average age in the squad is about 27. David (Brady) is the oldest now and you have three or four lads around 30. People want to do their own thing as well. We have been training for 13 months. It's tough going for three of four nights a week. Even today, I went into Castlebar to get an injection in my back. Just wear and tear."

Ballina's inexorable completion of another Mayo title bore the club's traditional hallmark of timing their form to perfection. They lost their first game in the group stages to Charlestown and just did enough to scrape through against Louisburgh and Westport. Even their three-point win over Garrymore looked somewhat tired.

Ballaghaderreen, young and raking up eye-catching scores in every match, were heavily tipped to win the Mayo championship, to the point where several bookmakers had stopped taking bets on them.

"They were being spoken of as All-Ireland contenders and there was nothing being said about Ballina," says McGarry.

"We were written off. And we really got stuck into them. That was the turning point of our season. Ballina is a very physical team. Most of the players are well over six feet - I'm five-foot-eleven and am the smallest player on the team. They had never been tested and we wanted to see how they react. We played well too. Nobody was really giving us a shot in that game."

That fact seems odd in retrospect given that Ballina boasts a formidable squad, including the current Mayo captain, Ronan McGarrity, the irrepressible David Brady and many of the team that won the All-Ireland in 2005. As manager Liam Higgins acknowledged, that experience and know-how have been invaluable.

"Once we get within sight of a county final, we tend to produce good performances. I don't know. We have a tradition. Ballina represented Mayo in the early years of the game. It is a big club. We have a good selection of players. We would have five or six lads pushing for places. There is a good range of footballers here.

"I remember one day last year we fielded a team without 14 of our regular players and still had a pretty good side. We lost the game all right but we were strong. There will always be a few Ballina lads representing Mayo and that helps.

"These are guys used to winning minors and Connacht medals and getting to All-Ireland finals.

"We play a good brand of football. And there are several other lads not too far off the cut either. Put it all together and you have a fairly good side."

Higgins has to be the most quiet-spoken and serene management figure in Gaelic games. He had acted as selector to Tommy Lyons and agreed to take on the management after Lyons was recruited by John O'Mahony. But he has steered Ballina to this latest triumph with remarkably little fuss. On the wall, there is a photograph of the 1987 Connacht-winning side, of which he was a member.

"There was an injury crisis and Ivan Heffernan moved out the field so I was asked to step in as a goalkeeper," he recalls.

"I knew a lot of those players and it was a fine team. I would have taught some of them in school as well and watched them come up through. I suppose the style of training is different now and the approach is a lot more tactical. It was more of a slog then.

"It's all ball work now and strategy. I heard one fella say recently that you would need a PhD to keep up with all the drills."

But there has always been continuity. Colm Leonard's father was a player on that team and a selector in 2005. Liam McHale was just entering his prime years: this year, the big man has been helping out at training and on match days.

David Clarke, the former county goalkeeper, is a substitute goalkeeper tomorrow and is also club secretary.

As clubs go, Ballina are big but it remains a tight circle of people.

"The club season is long. It can be hard to keep going," says Paul McGarry, "In 1999, we kicked 18 wides against Crossmaglen and it took us until 2003 to win the county titte. The next year we won it again and went on to win the All-Ireland final. But we always regret not winning the three county titles in a row. So it is good to be at this stage again and Nemo are going to be strong. We just want to tear into it."