TOM HUMPHRIES/LockerRoom: Lockerroom was away when Na Fianna said a weary farewell to this year's club championships. Of course the feelings of anguish which rent Mobhi Road were felt in LockerRoom's bones even as the Hawaiian masseuse scampered off for that extra splash of rum to get LockerRoom through till teatime.

Still, LockerRoom couldn't help feeling as he shook down his grass skirt that the troubles which city teams have with the club championship is no bad thing. The dominance of the rural community which expresses itself through football/hurling has bred a new form of travel writing: Paddy Devlin is milking his cows. He has 120 of them, black and white - like the team's colours. Paddy is in a hurry this evening. Training begins in two hours. The parish are back in the big time and in the winter when they came calling for Paddy's services they didn't have to call twice. They never do. "Not since call answering," says Paddy modestly.

Tonight Paddy looks down the rows of brown eyes, the lowing, bovine faces leaning from their stalls in the parlour. Yes, a parlour. This is his company for the next hour. About football nothing needs to be said. Not here. Not this week.

Tomorrow though, even though he is a corner back, he will have to go to the creamery. This milk must be sold. That is just a reality of life in a town which expresses itself through football. This barter of milk for money enables Paddy to play football. Without the barter system he would have too much milk for one man.

In the Bunch of Grapes, a "public house" in that literally it is a house open to the public, the locals order their favourite drink, hearty black stout with white trim on top. To the outsider this quiet celebration of local loyalty is a wonder, a metaphor suggesting all sorts of things. In the Bunch of Grapes, it is just "drinking". It puts down the days between football matches.

Tonight Afghanistan is mentioned scarcely a dozen times. House prices merit just 15 minutes' conversation. Just two women are shifted. By each other. There may be consummation but there will be no marriage. How could there be? The game hangs over everything like a well-hung chandelier, illuminating every face, lighting every corner. Somebody asks if the team are training tonight. Another wonders if there'll be a game this Sunday. "Isn't there always?" says somebody else. Conversation moves on. Best not to dwell.

Life is different here. Many houses are what the locals call "bungalows", houses with literally nothing upstairs, not even a landing. You could chip a 14-yard free kick over the roof of Paddy Devlin's bungalow. Yet with nothing upstairs Mrs Devlin raised five sons. One is a cross-dressing bingo caller, one a computer programmer, one in the bank and another is on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. But inevitably and most celebratedly there is Paddy.

PADDY DEVLIN is a footballer. What else was he going to be, reared here, by these people, in this place of bungalows? There are hardships, sacrifices. To train, the team must go to a field. Tonight no limo comes to collect Paddy Devlin when the milking is done. Instead he walks the 60 yards to the field, a path so familiar now that it has pavement. Football is what gets things done around here.

Still streetlamps don't shorten the journey. One foot in front of the other, Paddy Devlin keeps on keeping on till he gets there. Past the Extravision and past the graveyard.

"The green mile, Paddy?" you say.

"S'pose," he says, after a while.

Other players get there as best they can. Cars. Lifts. Over the back fence. If resourcefulness won championships the parish would be there or thereabouts every year.

The field isn't much. Just a flat, rectangular patch of earth where grass has grown. Somebody has put goalposts at either end and primitive boundary lines have been marked out. Serendipitously, there is banked concrete terracing nearby but, significantly, no shopping mall or convenience stores here. No 18-lane highways. Just a field, some terracing and a clubhouse, a simple nod to the pre-eminence of their game.

Paddy Devlin first went down to this field when he was eight. There seemed to be something inevitable and unavoidable about that first pilgrimage. In fact his whole class was going. Paddy went too and something in him was stirred. He stayed till it was time to go. Realised later he had no choice. Still, he never looked back.

His story is not untypical within the club. When he got to be an under-18, the club said to him that he should play minor. Three years later there were raised eyebrows. Paddy Devlin was playing under-21. Nobody had needed to ask twice.

"That would be a natural enough progression," he says quietly.

Tonight, for the third time this season, he is the last but seven to arrive.

"Lads," he says softly as he walks into the dressing-room. It is a simple affair. No juke box here. No carvery lunches. Just long wooden seats pressed into service as benches, some white tiles covering the concrete walls, and a long wooden structure called a table dominating the centre of the room. The scene is lit by a single 100 watt bulb. Nothing upstairs either, the "bungalow" style.

"Paddy," reply some of the lads.

Lads. Paddy. The simple salutations tell us much. They are indeed lads. He is indeed Paddy.

Next door there is another dressing-room. The legend on the door says simply "AWAY". Nobody says it aloud but the message is stark and poignant. This is a place of remembrance, the empty chair at the table, the room kept ready for those who have emigrated from this ravaged place. The brightest and the best? They are "AWAY". One day, if the football is good, they shall be "HOME".

"Yerra, maybe. Who knows?" is the phrase Paddy Devlin chooses when you ask him if the team will win on Sunday. First he must sell the milk. Then he wants to see a "movie" he has heard something about from a colleague who has been to Dublin. On the farm, meanwhile, he has noticed that nobody calls anymore. Not this week of all weeks, not since he switched to direct debit.

He may sell the whole thing to developers. They have mentioned the figure of eight million but that is their money. Even though Paddy Devlin is a corner back for the parish, these are the choices which football can't insulate against. No till after Sunday anyway, when the football will be done and, they hope, the banks will open again.