In Bellaghy, the memories are as long and as tangled as the family trees. For a community which moves forward with such vigilant determination, Bellaghy has a lot of past to cope with.

Danny Quinn was in the dressing-room the other night when young Sean Brown came around taking details for the insurance forms. Names and dates of birth. In the space of a few seconds, Sean wrote down the name of Fergal Doherty and his birthdate in 1981. And then Danny Quinn and his birthdate in, eh, 1966. Oh Danny.

Danny set to thinking. The Dohertys lived beside the Quinns. When he took a moment he could remember going into the Doherty's house when he was about 16 to see this same Fergal, new and pink and swaddled on his mammy's lap. Now on Sunday he's watching Fergal play midfield for Bellaghy. Danny is sitting on the bench and Fergal is wearing the jersey Danny used to wear. And Danny smiles to himself. Time passes.

Before the Christmas was tended to, they added their fourth Ulster club title to their unfussy roll of honour and in Enniskillen tomorrow when they play Crossmolina the boys from Bellaghy will be looking to continue a love affair which began in 1972 in the chaos of the Troubles when this little village won the All-Ireland club championship. They've kept dreaming of it ever since. They seriously romanced the trophy in 1995 when Kilmacud beat them in the final and they are back now with a young side ready to woo in earnest.

Memories. Seamus Birt didn't get much of a break. Didn't really want one if the truth be told. He first went down to the pitch in the village when he was seven or eight - he can't quite remember, but it was in the early 70s, and he played for Bellaghy through till 1997. Early the next year he put himself down to train the under-14 team and got a surprise. He ended up managing the seniors. He reckons he's the only one involved in the panel who remembers the 1972 game. Rather he doesn't remember it, just the excitement.

"The parents went down to Dublin for the day and Brenda Doherty, whose brother Peter was playing, minded us in the house. We didn't get to hear anything, but I remember my father coming into the room in the middle of the night and waking us to tell us the news. Bellaghy were the All-Ireland champions. The excitement in his face, I can still remember it."

And things today are tangled up in that time. Not long afterwards they remember Larry Diamond, the team captain, starting skills sessions for the local kids in the club hall and those sessions went on and on and they reckon there isn't a player on tomorrow's panel who didn't learn to love the game in that way.

Bellaghy. The threads running through its history are on the team-sheets. The Diamonds - Karl, Peter and Paul - are sons of Tommy who played in 1972 and beyond. Ciaran McNally, Gavin Diamond and Kieran Doherty, the 'keeper, are all cousins. And there's Kevin Doherty's boys. Fergal, Kevin and Gareth are all playing senior now. The first year Danny Quinn played senior he was full back and Kevin senior was playing centre back. Now Kevin has four sons, of whom Conor is the youngest. In the reserve league final this season, Danny played with Conor and won. Now Danny has won county medals with the father and four sons. Time flies.

It hardly seems like six years since Bellaghy were last truly in the big time. Back then they had a side brimming with possibility. Fresh-faced kids sweated with big, meaty men who'd seen inter-county action and other stuff they didn't like to talk about - like Lavey winning the 1990 All-Ireland club title.

Tomorrow only four of that team that played in 1995 will be on the field in Enniskillen, a remarkable turnover for a village of under 2,000 souls. Remarkable, but somehow inevitable.

"There's lots to do in Bellaghy," says Seamus Birt, "but in a way there is only football. If you're a young lad, you'll play football. The club won Ulster minor titles in 1991 and 1994, so those lads were always going to come through. We've got a fair haul off those two teams and the team that plays this weekend is going to be around for another four or five years."

Everywhere there are memories. The odyssey back in 1995 began when Danny Quinn and Sean Brown travelled in Sean's car to the draw for the county championship and decided on the way home they had a good chance of winning the thing. So it was and the good times rolled.

On Monday night the current team trained on their own pitch, the first of the three weekly sessions which have sped the winter for them. They were gone towards their homes not long after nine o'clock, nipping out the Castledawson Road past the iron lettering on the arch which announces the neat apron of pitch as Pairc Sean de Brun. Gone and past the plaque which commemorates the abduction and murder of Sean Brown "our esteemed chairman", who was taken from here by the LVF on May 12th, 1997. Sean Brown was one of those men no community should be without.

The sort of service he gave to Bellaghy was part of a family tradition; his own father Jim had been involved with the club since 1939. Sean saw the club as the centre of the community and realised its possibilities. It wasn't just for football, which he was passionate about, but for everyone, a focal point. The club reflected part of the personality of Bellaghy, part of the defiance. Sure, there were troubles. Three times the clubhouse was burned down. In 1977 a player, Willie Strathearn, was lured to his death by somebody claiming to need medicine for a sick child. An RUC sergeant was later convicted of the murder.

All these things happened, plus the usual difficulties with harassment and marches, but the club retained a generous heart and part of what informed that generosity was Sean Brown.

His death was sickeningly pointed, reflecting as it did an acute realisation of what Sean Brown was about and what he meant to his community. He went to lock up these gates late one wet night after a meeting. Things had dragged on. Sean's son, also Sean, who helped with the duties around the club and who had already become treasurer, had headed back to Belfast as he was studying for exams. Sean senior would be the last to leave.

He had closed the premises, set the alarm and he drove his car out through the gates and got out to lock up. He was pounced upon. There was a struggle. He was driven 10 miles away to Randallstown, where his body was found beside his burned out car.

"They knew what they were doing," says Seamus Birt. "Sean was murdered because he was part of the GAA, he was part of what we are in Bellaghy. It was meant not just to hurt the Brown family, but to hurt all of us. And it did, it tore our hearts out. But we came back together. Joe McDonagh came to us, I remember, and he spoke beautifully. He told us that in our grief we'd have to remember what Sean would have wanted. The way to honour him was to move on with the club."

"It had a huge effect, huge," says Danny Quinn. "Just a major loss to the people all around; this is a parish not just a club and he's a major loss to us all. He is still missed. It hit us very hard, but we had to reform, get the whole thing going again. And now his son Sean is around every night at training. Sean organises everything, from the bibs to the water. Everything. We couldn't get by without him. He's stepped into that gap."

After his father's death, Sean Brown wasn't sure what his own relationship with the club would be. Illness had finished his playing career early. Nothing would have been easier than to walk away and concentrate on his work in Belfast, bury himself in the world of elsewhere.

"It was hard. I didn't want to walk away and leave with his work unfinished within the club. I was recovering from a serious illness, so I wasn't going to be playing again. Damien (his brother) was still playing, but he has since retired. He's 30, 31. He had odds and ends of work and he couldn't really give the time. But I decided I'd come back. I wanted to do what he had started."

It isn't always easy. Never will be. Enjoyment isn't the right word to use for what Sean gets out of his involvement. That Ulster club win over Errigal Ciaran in November was an odd day.

"Mixed emotions. Strange time. Yeah, I did feel it on the day of the Ulster final. Wishing he was here, knowing what it would have meant."

It'll be a little like old times tomorrow. Sean Brown's mother, Bridie, won't travel; she has no appetite for football since the passing of her husband, so she'll stay in Bellaghy and one of Sean's sisters will stay with her. The rest of the clan will travel, though, as will most of the town.

"What's the club's place?" muses Sean. "Strange. Whenever there is a good run, like the present run, it's the focal point, everyone talks about it. Outside of football the club sits in the background, there when there is something to be done. It's part of the community, not the essence. At the moment the church is having work done, so the club is the chapel. And there's a youth club there and lots of other things. That's what it is supposed to be, an expression, not the be all and end all. This weekend, though, it will be the be all and end all. My father liked that balance."

And tomorrow Sean Brown senior will be in the dressing-room somewhere.

"This weekend everybody will be thinking of him somewhere in their minds," says his son. "It's that type of thing; they know it's there in their thoughts and some of the players would know more, realise more of what he had done. They would know the importance of trying to achieve success and paying tribute to him. The younger players haven't that same sense, but it's in the back of their minds. He'll be with us."