Ulster Club Football: Mayobridge: Tom Humphries chats with Down legend Mickey Linden, who is living proof that football life doesn't end at 40.

We've become so used to northern hegemony in the business of Gaelic football that it's hard to imagine the novelty of 1991 when a Down team who played the sweetest football of the decade, brought the big cup back to Ulster for the first time since the 1960s.

That Monday night was a long and emotional journey. They crossed the border with their silverware making sure to observe that this was the border between Ulster and Leinster, no more. They toured Newry with the trophy and then went east out across the county. First stop Mayobridge, six miles away, but a different world.

The town was tiny then, still is. Mickey Linden, their first county player and a quiet man with quicksilver feet, was garlanded and loved. If anyone deserved that night it was Linden who had been toiling then in the black and red for nine years.

He was at the summit.

Or so it was thought. Three years later, Linden was an even better footballer. He swept the boards. A second All-Ireland, an All Star and footballer of the year. He'd turned 30 now. This was it. The old team broke away piece by piece, most of them sated, but in 2003 Linden was still playing, still making his quick as a fish darts at straggling defenders, still scoring.

He's 41 years old now and the living proof that good things come to the feet of those who wait. Winning an All-Ireland at 28 was prodigious progress by Mickey's standards. He was 36 before he had a county medal with Mayobridge and he had all but abandoned hope. Now he has four of them and he yearns for an Ulster club medal. It may come this year. It may come when he is in his 50s. Who knows? He has no intention of quitting.

He won a minor medal years ago as a gasoon with Mayobridge. It's the nature of the place that most of those boys are still involved as men with the club. Anyone else still playing Mickey? Ah no, he says, just me. Been that way for about 10 years.

He doesn't keep going out of hunger, although that is still there - he keeps going because he can, because he can still contribute and he can still get some crack out of it. You'll be retired long enough, they tell him. He knows it.

There are, at tops he reckons, 2,000 people in Mayobridge. If it weren't for the GAA club, it's magnificent clubhouse and tidy lands you could flash through it without the place registering as a village at all. Mickey Linden reckons that everyone in Mayobridge is involved somehow with the club, if not through football then through Scór or music or some other cultural activity. Walking away is not an option really.

Last year, a vacancy arose as senior manager. Mickey was helping his young lads team at under-10 level and he was a senior selector. Rumours went around that the committee were going to ask Mickey to be senior manager, but nobody came calling so he said nothing.

Finally, somebody went to the committee and said will ye just ask him. So they did and after a couple of weeks he said yes. So, at 41 years of age he finds himself playing and managing.

"It's great at the minute." he says "When things are going well it's easy to enjoy it. I don't find it too bad. Well, early in the year most of my job was managing. I wasn't really playing much at all. I played very few league games for the club. It was only coming up to the championship that I started playing regularly."

Even that was done with his customary modesty. Two of the clubs' young county stars came down injured.

Mickey Walsh went out with a busted cruciate ligament and Ronan Sexton was having a cartilage operation. Two county forwards missing. It made no sense for Mickey to have himself on the bench.

"I felt that, just for the balance, I had to go in at full forward. I'd played a few games near the end of the league and coming up to the championship. I felt a little bit of fitness coming back into the body. It's worked okay."

It has. Linden's fourth county medal came on the back of a 16-point win over Annaclone. For a man who played in five losing county semi-finals and a losing final in the 1990s there was a sweetness to it all.

Everything in Mayobridge happens slowly, except for the forward play. It's the metabolism of the place. This team's first county title five years ago ended an 80th-year famine. Mickey Linden endured the days when the club was parched and hungry. They were a Division Four side when he broke through as a slender senior.

"When I started we were going to all the grounds around the county that senior teams never visit. Those teams are still in Division Four and Division Three. We have managed to move on, but I've played in every club ground in the county at this stage. At least we were winning. They were happy times."

He has winners' medals from Division Four, Three, Two and One. A full collection. He wonders if that mightn't be unique. Other momentos too.

"When you went down to Division Three and Division Four the skill level, especially back in the early 1980s, was low. There was a bit more emphasis on the physical side. Glasdrummon? I've no happy memories of playing there. And St John's! I got knocked out cold in St John's one day. There were five sent off in the game. I was soloing up the field minding my own business and a fella just drew on me. I was just knocked out. Normally, they have to have a go at taking the ball first."

He was light then and he made the county side early so he might as well have painted a target on his back. Corner forwards often feel like that.

His strength grew though. He saw what was needed. He did some weights and he used his work as a motor mechanic to build some strength into himself. Tightening bolts, etc. Every twist was a moment of resistance training.

And he started to live by habits which he still has. He eats no more than a small bird might. A decent breakfast, a little lunch and sometimes something to eat in the evening. He's usually training three or four times a week and he doesn't eat dinner on those nights. Doesn't eat anything. The weight he is now is the weight he was 20 years ago.

His body has rewarded him in bushels. Apart from tweaks and pulls he has suffered no major injuries, bar an ankle ligament which went four years ago and which has bothered him intermittently since. The rest this winter seems to have placated it however and he sees no reason to hang up the boots next season.

Meanwhile, he's enjoying being manager. The team's first meeting of his tenure, in the weights room up above the changing rooms in the club, well that was a little nerve-wracking. He's a listener by instinct. Standing up and talking to boys he knew so well, didn't sit easily.

Now, though, he's used to it and when it comes to half-time, John Murphy, a former player and former sidekick of Pete McGrath's does the talking until Mickey finds his wind and his focus.

The respect of the players comes naturally. They are a motivated bunch and always looked like being so. The championship of 1999 was won with five of the county's succesful minor side in the ranks. Mickey had watched that generation come through and hoped he could hang on until they graduated to senior.

No doubt they were out and about that night in 1991. Times like that sow the seed. Mickey Linden's first football memory was of Tom O'Hare bringing the Sam back to the local primary school in 1968. There wasn't a lot of football to be played in the little primary school back then, just two games a year with local rivals Burren, but Mickey Linden was hooked. All these years later that's how he remains.

Tomorrow, the town empties itself and makes the journey up the motorway to Casement Park for the Ulster semi-final.

They want Ulster badly.

When Mayobridge eventually won a championship in 1999 the county competition finished late and the board tossed a coin to see who would represent the county in the provincial. Burren, the dreaded local rivals, got lucky.

Twice since then Ballinderry have put a stop to their gallop when they have escaped their own borders. Tomorrow, it's Carrickmore of Tyrone. It will be hard and in Mayobridge they wonder which team will turn up - the error-prone side which gave the ball away 18 times in the first half of the drawn game with Ardara a few weeks back, or the fluent young team who had 15 points to spare on the same opposition in the replay a week later.

Mickey's reward for his years of perserverance is to play in an extraordinary forward line which, even without stars like Mickey Walsh and Ronan Sexton, has been cutting up. Benny Coulter is coming into the form of his life. His brother Robbie isn't far behind, and Linden still has enough of the fox in him to need minding all the time.

Mickey Linden reckons that this was a good year to begin a senior management career. The boys lost a county final last year and it hurt.

"They are ambitious. They want to do well."

Ambitious enough to be thinking of St Patrick's Day? And if that came to pass would it be time to pack it in? He laughs, embarrassed to be listening to such wild hubris.

"Listen give me a ring if we get there and I'll answer you that one!"