Yesterday was a mixed day for Pat Comer. His friend Martin McNamara was unfit to play in goal for Galway so Pat stood in. Regrettably he had to pull the ball out of the net three times as Galway finished the year with a league defeat to Armagh.

Pat's day wasn't done, however. A few hours later in Galway town, Pat sat the Galway team down in a hall and showed them his new movie. Starring the Galway team. Directed by Pat Comer. Une film de football.

The roof didn't fall in. Watching Pat Comer's filmed account of Galway's progress to the All-Ireland title this summer, it was hard not to feel that as well as being a cracking documentary record of an antic summer, the film is a watershed for the GAA.

A team let a camera into their dressing-room and it captured what we always knew. Grown men walk around naked. Managers curse a lot when they get excited. People talk tough to each other. So what? Let's usher in an era of greater openness and confidence.

A Year 'til Sunday captures all that hard grit and places it in its context. Something happens to teams who win All Ireland titles. Not the obvious hoopla and celebrity which they absorb, but something more subtle, some part of the journey stays with them. In 20 years' time, the men in Pat Comer's film may not meet each other that often, but when they do they will know that something extraordinary happened between them in 1998.

You could see that in the electric footage Comer has shot of the Galway dressing-room at half-time in the All-Ireland final. Manager John O'Mahony is unusually excited and wound up, the team are looking for some sort of recharge for their adrenalin. Suddenly O'Mahony brings the 15 players who have been on the field into the warm-up hall beside the dressing-room and orders them to look into each other's eyes, to think about the last half hour. And the boys walk out and up the steps to the pitch again and the remainder of the panel are lining the walls clapping them on their way.

Galway went and won the All-Ireland in the opening stages of the second half.

Other things happen to the team on that journey. This hack has travelled with a couple of squads on the crazy homecoming nights which occur on the Monday after an All-Ireland final. Typically, a bus will trundle through the thronged roads, transporting players high above flags and bonfires, and when the team reach a village or town the players who hail from there will be required to get out and wave the cup at their joyous neighbours and friends.

And, strangely, though they've grown up in that place and love it and represent it, they often seem reluctant to tear themselves away from the team. It is a wrench to leave the bus and become immersed again in the real world outside. What the players have been through is their own, not really for the county or the village, but for themselves as a group, loyal to each other and at the end of the summer, sharing it out with the happy hordes is difficult in an unconscious sort of way. Leaving the cocoon. Coming home from war. That sort of thing.

A Year til Sunday is disconcerting in that respect. We are used to the grammar and syntax of fly-on-the-wall sports documentaries by now. We see a little real life drama stolen from between the four walls of a dressing-room and then the narrative develops by catching up with the principals a little later and asking them to reflect on what we have seen.

Pat Comer's film is different, frustratingly so at first. It is more impressionistic, more involved. It is a film which comes from the inside looking out, rather than a document made by outsiders looking in. Nobody talks to camera about how they feel when John O'Mahony says harsh words to them. The camera just captures the harsh words and the closed face of the recipient and suddenly you remember how it was when you were sitting in dressing-rooms yourself. What happened to other players in terms of their form and their injuries etc didn't impact on you directly. The narrative of a season was training, games, winning or losing, the gaining or loss of momentum. The story never shot off into side alleys to catch up on somebody's feelings.

MUCH OF the time in A Year 'til Sunday, players look at the camera and talk about what it would mean to win an All-Ireland. They say things which coincide with the party line, but which have a personal spin. Ja Fallon muses over people talking about teams 30 or 40 years from now. Michael Donnellan talks about his father and his grandfather, All-Ireland medal winners both.

And the tapestry of the players' different motivations go towards making a picture of what makes a team whole. Nobody has captured so much of that before.

Pat Comer's stroke of luck was to be able to introduce his hand-held camera to the Galway dressing-room without provoking hostility or self-consciousness. Pat has served his time for the cause and his motivations were never open to debate. As a result he has captured the story of a strange season in a unique natural way.

The most compelling scenes are those shot in dressing-rooms during big games. It is often said that athletes at the top level have no room for perspective or irony. Indeed, when Paddy Cullen told his Dublin team the day after the 1992 All-Ireland that losing wasn't the end of the world, especially a world which included death and famine and war, his rationality also marked his end.

The dressing-room scenes from Galway's summer explain why. As John O'Mahony's voice fills the room, his message getting stronger and louder by means of the repetition of simple orders, the sense of tension builds incredibly. Those of us who have played on teams well remember scenes like it, when a mentor builds towards a crescendo and behind his back somebody is rolling their eyes towards heaven or is whispering a smart remark.

In the Galway dressing-room the odds just get stacked higher. When John O'Mahony's speech climaxes he has brought the team with him, a unique skill, and they are shouting and pumped and excited, too, ready in a strangely focussed way. They talk about crossing lines, and the simplicity of tasks, and the loyalty to the group, and the earnest cast of their faces explains why they are winners now and not the polite losers which they were for a generation.

Galway have done the GAA a service by winning this year's All-Ireland with their fluent, thoughtful football. They have made the association another gift by allowing Pat Comer to film them in action and repose. Something of the intensity and passion that makes the game great is illustrated here in what is surely the first great GAA film.