Interview: Keith Duggan talks to the star forward about the joys and demands of serving club, county, and now country.

Breakfast time on the outskirts of Galway city: a grey day, traffic crawling, faces behind rain-splotched windscreens, alone with Ryan Tubridy.

"Once you get past Brennan's pub, it moves a bit," Pádraic Joyce promises on his mobile phone. Living in Tuam, he makes this commute down the Saw Doctors' beloved N17 most mornings, another in the long line of traffic that has acquired national notoriety. Morning is about the only part of Joyce's day that moves slowly.

"Up to my eyes," he smiles when we meet over a black coffee in a completely empty restaurant. "With the injury there I had three weeks off sitting around the house and I said to myself that will have to do for rest and relaxation for the time being. So I'm a bit behind with work to be heading off again to meet up with the squad."

The "injury" Joyce is talking about is already the stuff of folklore around the football parishes of Galway. A complicated groin strain he suffered at club training with Killererin was supposed to rule him out of the county final against Salthill a fortnight ago.

Killererin is football passionate but tiny, and without Joyce its constellation dims. He was not named in the match programme and did not line out on the field with his team-mates and when the parade around Pearse Stadium took place, Joyce stayed huddled in the dugout.

It was only after the National Anthem had sounded that Tommie Ryder, the man listed to replace Joyce, sprinted towards the sideline to be replaced by Killererin's most celebrated player. Both teams were slack-jawed at the exchange.

In the press box, the radio men went into a frenzied pitch that only the dogs could hear. The crowd reacted as though it had witnessed a religious apparition.

The Connacht Tribune would call him "The Miracle Man". To Killererin people, his appearance was just that: miraculous. Nobody had an inkling of an idea that Joyce could play. For the previous two weeks he had met with his uncle and team trainer Billy Joyce at the pitch in Bearnadearg in the dead of night.

Long after the rest of his team-mates had fled for home after training, Joyce would go through a series of running drills that took him around to midnight.

"The reason for the secrecy was we didn't want the other players getting their hopes up if they saw me at training," he explained. "Because I was medically ruled out until the week after the final took place. I just decided to test it out.

"Billy decided we should tell Tommie Ryder. And Tommie said he didn't care whether he played or not, all he wanted was to win that county final. Like, this man has been playing with the club for the last 15 years. I ran and it felt fine - a bit uncomfortable but I knew I would be fine.

"Tommie told no-one. Another lad might begrudge it happening. It was hard on him - like his father is president of the club and he didn't know about it until the switch was made and his family were all watching the game and they didn't know about it."

As surprises go, it was spectacular. It was born of necessity, but it worked and the mischief in Joyce enjoyed it.

"The Salthill boys were hitting into me, but sure I went out midfield then just to try and undo their plans a bit more," he laughs.

Killererin had lost three of the last four Galway finals so that victory - by 1-10 to 0-10 - was a tonic to Joyce after another frustrating All-Ireland championship with the county. He hit three points and two of those were frees, far from the kind of terrifying total he has posted over the years for his club.

But the effort he underwent to play with Killererin meant that Joyce was the talk of Galway's football pubs - word even reached the Galway women's All-Ireland football celebration banquet in Citywest - that Sunday night.

It made sound hollow some of the rumours that have followed Pádraic Joyce's football career over the past two years - that he no longer cares, that the two All-Ireland medals have made him bored, that he is arguing with this guy and not talking to that.

"Upsetting stuff. Not just about me, but other guys in the team and it was disappointing after what those teams achieved under John O'Mahony. We should never have had to hear it. Like, it was only a minority but the same stuff just kept coming back.

"If you ask John O'Mahony, we always did what was asked of us at training. There was never a problem. But rumours like that are what happen when a team wins things. It becomes public property.

"Like, I remember after we were beaten by Wexford in the league there in Tuam. I walked off the field behind John that day and the abuse he took was unbelievable. One man followed him side-by-side along the wire from the dugout to the tunnel just screaming at him. That's about 60 yards.

"Fortunately, John didn't react. But it should never have happened. And I know this man who was doing the shouting and he should have kept his mouth closed. He would never have been at a Galway game before 1998."

Joyce was only 15 when he played his first senior championship game for Killererin on a filthy, wet evening in Tuam. Clonbur were the opposition.

"I was marking a man called Eoin Burke - I'll never forget him. He has a restaurant in Clonbur and he has the jersey on the wall - he is looking for another now. He would have been a gent off the field and a tough corner back on it. I survived him anyhow and we won by 10 points to eight."

From that point, his career has passed at the speed of light. Joyce shakes his head when his 1994 Hogan Cup win with St Jarlath's is mentioned. The fact that happened a decade ago sometimes makes him dizzy. He stayed close to that gang but life has thrown them to the four corners of the country and frequent nights out dwindled to occasional meetings and those have now been replaced by phone calls or the odd text message.

Joyce is still only 27, a young man in the prime of his life, but he agrees with the theory that once a Gaelic footballer passes 24, he is wary of the clock, of his athletic mortality. He cannot believe he is 10 years on from the relatively carefree life of Jarlath's or, for that matter, that he is seven years into his Galway football career.

The game and his attitude towards it have changed. He says the fun is gone and he regrets that but at the same time, it is not a complaint. It is a matter of choice.

"The social side of things was great in 1998, it was. But the older you get, you start thinking that this could be your last chance to do something or whatever. You get more conscious. The way I see it, I am not still playing with Galway for the craic but because I want to, because it is a privilege.

"And you start pushing yourself a bit more the longer you are on the scene. It may not come from management. Like, whereas before you might have met the lads at home for a pint or two on an evening off, now you just grab the gear bag and head to the gym for an hour. That's the way I have turned, I'm afraid."

The fact is he feels he has more to offer the game and desires more from it. The ground underneath him constantly shifts. Before the International Rules team left for Australia last autumn, they stayed in the Citywest for a night or two.

On the Saturday morning they flew out, Joyce saw two of the Armagh boys leaving the hotel gym at half past seven in the morning. He was stunned with admiration and a quiet nervousness. Those players had lost an All-Ireland final just four weeks earlier.

The moment was just quietly reinforced that across the land, nobody was sleeping, nobody was resting up. If you thought about it too much, you could become racked with guilt or obsessed and start to charge up mountains just for the sake of it.

The best approach is to try and stay sharp and measured. Joyce knows himself by now. Sometimes he attacks the weights but never gravitates towards them out of interest.

Going back to his days in IT Tralee under Pat Flanagan, he was never keen on pumping steel. Heregarded it as a chore. In preparation for this year's International series though, he put in the hours. Being chosen as captain of Ireland he regarded as an honour although it was overshadowed by the drama caused by his injury.

Séamus Moynihan, his friend since college, called up.

"He was joking that this captaincy was a curse because the same thing happened with him last year. But yeah, I am delighted. It is great for the family and the club here in Killererin. It is an honour, it really is."

Joyce was a keen advocate of the new game from the beginning, memorably playing in the 2000 series just over a week after Galway lost the All-Ireland final replay to Kerry. The speed of International Rules thrills him.

"Compared to Gaelic, where you have the kick-out and a lad catches it and has four or five others pucking at him around midfield, it is so fast. I think as entertainment, it is second to none. And playing it means we get a chance to pit ourselves against professionals. That is Australia's great advantage and it is sometimes overlooked.

"The physical aspect has lessened in recent years. But you know if they hit you right in a one-on-one, it will hurt because we don't really know how to deal with those tackles yet and the fact is they are just in better shape than us by virtue of being professional."

As Octobers go, this one has not been bad so far. Killererin's victory made up for the disappointment of another muted summer for Galway and the end of O'Mahony's era.

"The way management is going now, it seems like the first year a manager comes in is everything," Joyce observes.

"If you look at what John achieved here, well, nobody in Galway can be anything but grateful.

"I will always have great respect for him as a person and a manager. Two All-Irelands in six years, a kick of a ball from a third. I think it was time, I think John felt that. You can only do so much and maybe he did more than anyone thought possible."

Joyce does not know Peter Ford very well, but has heard positive things about him. Another smart Mayoman. Galway, though, is on the long finger for a while. Killererin will meet the winners of the Sligo championship in the Connacht club championship in a few weeks.

"We wouldn't exactly be hot favourites or anything but we will give it a go."

First though, comes Ireland. He is looking forward to the Test games, to sitting in a dressing-room with summer foes, to Croke Park. He is a keen fan of the Australian game and regularly tunes in to see how Tadhg Kennelly is doing with Sydney Swans.

He expects he will recognise the Australian players from just having watched the games but he had not studied the visiting panel yet. He hadn't had the time. Three busy days of work and then he can zone in on the weekend. He walks across to his car and even the charcoal neutrality of a business suit cannot disguise the athlete in him.

Spend half an hour listening to Pádraic Joyce talking about football and you do not get any sense of a man left washed out by the demands of the rare excellence he has possessed for the last ten years. The question is not whether he still cares but whether he cares too much.

Right now, he seems to have struck a happy balance. He indicates right and rejoins the queue for Galway city. Not even miracle men can escape the traffic.