There was no hint of any profound, emotional release, of some great weight being lifted from his shoulders. Indeed, the more he talked about the events of 38 years ago, the more he seemed to be enjoying the memories.

Like Thady Quill, the exploits of P J Reynolds have become the stuff of legend. And poetry. As in the verse: "For sports star of 1964 . . . No need to take a vote . . . Salute the him, the camogie Jim . . . Who won the cup in Moate."

When I visited him recently at his home in Mullingar, the most elusive cross-dresser in the history of sport in the midlands was ready to talk. Yes, it was true he played in a Westmeath camogie final, as a member of the winning team. And it was also a fact that his duplicity led to a high-speed chase from Moate towards Clara, after a car-switch to elude outraged pursuers.

On his morning radio show in 1984, Gay Byrne was reading headlines from the newspapers of 20 years previously. One of them, from the Irish Press, posed the question: "Was the she a he?" The country's most celebrated broadcaster had a special interest in the story, having failed in two attempts to get the individual involved onto The Late, Late Show.

"I wonder where this camogie player is now?" mused Byrne with a chuckle.

"Hey P J, come down and listen to this," Marie Reynolds shouted up the stairs to her husband, who was in bed with 'flu. But he was too ill to be interested.

Only two months ago, Reynolds, who runs an electrical contracting business, was in Mullingar Hospital for a minor operation to have a cyst removed from his nose. "Careful, nurse," cautioned the surgeon. "We've got a cross-dresser here." And not for the first time, P J shared a joke about his sinister past.

Back at home, where his wife and their twin sons, Paul and Denis, waited eagerly for him to bare his soul for the first time in public, a crucial question had to be asked. Why do it now, after almost four decades of silence?

It happened through the persuasive powers of a mutual friend, Michael Duffy, whom I know as a past captain of Mullingar GC and who was a neighbour of P J's for years. "Anyway, I think the mystery has been dragged out long enough," he suggested.

So, Reynolds began his tale of a county camogie final in which his local club, Cullion, met Tang from Ballymore, near Athlone. And how Cullion had surmounted formidable odds by forcing a draw with six unfit players in their side.

That was what prompted a cunning plan whereby a ringer would be introduced for the replay, fixed for Moate. Reynolds, who now stands six feet and weighs 16 stones, but was only a whippet of a lad back in 1964, was targeted for the deception. Remember, this was the time of Beatlemania, when long hair had become a male fashion statement, making it easy for a fresh-faced lad to pass as a member of the opposite sex.

"It happened in October 1964," he began, "when I was 14 and a schoolboy at St Mary's, Mullingar. We had to attend school for a half-day on Saturday, and on my way home I was approached by Pauline Delamere, one of the girls involved with the Cullion camogie team."

Visibly warming to the memory, Reynolds went on: "When she asked me if I would play in the replay of the final the following day, I thought it was a bit of a joke, so I said 'Sure'. The idea was that I'd dress up in my own football togs and jersey, and then wear the team's maroon and white gym-slip over everything. And I would be given a coat belonging to a sister of Mary McCabe, the camogie club secretary.

"I can only guess that they chose me because I was slim, athletic and a useful hurler with one of the Cullion under-age teams. Anyway, I expected her to call back later and say it was all a gag. But I began to get worried when I hadn't heard from her by the following morning.

'By then, everything began happening so fast that I hadn't time to protest. As far as I could gather, none of our players knew what was going on. In fact, Mary McCabe wasn't told until shortly before the puck-off.

"The pitch was about a mile outside Moate and I was brought into the dressing-room just before our team were about to go out on the field and introduced as Kathleen Corcoran. Since the rest of the players said nothing to me, I can only assume that they were told all about the situation before I arrived. Anyway, none of them seemed surprised.

"So I trotted out onto the park as a midfielder, with the number eight on my back. And when the whistle went, I got right into it, just as if I was playing a hurling match for the club. But I soon became aware of minor disturbances among the spectators. I learned later that the girl I replaced on the team wasn't too happy and she was crying and creating a bit of a rumpus."

And what was the age profile of the side?

"Oh, they ranged from my age up to 30 and over," he replied. "In fact, there was one lady on the team, a great Westmeath camogie player and she could have been nearly 40."

With that, he let out another of his frequent laughs - "Yes, there were ladies on the team who were old enough to be my mother."

Though Reynolds knew nothing of it, it seems the opposition had become highly suspicious of this fleet-footed midfielder with dark, curly hair. According to the piece in the Irish Press, one of Tang's best players expressed the view to colleagues that the player marking her was going in far too hard to be a girl.

The upshot was that Tang officials decided that a half-time visit to the Cullion dressing-room might be in order. But Cullion were already a move ahead.

"They told me I was being taken off at half time," said Reynolds. "So I made a quick visit to the dressing-room, put on the girl's coat over the gym-slip and was whisked away by Mary McCabe into a waiting car.

"I was driven from the pitch to the convent in Moate by the late Tony Nangle, who was married to one of the Ling camogie players from Kilkenny. Mary McCabe knew the run of the convent, where her sister was studying for the Leaving Certificate, and after taking me in one side of the building in my camogie gear, I was brought out of the back entrance in my football gear.

"They knew the Tang people had given chase, so we switched cars and Mick Power, the local hurling secretary, took off at high speed down the Clara road. Sitting in the back seat, I could see there was a car in hot pursuit, but Mick was a right man to drive. With his boot to the floor, he put a fair bit of distance between us and our pursuers. Then, when we went round a sharp corner in the road, he stopped the car and told me to hop out. And as I slipped through a hedge into a field, he was already way down the road.

"Unaware of what had happened, the Tang car kept chasing Mick while I was in a field, dressed in my white Tee-shirt and white shorts. And with a herd of bullocks surrounding me, I stood for about two hours, shivering with the cold, waiting on Mick to come back for me.

"I heard later that he had no problem in losing the Tang lads. Meanwhile, the match was continuing in Moate, with all sorts of rumblings about the mysterious, young midfielder in the Cullion team. And to prove how easy it is to deceive people, there were many who swore I was on the pitch right to the finish. Eventually, I was picked up and told on my way home that Cullion had won the match by three goals to two."

What he wasn't told about was the second-half scuffles in which a Mullingar butcher got a black eye after going onto the pitch to bring away his two daughters, who were in the Cullion team.

According to an observer at the time: "During the second half, the Tang crowd kept shouting from the sideline 'There he is', 'No! There he is.' They couldn't seem to make up their minds which was the lassie they thought was a gosoon."

As Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara might have told them: "Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another."

Meanwhile, these outrageous claims were emphatically rejected by the Cullion hurling secretary, Power, who told the Irish Press: "The whole thing is only hearsay. In the first game, six of our players had been ill and only got up to play the match. With our full team on Sunday, Tang couldn't understand why they were being beaten and they began to say we had a gosoon playing for us."

Power concluded: "There will be no protest from Tang. They have nothing to protest about. There was no gosoon in the team."

As it happened, Tang had no need to take action. After the presentation of a cup and medals to the Cullion team, all of the silverware was recalled by the county board and given later to a football team. But according to Reynolds, one medal survived. "Mary McCabe has it," he said. "It was considered worthless at the time because of a mistake in the inscription on the back. She was asked to give it to me, but I didn't want it."

Reynolds, who crossed hurleys with the great Jobber McGrath, went on to have a successful career with the Cullion club, playing until he was 43, which is only eight years ago. And was he ever ribbed about his cross-dressing?

"No," he replied with a quiet smile. "But that was probably because I had a reputation for being able to take care of myself.

"I knew of another man, since dead, who played camogie for a team in Delvin. But to be honest, I don't think it was worth their while playing me that day. And it certainly wasn't worth all the trouble that came afterwards. There was a lot of stuff written about it and the story went on for months, even years."

Is he sorry he did it? "Oh no," he replied with some emphasis. "Though I've never really admitted it until now, I got great craic out of it, particularly from lads working on building sites."

Then, his sense of fun coming to the fore once more, Reynolds concluded: "It's become a part of my life. And you know, it's not every camogie player who makes the national papers."