All-Ireland SFC Final Mayo v Kerry: Keith Duggan talks to Mayo's James Nallen who says he does not play merely to win an All-Ireland medal.

In 1997, when Mayo last went into All-Ireland meltdown as they prepared to meet Kerry that September, James Nallen was safely cloistered in Maynooth. He found sanctuary in the university laboratories as a senior technician in the physics department.

Seven years later and Mayo are back in the same situation, but Nallen now wears a white coat around NUI Galway. Driving back and forth across the most tempestuous football borders in Connacht has been a new experience for the senior man of the Mayo defence.

Although a son of Crossmolina, although a survivor of some scarring years for Mayo football, Nallen has been forcibly struck by the magnitude of this game for people in the county. Football is Mayo. Mayo is football. Maybe not a law of physics but something that is equally rigid in the mindset of his county men.

"In 1997 I just had no idea of what the feeling was like," he says over a mineral water in Breaffy House. Nallen has just returned from a public evening in the nearby football field and like the rest of the team was stunned by the numbers that showed up.

"It is different this time even though the comparisons will be made with that game. But I guess the further away you go from the past experiences like that Kerry game, the harder it is to remember what they were like. And they are the ones you don't want to have for life."

Trite to say it, but that 1997 All-Ireland was played in a different country. The video of a forgettable match is framed by the backdrop of the antediluvian Croke Park and shows two very different teams playing a style of football so lacking in urgency. The grace of Maurice Fitzgerald lifted the occasion from the drab. Mayo got lost in the mediocrity of the day.

The Kerry of this Sunday will bear little resemblance to the team of seven years ago in either style or substance. Mayo, too, have changed greatly. True, John Maughan still stalks the sideline but in Mayo but only five men have made the transition from that day. That Nallen is one of that gang to survive the interim years is of little surprise. Since making his debut in the long hot summer of 1995, Nallen had the look of one there for the long haul.

Since then there have been two senior All-Ireland losses, an All-Star and an All-Ireland club championship. Old friends have dropped away. Liam McHale has become a selector. Nallen has turned 30. Maybe the game is different now?

"I dunno," he confesses. "I suppose I am coming more towards the end. So I think I am at the stage where every game is more important now than it was in 1996 or 1997. So from that perspective, you are always aware that this could be the last one. That could be a driving force now. The relationship with the players, I dunno, I dunno . . . there isn't any particular reason why I play. I enjoy it and the group thing is good - there are a lot of good guys here that you would be friends with. But I don't know how many players play to win an All-Ireland or if that is their true reason for playing intercounty football.

"Personally, it is not why I play. You are out there trying to improve on skills and you have to enjoy it. But I think often you play club, you get selected for your county, it is a great honour, you are on the fringe, then you make the team and all that acknowledges your skills or what not. Once you get there, it is hard to fall out of is really what I am getting at. The easiest way to fall out of it is just to not be considered. Once you are there, you are there. And then one day you do fall out of it. And then you are gone. And that's it."

He delivers this comic-bleak assessment of a footballer's lot with a wide smile although with Nallen there is the suspicion when he does leave, there will be no trail of footprints. He possesses many of the classic traits of the native football player: skilful, courteous and like all Mayo men, helplessly honest and introspective on matters concerning the county's parched All-Ireland history.

Nallen is to be believed when he says he does not play merely to try to win a senior medal but yet this is his third crack at it, a privilege granted to few players and testimony to Mayo's consistency over the past decade. Unlike the 1996/'97 vintage though, there has been an appealing edge and conviction about this year's side.

"We have pretty much performed when we needed to perform and if our approach is the same here and we don't allow external factors to get to us on the day then we are right in there with a chance of being winners," he agrees. "In 1997, though, there was a confidence there as well - we beat Kerry in 1996 and definitely there was no doubt we could win it. If you are in a final, you gotta believe you can win no matter what you tell the press.

"You are only fooling yourself if you don't believe you are in with a chance - and you surely are because it is down to two. But in 1997 a lot of the side was young and we were just flat. I don't know if it was training or the approach but it was just a big disappointment. Something you don't want to relive."

The belief that that won't happen appears justified. Nallen identifies the week Mayo spent in the Catskills in the US as the key point of the season. Young and contradictory in the league, it was a team full of maturity and urgency and skill that comfortably won the Connacht championship. The manner of their victory over Galway spelt out they were more than just pretenders. "Once you beat a team like Galway, you know you are in the frame."

Nallen is undoubtedly one of the leaders of this team but that does not mean he is responsible for taking the younger players under his wing. There are plenty of lippy young lads on the scene well able to give an opinion and that is encouraged.

"The young guys have performed admirably so I am not worried about them. I can only control what I do out there."

In this case, out there is Croke Park. A place simultaneously loved and feared by Mayo folk for decades. Mayo is spiritual home of the sign, "Last One to Leave, Turn Out the Lights". They truly do desert the county on weeks like this. Too often, though, they returned and found they preferred to sit in the dark for the winter.

This year, they say, it must be different. Certainly, Croke Park will be a sumptuous place in which to win, say, a first All-Ireland since 1951. James Nallen agrees is it a much better place than it was when Kerry and Mayo met in 1997.

"There is a big echo," he says thoughtfully. "A major echo when you are running so all you can hear as you go up and down is a 'wooh-ah wooh-ah, woooh-ah' kinda thing. At the moment it is blank at the Hill side so it might be more difficult for forwards there. But it is a much better stadium now. As for the grass, I wear six studs. I remember playing Cork in 2002 and I got blisters in the second half. So you wear double socks, blister cushions, you take precautions. It won't happen again."

It won't happen again. That is what they are saying all across the broad land.