THE MEMORIES of the great days of the early 1950s are growing dim for Paddy Prendergast, bud the loyalty to Mayo has survived more than 30 years of work and now retirement in Kerry, "Kern has been good to me but Mayo will always be with me," he says, even willing to talk football or any other sport with great affection for its lore and its people.

Prendergast was a classy full back when ruggedness not class was the quality which football fans and mentors looked for in that position. It was said of him, without any sense of the ridiculous, that "when he goes up for the ball, he doesn't come down without it."

He sees a Mayo win in Sunday's All Ireland replay as a distinct possibility, rejecting the theory that their chance was let slip away last time. He believes, however, that Mayo will need to adopt a more attacking attitude this time.

"I remember Joe Keohane (a great Kerry full back) once saying that when you go 20 points ahead you should immediately go for 21. When Mayo were six points up (in the final) they should have gone for seven," he says.

Prendergast remembers distinctly an incident in the 1950 All Ireland final when the Mayo forward Billy Kenny broke his leg and was carried off on a stretcher. Others remember that as some of the other players, in a gesture of concern, were helping to escort Kenny to the sideline, he sat up on the stretcher and ordered them: "Don't mind me. Go back and win the match." Which they did.

He believes that the same spirit now pervades the Mayo team. Although he regards victory as extremely important for Mayo in particular and Connacht in general, he feels that things are not as bad as they are sometimes painted. "Galway should have beaten Tyrone last year and they (Tyrone) were beaten by a single point against Dublin in the final.

"We came from nowhere this year and beat Kerry and should have beaten Meath. Leitrim have been unfortunate and the Sligo minors should have been in Croke Park this year, not Mayo. It isn't all that bleak," he says.

"The present Mayo team is more focused than ever before. They know where they are going. I have great admiration for John Maughan. He has had a tremendous effect on the side.

"I believe John Casey wasn't fully fit for the drawn match and that this disrupted the Mayo attack. Now I believe that Maughan should play Ray Dempsey on Martin O'Connell. Dempsey is big and mobile and I believe that he would limit O'Connell's influence on the Meath side. He is a tremendous player and didn't deserve the abuse he got after the Tyrone match."

Prendergast also advocates a more positive role for Colm McManamon, the Mayo centre forward who has been playing deep in the team's run of championship victories.

"I think he should be used much farther forward to put pressure on the Meath defence. I have always believed that forwards lose matches either by missing chances or not putting sufficient pressure on defences. In the draw the ball wasn't reaching the full forward line and towards the end we were playing with only two forwards.

"I believe that we took the foot off the pedal when we should have gone for those extra scores which would have put Meath out of sight, but I think that Mayo will have learned from the experience.

"In a sense Meath were playing at home. The Mayo lads now know what faces them and I'm sure John Maughan is shrewd enough to have used that to Mayo's advantage in getting ready for the replay."

He insists that the present team is similar to the one in which he played a significant part. He talks passionately about Sean "Theo" Flanagan and Padraig Carney.

"I remember him (Carney) coming at me in training. A 10 second man for the hundred (yards), weighing 15 stone, coming straight for you was a frightening sight. Many is the time I stepped aside and waved him on," he says with a laugh.

Tom Langan, full forward in the 50s team was a big angular garda. "He tortured me in training. He never stood in one place. He was running right and left all the time and was very quick for a big man. He used this tactic to make space for Carney coming through," says Prendergast.

"I think McManamon and Casey should be used like that," he says.

He is convinced that Mayo now have a better than ever chance of beating Meath. "I don't know what happened to Tyrone but Mayo will not stand back and they have all the ability to do it this time" he says with the kind of passionate feeling which epitomised his performances on the field.