Not long ago, Tommy Joyce moved out of the family home. Married Angela, got a house, moved on. For his younger brother Padraig, who arrived in the Joyce household just a year after Tommy did, the space left behind was felt most. All those years growing up playing football and talking football together. Well.

Late in the summer, as the season got down to the narrow end, the brothers found themselves together in Tommy's new house getting the place ready, painting the walls, moving stuff in.

"We'd be down there painting," says Padraig, "and we'd be talking about the match as we'd be painting. Just this and that". And he pauses. Not a fella to say much. The last few weeks though capped by yesterday, well it's what you do it for. This is a lad who has just scored 10 points in an All-Ireland final, a feat which will follow him like a shadow for the rest of his days. He brushes it aside.

"I'm delighted for Tommy," he says, "It's brilliant. I don't want the limelight. Tommy deserves it all this year. He's been a great brother to me and this season he's had a super year. He's too versatile a footballer if anything. You could put him in anywhere on the team and he'll do it for you. He's had a super year. Great to win with your brother playing alongside you.

The brothers play for the small and not very fashionable club of Killererin, not one of the great Galway powerhouses. Yet they had three players on yesterday and lately they've had a senior championship and more success on their plate than they ever expected. Inter-county football is great, but club is the club is the club.

"I was just talking inside to Alan Keane's parents Michael and Bridie. It's Alan's sixth championship match and he has a medal straight away. It's super for him. I went to school with Alan and I sat beside him for fourth, fifth and sixth class in school. It's just a great achievement for our club to have three on the team today."

And Padraig Joyce? Great achievements have seldom come wrapped so unpromisingly. The first quarter of the game yesterday seemed to pass him by. He had three wides before he scored and had plentiful views of Darren Fay's broad back before ever he touched the ball. He made himself relevant, the old-fashioned way. He worked.

"Yeah, early on I was looking to the sideline to see if the number 14 would come up at the side. Luckily, he left me on. Doesn't matter at the end of day what happened after that, we have the Sam Maguire back tomorrow.

"Nothing went right early on. First chance you get, well first thing you want to do is win the ball and show your man. The last thing you wanted them to do today was kick in a high ball and see Darren Fay catching it and coming out the field with it. "He did that three or four times before I touched the ball. I mean, it was disappointing in the second half to miss a chance you should be scoring, but the first half was worse.

"We have a motto, if things are going badly you have two choices you can surrender or you can turn your shoulder to the field. No excuse for going out on a field and not coming off with a bit of sweat on him. Anyone can run and do a bit of work. And that's what we did. We kept digging deeper and it paid off."

Joyce began the second half by blasting a good goal chance over the bar. The loss of the goal wasn't felt for long. He just kept on scoring, adding nine points to his first-half sum and leaving the Meath defence in the sort of disorder few thought imaginable.

Joyce insists that at half-time he had no inkling that good times were on the way. "Hard to know. We'd started off poor enough in the first half. Coming in at half-time it was level and we still weren't playing that well but Meath weren't either.

"It was a scrappy enough game, six points all at half-time and we knew we were in with a shout once they didn't get too far ahead of us." Many braced for a Meath comeback, but Galway have their own race memory. Bad days recur in flashbacks.

"The final factor was our defeat to Kerry last year. It stood to us. The mood in the camp all weekend was quietly confident. No overconfidence. Which was great. Sending off had a factor. We used the extra man well, rotating between Tommy, Seβn de Paor and Kieran Fitzgerald. Nigel was awful unlucky but he went high.

"He won't complain when he sees the video. Trevor missing the penalty was a crucial point. There was five points in it at the time and if they had scored it would be down to two and they would be on the roll again. Maybe if they got the kick-out, scored a point. . . ."

It wasn't to be. And a season of imperfections and sheer hard work ended on a perfect note. Joyce bookended his summer with sublime performances. Opening with 3-3 against Leitrim, closing with 0-10 against Meath.

When did he last score like that?.

"Maybe Under-14 in the club," he laughs before conceding that he got 12 in a club game a couple of years ago.

And he departs, head no bigger than when he arrived in Croke Park yesterday, heart just as great, Player of the day and story of the day.