IN Down they tell a story. It comes in two segments separated in time by height years. In the dressingroom before the 1960 Down county final, Newry Mitchells captain Seal O'Neill was to be found expounding upon the game of football. Simple game. Simple precepts.

"There are,"said O'Neill, "ones referee, two linesmen and four, umpires. They will do their jobs. When a ball comes in, it can go to the net, over the bar, be saved, be dropped, come back off the woodwork. Anything can happen. The officials will do their job without anybody watching them. Our job is just to follow the ball."

Fast forward then eight years to the All Ireland final of 1968, the sixth minute of that game. A high spiralling ball drops back down off the Kerry post at a freakish angle. There unattended beneath it is Sean O'Neill who sidefoots it to the net.

In Kerry, they still say that O'Neill was lucky. In Down, they just say that O'Neill, probably the greatest forward of his generation, had been doing that all his life; sure you should have heard what he said before the 1960 county final. O'Neill always practised what he preached, see.

That was then. This is now.

Just two weeks ago on a greasy day in Croke Park, Dermot Flanagan stepped out ahead of his man and bent his back towards an incoming Scud of a ball.

This might be the ball which turned the battle Dermot Flanagan's way. The crowd could see Flanagan out ahead of Brolly, not skidding behind him. Good sign.

The rest is already written. The ball skids through Flanagan's fingers, freakish as a greased pig. Joe Brolly takes receipt, unsure of what instinct had told him to hang back, but certain of what remains to be done. He solos goalwards till Derry voices are shrieking for him to make a pass. Then, with his weaker foot, his right, he rifles the ball to the Mayo net.

Joe Brolly enjoys listening to bean O'Neill. Their paths have crossed in football and in the law and O Neill a tough minded, uncompromising footballman has always had the ear of the younger man. Much of O'Neill's philosophy of forward play has been absorbed into Brolly's game and he is happy to acknowledge the debt.

"O'Neill's attitude was that the forward should basically mark the defender. The forward should thump the defender and pressurise him and pull the defender's jersey and turn the tables. One of his themes was why wait till the defender hits you in the mouth?

"That's a perennial problem for forwards. As a young forward you get pulled and held and hit and you wonder what can I do here?" O'Neill would say to you that you do whatever you have to do. The forward has to dominate the physical exchanges; the defender has to know that he's not going to get away with anything, the defender has to do the thinking and worrying.

"The second thing is O'Neill's directness. I don't have the physique of Dermot McNicholl or O'Neill. If I had I'd head straight for goal every time. Direct. Direct. Direct. O'Neill is a tough man. Wouldn't let anyone beat him at anything. Competitive. I have some of that. I hate criticism. Try to work on that but I don't like it. There is that competitiveness."

There it is. Simple game. Simple precepts. From Sean O'Neill of Down to Joe Brolly of Derry.

PEOPLE have a fixed idea of Sean O'Neill. There are several versions of Joe Brolly, however. Some people think Joe Brolly is a hoot. A funny man. The class smart ass.

The local rent a quote merchant.

There is a story which journalists tell about Joe Brolly. Everybody laughs and then pauses for a second when they, hear it.

A scribe, new to his newspaper and not noted for his interest in Gaelic Games but keep to expand his knowledge, was assigned to interview Brolly. The early exchanges went well; Joe Brolly is after all the soul of affability. As the tongues loosened, it became apparent that the journalist was winging it.

Mischievous thoughts entered Brolly's head and soon he was waxing lyrical about Mick O'Connell's soaring catches and about how Joe himself liked nothing better than to soar above the heads of his peers and pluck one down rum the skies. The faster the earnest scribe scribbled the higher Joe's fancy took him.

Brolly tipped the journalist off the next day but hacks still laugh nervously when the tale is recounted. Keeps the pressure on does Joe.

Several versions. Other people think that Joe Brolly is a chicken. Nervy, fearful, tentative and, windy, they say about him behind his back.

It was whispered around Ulster last year when Brolly broke his wrist in the league final. Derry would be better off without him. Whispered until Derry limped out of the Ulster championship on a hot day against Tyrone to want of a bit of pace and imagination in their forward line.

Then there is the constituency, that thinks that Joe Brolly is perhaps the best forward playing football in the country at the moment. Serious, quick and tough.

Close your eyes and try to remember the last time you saw, Joe Brolly hit a silly wide. How about the last time you saw him cleaned out by a corner back? Who scores as frequently from play? Who oils the machine - around him so well?

It's hard being a forward. Especially a young forward plying his trade on the unforgiving plains of Ulster. Brolly knows how it goes.

"There's an old thing around the club scene that if your team is, playing badly the first thing you do is take off the corner forward. That carries over."

He has seen it all, in his five or so years with the Derry panel. Seen the way Ulster almost suffocates its own with oppressive negativity and the blanket of harsh words. He has studied the blood lines of Ulster football's thoroughbreds, found encouragement and shared experiences.

They said Linden was a chicken. They said Canavan was a chicken. They said Joe Brolly was a chicken.

"I remember people lambasting Peter Canavan and Adrian Cush coming out after championship matches when they were 21 or 22. Saying `oh gutless, they'll never do it for us.' This sort of thing. If you are 20 and you can score you are in the spotlight. You do the things that get shown on the highlights.

"All of a sudden the pressure is on you. Corner backs are being told that you have to be watched. You are immature and you are being marked by a 27/28 year old with lots of experience. Then people say he's not up to it, he hasn't got the guts. It's a tough position to play.

"You need the maturity to be able to consistently which is what Canavan learned last year. Really I was one of his doubters but I played with him on the Ulster team this year and I have to say he is the complete article. Determined, single minded and ruthless. That's what a forward has to be. Marvellous skills. The same as Linden, was two years ago but maybe a bit more controlled than Linden. Peter Canavan is now the ideal for forwards, anyone looking at how you should approach taking on a defender, what sort of challenge you need to present should watch him.

For a corner forward determination and tenacity are the most important things. Mickey Linden took a while to realise it was about a lot more than scoring. He was an ordinary footballer who could be marked out of a game for a long time. Peter Canavan was the same. For two or three years Derry had no trouble with him until he decided to bite the bullet. Now watch him."

BROLLY certainly watches him. Anybody who can teach a new trick to Joe Brolly, is worth watching. He occupies a peculiar place in Derry football. Central and yet outside. Observing the team he has been part of for most of his adult life, noting the complexities of the web of relationships and the amalgam of motivations.

He has always been that way. Of the tribe and yet distinct from it.

His grandfather was the driving force - behind the club in Dungiven. Joe knows that it would have taken a freak of nature for him to have been anything other than a footballer. His early memories are the football field and the father, Francie, "plagueing me to try to use the right foot, was too complacent for that".

No matter where he has strayed in the years since then, the GAA has been the wind at his back ever since. He has escaped the straitjacket of stereotype but not the cloak of the game.

Dungiven is a quiet town whose footballers yearn every year to beat Lavey in the county championship and don't care too much about what happens beyond that. The Troubles have had little impact on the gentle community. A club member and noted hurler Kevin Lynch died on hunger strike in 1981 and the ballads of the blanket men got sung on solemn occasions. Football rather than politics informed most of the discourse, though.

Music was in the family. Joe's mother Anne and his father Francie sang the songs but once upon a time Francie scored three goals for Derry in a McKenna Cup game and it was that talent which got passed on intact.

Joe went to St Patrick's in Armagh as a schoolboy rather than take the well beaten path down to the school of the same name in Maghera. Then, to escape the prospect of Belfast and the claustrophobic northern boy thing, he headed down to Trinity for a law degree. Got what he wanted in terms of freedom and academia.

"Within four hours of arriving I was sitting in a pub with a Kerryman and a Limerickman."

Through all this with his spectacularly unsuccessful school teams and his endlessly promising Trinity side and finally with Queen's in his postgraduate incarnation, his stock as a footballer was rising. The reputation as a retailer of fast quips and one liners which he carried with him masked a certain earnestness about the science of football.

"The joker stuff wouldn't be a proper reflection of me. All that image stuff is external. I'm deadly serious about football, competitive about it. When I was younger I'd just be chuffed with a bit of success. I was more happy go lucky about it all."

Just as Derry have changed their place in the world of football so he has, found that football has changed its place in his own world. The person he most relishes competing against these days is himself.

"It's different now. I enjoy my football much more now. Much more valuable outlet for me now that I'm working. It's an outlet from the daily tedium. I've started to enjoy the concept of competition itself, realising that you are competing against yourself even in a team game.

THROUGH all this he, has grown closer to the centre of the team, more essential to their needs and more influential in their thinking. The turbulence and humiliations of the past few years have seen many Derry players grow in a similar way.

The team has been through the painful post All Ireland period and has spent longer hours than most turned in on itself, defining its priorities and future. Brolly thinks it has taken a long time for them to shed the notion of themselves as All Ireland champions, ex All Ireland champions, a team who could do it when ever they wanted.

In Brian Mullins, he feels, the Derry team has at last found an apposite reflection of their own earnestness, and cerebration. "Mullins is an interesting man. He has the benefit of having been there himself. Very popular with the boys. He talks interestingly about the motivation and what competing requires. Look, he says, the test is the test against yourself. That's what the satisfaction comes from. We have talked about things like Wigan rugby league club and how they are so relentless and remorseless. That's internal.

"Another thing he has done is try to discard these old Ulster mythologies. Down can never beat Tyrone or you'd rather play Cavan because they have a bad history and so on. He has minimised the kind of hatreds that exist between ourselves and Tyrone for example. Mullins has sought to make it more mechanical. The only difference Mullins says between Armagh and Tyrone is the colour of the jersey. You forget the other team. These are useful thoughts because Ulster tends to be very parochial."

Through all this introspection Joe Brolly has thrived. A serious team suits his serious side. People look back at the All Ireland win of 1993, that gaunt and hungry Derry team and Brolly seemed to represent their lighter side. Three years later the mark of the man is that 1993 and all that is described as "the biggest anti climax of my life."

Perhaps that's because it was no climax. Afterwards he just felt a hunger to get out and play again, to wipe out the distractions and concentrate on the game itself. He has shed all the baggage he says, "got rid of all the things that don't mean anything. We aren't ex champions or ex anythings. The only contests that matter are the ones in front of us.

Derry train in Dungiven these days. Joe Brolly lives and works as a barrister in Belfast. He is as immersed in home and the northern boy business as it is possible to be.

Maybe once it all would have been a little claustrophobic for him but Joe Brolly has different things to worry about now.

Once upon a time on these fields he was too complacent to listen when Francie urged him to use the right boot a little more. He was going to be a good footballer anyway. Two weeks ago he scored the goal of the season off the right peg.

"Complacency is the fatality for success," he says. "The minute you start to feel happy with yourself, it all disintegrates. A couple of years ago we were so settled we would have resented a young fella like Sean Martin Lockhart coming in. We were happy with ourselves. Now we want him there. We have no doubts about him. None.

"The complacency is gone. You do what you can do. Like the Nike advertisement says. Just Do It. That sums up what managers should say to teams. What people should say to themselves. Regardless of whether there is 50,000 there or nobody there. Just Do It."

Tough minded, uncompromising, football man on the cusp of another big day. One thought. Just doing it.