"I was walking up the town one night last winter and I met this guy I kind of knew. He says to me: 'Did I hear you got called into the Mayo panel?' I says: 'I did, yeah.' And he started laughing at me.

He says: 'What the fuck do they want you for?'" - Ronan McGarrity, September 2004.

It was like he fell from the grey, mottled west of Ireland skies and landed at midfield in McHale Park. A 6ft 4in gift, green-and-red wrapped, or perhaps something more dubious. Perhaps another of the peculiar Mayo adventures in sound and form fated to end badly. Like all pure football counties, Mayo has its own hierarchical structure in which players are evaluated by bloodlines and club name and childhood deed and reputation.

Reminiscing about the latest Chosen One's immortal under-seven performance is part of the fascination. The public likes to know its footballers. Likes to know everything. That way, the team becomes a common possession, its bit parts neatly boxed. The Mortimers of Shrule. The Tattooed Blond from Crossmolina. James Nallen, The Scientist. Ruane the Builder. Identity is everything in GAA.

Yet Ronan McGarrity was presented with virtually no football DNA. As Mayo prepared for the league this spring, he was little more than a rumour. He came from Ballina via America. From basketball. He had never played football in his life.

"The first time I ever met the lad was when I walked into the bookie's in Castlebar around the time of Cheltenham and there he was behind the counter," confessed Martin Carney.

"He may have played a game or two at under-age, but I don't remember it, I don't think he did," says the veteran Ballina football man Noel O'Dowd. "Sure he has only played a handful of senior games with the club."

"The minute I walked into the room to meet Ronan," smiled John Maughan, "I knew he was something special."

Look. Ronan McGarrity is breaking rules here. You don't just show up for county training at McHale Park and get handed the number nine jersey. You do not just waltz into such an inheritance. Above all counties, Mayo football has famously wrung pain and sacrifice and introspection from its suitors.

Kicking football for Mayo isn't an act of sport or romance; it is a more a concession or a commitment to a tradition that for whatever reason has become the definitive symbol for all of the turmoil associated with the Mayo psyche.

Fifty-Three Years A-Waiting reads the headline in the Mayo News this week. No pressure or anything. Many fine players have given some small but significant part of their souls to the Mayo cause. Liam McHale lost so many All-Ireland finals that he prolonged his last playing years in a state of fear that the county would win one after he stopped. He knows it was not healthy, but it was the reality. To play football for Mayo is to risk being haunted. Young McGarrity, though, has no ghosts, at least not those that roam the Gaelic fields of Ireland.

"If anyone told me this time last year I would be playing in an All-Ireland final, I would have laughed. Because it literally would have been a joke. Like, I was never even a great fan of watching football. If Mayo were on TV and I was on the couch, yeah, I would watch it, but I wouldn't plan my dinner around it or anything like that. I suppose I could take or leave it."

In Mayo terms, McGarrity was plucked from the oddest tree. Almost alone among his team-mates his youth was not defined by Mayo's jilted-at-the-altar seasons of 1996 and 1997. He was aware of all the hoopla and thought it was a bit of a lark. He even went to the drawn final against Meath with his parents. But the soul selects her own society. His belonged to a beat-up and mostly empty gym on the outskirts of Ballina Town.

"I stayed home for the replay so I missed the dust-up," he says regretfully. "Just the thought of heading up to Dublin a week later killed me. And I had basketball the next evening. I suppose I was sorry they lost being a Mayo man, but being honest, Jesus, nah, it didn't really bother me one bit. Like, I had forgotten about it by the next evening."

This summer, the comparisons between the emergent McGarrity and Liam McHale, Mayo's original basketball-turned-football-

hero, began to come hot and heavy. Both are Ballina born and bred and are possessed of a languid, easy athleticism. But McGarrity is simultaneously flattered by and uncomfortable with the linking. They say you should never meet your heroes. But that's not so easy when your exemplar has membership in the same Chartbusters and plays in the same local basketball league.

"I suppose I happened to grow up when Liam was the best basketball player this country had ever seen and Ballina were appearing in cup finals with Seán and Anthony. It made a really strong impression on a few of us and, to be honest, I don't think I ever spoke a word to Liam before this year. There was an element of awe, I suppose." McGarrity was one of several teenage basketball talents schooled in Ballina in the 1980s and 1990s and, unlike McHale, who passed on many offers, he was keen to realise his potential on an American scholarship.

In US terms, he was a "tweeny" - not quite big enough to muscle up against the monolithic forwards of the American scene or quick enough to play the one-dimensional point-guard spot.

Like Liam, he had great hands, a natural's jump-shot and a smart, sharp brain for the game. The letters, stamped with the college emblem, came regularly and he opted for St Lawrence's in Canton. Third division in a solid and respectable academic college in the forested splendour of upstate New York seemed the perfect ticket when he was 18.

Adios, Ballina.

When did it go wrong? There was nothing as clean as an incident or moment. What began as a weight in his heart ended up as something intolerable. In the beginning, the polished court, the suave uniforms and all the basketball he could eat - six hours a day, six days a week - was like a dream. Even now, that part of the package was sweet. It was the rest that ground him down.

Third division means you travel by bus and McGarrity spent endless winter nights on the highways littered with roadkill and Springsteen's broken heroes on a last-chance power drive. Red-eyed and lagging, he would find himself in class at nine the next morning. Weight training at lunchtime. The gym in mid-afternoon. Semester papers piling up and professors unsympathetic about an 11 p.m. overtime loss up in Buffalo. Sunday, rest day, was a scramble. Laundry. Food. The phone-call home. It did not happen quickly, but after three years he found it had sapped his spirit.

He actually played some football in New York last summer and came home for a visit a few weeks before his last college year was due to begin. In his heart, he knew the adventure had ended.

"It had got to the point where I wasn't enjoying life anymore. The year before, calling home, my mother picked up on it. She just figured I was unhappy. It just wasn't in me to go back there and that was a shock because I never quit on anything before. It was scary too. Because I saw myself maybe staying in America for a while."

Autumn is an unforgiving season to reintegrate to any provincial Irish town. At least Ballina had the sound of basketballs thudding. That saved him. He signed up with McHale's crowd, who promptly went on a cup run that brought them to live television and the national finals. It gave McGarrity a chance to put some emotional distance between his college experiences.

"I don't want to sound full of regrets. I wanted to try the life and I gave it a go. I played some good ball. But it was extreme. I suppose the coach, Chris Downes, wanted to take us to the next level. It was just his style. When you were fresh, it was fine. He was a bit of a Bobby Knight," he smiles, in reference to the infamous, tantrum-throwing demon of US college basketball.

Somehow, in the midst of this turmoil, football came along. Apart from sport, McGarrity's entire life was in a spin.

"I was depressed. Didn't have a clue what I wanted to do. I was lucky because there was a job in my father's bookmaker's and I was grateful to get that. But you know, that isn't what I want to do forever. I felt low. My mother would tell me when one door closes, another one will always open. Maybe that is where the football came in."

From day one, McHale was on Maughan's case about this lanky local kid who could well be the next, well, Liam McHale.

"Anything that comes out of Ballina that can kick a ball Liam thinks is going to be the next All Star," smiled Maughan. "And, believe me, he has put a few our way before and the less said about them the better.

"But in fairness, Ronan was a good one. George Golden and myself went to Ballina to meet him and we left the room laughing because he had this amazing confidence and attitude. We needed a midfielder and we left the room excited. And Ronan has developed, no doubt about that. He has been a real find for us, a jewel."

Thus began a twilight existence. Daytime behind the counter, studying the form in Doncaster, immersing himself in Premiership talk and, stranger still, inter-county football games featuring him.

It suited him to come into a skeleton squad full of bright young footballers eager to please. He liked Maughan, feeding off his energy and respecting the space the manager gave him. Before he knew he was talking to McHale as a friend. He never questioned whether he was up to inter-county standard or not, partly because he did not have time and partly because it never occurred to him to.

He was noticeable during the freak early-season crushing of Dublin at McHale Park, lighting the vocal home support with a demonstrative show of fist-clenching at midfield. He did some excellent things in that game and made a few mistakes.

Results varied as the league rolled on, but McGarrity's graph of errors fell and fell. When it came to preparing a championship team, not even the return of Ballina legend David Brady could shift the novice from centrefield. McGarrity could catch, pass, run the field all afternoon. He cared nothing for reputations and true to his word, he loved the theatre of championship days.

"John and the boys get a buzz out of me because I'm always complaining there is no atmosphere at football. I'd tell him people just stand and clap, that there isn't enough jeering or in-your-face stuff. People doubting you. That's what I love. The thing is, you can have 400 people in a basketball gym and it's deafening. The lads don't understand that. That is why I love Croke Park. That's as good. Nearly."

The Mayo faithful scratched their heads and accepted the changeling as a bright spot of luck. God knows, Mayo football deserved one. At his best, McGarrity was evocative of vintage McHale. And they noticed he was sticky. He gave Seán Cavanagh no breathing room in the quarter-final against Tyrone.

He was tough. He took a good crack of a punch coming off the field in the drawn semi-final against Fermanagh. Although he was hospitalised for two days, few knew how potentially serious the injury was. But there was some bleeding around vital tissue. Five days later, McGarrity was back in Croke Park, the senior partner now with Fergal Kelly in support.

As the summer wore on, he was offered wagers on himself to score the first goal. He replied he would be happy to lay odds of a million to one for the likelihood of that happening. But, for the most part, Mayo football fans simply do not know Ronan McGarrity. Even at the autograph session at which several thousand kids turned up, he heard them ask, "who is that"?

"It's fine, it means you go about your business. I could definitely walk around Castlebar the week of the All-Ireland and nobody would have a clue who I am. And I think even the few around home in Ballina who do are still shocked that I am playing."

That is because in the conventional world of Mayo football, McGarrity's story is rather shocking. When you think of it, he is living the ultimate GAA fantasy. The bit part and forgotten Gaelic football player, with a handful of club appearances to his name, lands back in his home town and takes a starring role in an All-Ireland adventure. As Noel O'Dowd remarks, the key difference between McHale and McGarrity is that from the age of 17, Liam worked untold hours to craft the majestic footballer he would become. McGarrity has a long way to go, but is learning with frightening rapidity.

In all, dropping out of college has been some education. Through his involvement, he has discovered the depth behind Mayo football, heard tragicomic stories about angst-ridden games of yesteryear and about some of the half-brilliant, half-crazed football characters whose legacy he inherits. He admits there is something sacred about pulling on the jersey, even if it was never a vision that kept him lying awake as a boy.

"I suppose the Mayo jersey has taken a bit of a battering over the last few years. There's a lot of pride going into this. It's clear that people believe in it again."

Mayo football gave Ronan McGarrity faith even as he found his own fading away in the dusk of an aimless Irish winter. He knows there are many who slogged their teenage years away for just a slender taste of the summer he has just spent.

It is undeniable that the rise of Ronan McGarrity has been fast and spectacular. But it cannot be said it came easy. Never that. The fact is he has not stopped running since he got off the plane last year. There are still life matters to sort out. He jokes that once he plays the All-Ireland final he will sit down with a cup of tea in the kitchen at home and have a good think about things. He is only 22, but knows enough to be able to state that life is funny. He was buffeted and almost broken by the sport he loves and now seeks redemption in the green and red.

Cast in that light, Ronan McGarrity sounds the same as any son of Mayo soil.