Connacht SFC/Roscommon v Sligo: Finding Tom Carr would have been an impossible job without directions. Fortunately, the ability to paint pictures across a phone-line is a lasting consequence of Carr's 18 years as an Army officer.

In clear, clean tones - in a voice reminiscent of the great Irish stage actor John Kavanagh - he described the country road that leads to his home so perfectly that it was disconcerting. After precisely 50 yards and a tight turn sat, as he had promised, a humpback bridge.

Then the twisting, shaded road for 40 metres which Carr called like a navigator. Then followed the leafy, sweeping bend into the immediate shadow of a towering, narrow railway bridge that had the haughty look of the 19th century.

"Slow there, it has a dip," he advised. "You are through the bridge? Fine. Another hundred yards on and there will be a slight dip in the road. We are the third house on the left, and would you like tea or coffee?"

Forty seconds later, Tom Carr stood at his front door, the ghost of a sinewy Dublin wing back from the early 1990s still evident beneath summer shorts and a polo shirt. Although it was almost nine in the evening, the May heat held well and from not far away was the gleeful sound of children playing.

" 'Scuse the attire," he laughed. "It's been a long day."

There have been three main acts to Tom Carr's football life. First came the high-wire balancing of a military career along with a place on a loud and charismatic Dublin football team, in which he was popularly portrayed as the quiet brooder among a cast of garrulous, Behanesque city men.

Then came his exit from Army life and the passionate chase for a Leinster title during his period as manager of Dublin. It was a post from which he was unceremoniously dropped in 2002 by the power-brokers of the city game and from which he walked away with a dignity that spoke louder than any wrath, the endorsements of his players ringing in his ears.

And most recently has been his relocation to the midlands and his part in the progression of Roscommon football to the final eight of last year's All-Ireland championship.

As the last of the sun lit up the kitchen and conservatory, and Carr made tea and offered a packet of fig rolls and chatted amicably as he guided us into the living room, the Oscar Wilde line came to mind: when good Americans die, they go to Paris. And when bad Americans die, they go to America. Maybe there is a parallel when it comes to the afterlife of those who manage the Blues. Maybe when it is all over, good Dublin managers go to Mullingar.

"I don't really miss Dublin," Carr said at one point. "I don't think it was a slower pace of life we opted for, it was the quality. Like, I don't really mind how fast things get. And being in business, if you head into the city from here it's murder, it's murder. You get up at 5.30 and leave at 6.15 or forget about it until half nine.

"So on days when I am training, I often just stop here for quick cup of tea and a sandwich, race off to Roscommon and get back around 11 at night. It's a long day. Especially in business and you have calls to make and then someone will ring about their ankle or to say they can't make training because their girlfriend is away on holidays and they have to drive them to the airport, and you have to become a football manager again."

That has never been a difficulty for Carr. When he began working with the Roscommon players, he immediately noticed the profound difference between that experience and what he had known in Dublin. Not better or worse: just an entirely separate existence.

Football mattered as much, but it was mostly removed from the national picture, whereas in Dublin, every player and result was dissected and distorted relentlessly. Back when Dublin was represented by extroverted, assured men like Keith Barr, Charlie Redmond and Paul Curran, there was a national perception that when they weren't winning Leinster, they were to be found singing folk songs in northside hostelries.

"And, of course, it was exaggerated, but yeah, those guys liked their pint and a bit of craic. And they probably wouldn't have had too much time for me, which I understand because I was a bit standoffish and serious. Perhaps too serious. But I felt I had to be that way because maybe there were guys with more talent than me so I had to be more competitive to play.

"But funny, after I became manager, that changed. Myself and Paul Curran wouldn't have been too chatty as players. But through the manager-player relationship, we became friends."

He remembers one night during his first season in charge after Dublin had beaten Sligo in the qualifiers; the team met and he told Dessie Farrell to let the guys know it was fine to have a pint. A few minutes later, a tray of rock shandies was carried past. Carr was confused for a moment, until Farrell explained that none of the players was bothered.

He and his captain laughed at the notion of the old brigade turning down a pint. But the young Dublin team Carr managed was different: quieter and less assured, probably playing under greater expectations. He became - and remains - deeply fond of them.

"I wish I had been in Croke Park when they won Leinster in 2002. And I rang Tom Lyons afterwards to ask him to pass on my congratulations. Funny, when I sat down to watch the game, I wondered if I would be annoyed at them if they won - kind of, 'fuck it lads, why didn't yez do that for me'. But no, I was really over the moon, leaping off the chair and just thinking, fair fecks to ye, I knew ye would do it sooner or later. Because I know those fellas and the pressures they were under."

In the country, it was different. In Roscommon, he was struck by "this kind of easy graciousness that a lot of people there seem to have".

When Carr played for Dublin, he held a vague notion of Roscommon as an estimable football county, a heavyweight of the western scene.

"Any game we played against Roscommon was a killer game," he recalls. So he was affected by the modesty of many supporters he met and by the inherent respect there is for the position of county manager.

After hectic days among the hustling and hustlers of the business world, it was refreshing to drive west in the cool evenings to Roscommon, a county with no pretence or conceit, but secure in what it is.

"You hear and read this myth about the warm, friendly Irish, and it is largely rubbish, but there are places in Roscommon where the sense of generosity is genuinely humbling. It is a disappearing world, but Roscommon is lucky in a way that it has no real big towns or industry. The community thing is very strong because of that.

"And they would realise they don't have the riches of Galway or tourist draws like Westport. But what is born out of that is a huge identity with Roscommon, and that often manifests itself through football. Players have a huge loyalty to their own clubs. And most lads who are living away want to come back."

The downside of that is that when players get chosen to represent Roscommon, the cult of "the county man" plays its part. For all the pressures on young Dublin footballers, they can walk into many city nightclubs and become invisible. Provincial and country existences offer no such escapes.

There is a goldfish bowl syndrome. The Roscommon players got involved in a couple of high-profile incidents over the past couple of years. Just this week, Nigel Dineen was subjected to tabloid headlines over some minor, local court case. Carr neither knows nor cares about the details and knows Dineen has the experience and character to deal with it.

But those moments remind him of the alternate pressures. In Roscommon, the intensity for football is quieter and more subtle than in Dublin. It does not flare up spectacularly like those panoramic days when the Dublin fans fill Croke Park, but rather is constant. His most worrying moment in Roscommon was in London this year when the team was struggling in thelast 10 minutes.

"And you could just see it - first team to lose in 50 years or whatever, so there was a bit of, 'ah fuck, don't let this happen to me' about it."

The task for Carr in Roscommon has been to build confidence and to banish the notion that being a county man was enough in itself. And he has succeeded. He admits failure in the opening game of last year's championship against Galway, and charges himself with sending out his team with too much caution. By the time they reached the All-Ireland quarter-final against Kerry, Carr had them singing with self-belief and they took the field in Croke Park with full licence to live their dream.

"But when you play a team like Kerry, there is a tendency to wait for the monster to come and chew you up. We had to play in that arena and experience those first 20 minutes to realise that these guys are good, but they are not gods. They are human."

For months afterwards, Roscommon folk thanked him for getting them to Croke Park. It surprised him: he understands the allure of the arena, but he grew up there and remembers the dark and near malevolent feel of the old place and how sickening it was to lose big games there, and it balances out.

For him, the adventure in last summer was to be found in the provincial grounds during the qualifiers. In Mullingar, they played the epic, extra-time game against Kildare. Late on, he was standing near Frankie Dolan who had a side-line kick about 40 metres out, and he turned to Carr and asked for advice.

"Just make sure you kill it." Dolan slung it across the bar, dead centre between the posts, winked at Carr and said: "Is that dead enough for ya?"

That is the joy in it for the manager: seeing a fine player thriving on high summer evenings. He talks flowingly about where Roscommon exist in the greater scheme of things and about his guilt at sometimes thinking too much about football. A few Friday nights ago, he watched Bob Geldof on The Late Late Show and realised that although he had hated the Boomtown Rats in their heyday, Geldof had somehow become the Irish person he probably admired most: the unofficial statesman of a country bereft of such figures.

Sometimes he thinks the GAA works so well because Ireland is a nation of escapists. When players and fans gather at Hyde Park tomorrow, they will get to leave reality at the turnstiles. When Tom Carr left Dublin, it was not out of any need to escape. The more he talks about the past, the more apparent his lack of bitterness becomes. Had Carr spoken poisonously after he was sacked by the Dublin board nobody would have blamed him.

"I just didn't want to go down that road of bitching and sour grapes. Yes, I might have disagreed with what happened, but I took huge satisfaction from the players' support. Guys put their necks on the line for me. I won't forget that. But yeah, after playing for a county for 10 years and working hard, there was disappointment and a sense of a job unfinished.

"And maybe relief, too, that the whole messiness was over, because there was so much innuendo through the last few months - rumours about this guy going behind your back or this deal being done with a manager or votes gathered against you. It wasn't in my nature to respond, really. I just wanted to go in the end."

Part of Carr still loves the city and he feels a pang of nostalgia when he sees the orange brick houses that remind him of home on the South Circular Road. But this new life in the midlands is suiting the family. Elizabeth, his eldest girl, is into athletics and the younger kids play everything. Sport is in the genes: Carr's wife, Mary, née Purcell, is a daughter of Seán Purcell, one of the greatest football players.

"So many have said that. I wish I had seen him play. The greatest: it is a hard concept for me to fathom."

When he talks about football with his father-in-law, Purcell remains steadfastly modest about his own playing days. He prefers to talk about the modern game and Carr listens, always open, never afraid to learn. He says a day you don't learn something is a day wasted.

Tomorrow, Tom Carr will rise at seven, play a round of golf with friends and think of what awaits him in Hyde Park: those thrilling, shivery minutes before the beginning of a game that has been anticipated for months. He sometimes jokes that Mullingar is the centre of everywhere. And he is perfectly located, still close enough to almost hear the gargantuan pulse of the city he has left behind, but less than an hour from the silent landmarks across Roscommon that have come to matter to him.

And that is how you find Tom Carr, still is his own man, still slightly outside of things and still happily caught up in the heart of it all.