In the summer of 1991, David Keane had it made. He made his championship debut and he made his mark. True enough Clare exited the championship in time-honoured fashion, flagging late in Cusack Park against a Kerry team which still had a smattering of legends in its ranks.

Keane, still a teenager with a blithe sense of confidence, stuck a goal past Charlie Nelligan and finished with 1-1. Clare finished knowing that in another year they would have the measure of Kerry.

That winter Keane was the star as Clare romped through the League and won the All-Ireland B championship. John Maughan, young and brimful of ideas, was the manager. The team were street-smart to an unlikely degree. By the summer of 1992, in the football heartland of west Clare, the optimism was tangible.

On June 12th, 1992, on a training spin in Cusack Park two weeks before the championship, Keane twisted his right ankle under himself. A stab of pain shot forth from his knee. Nineteen and by nature optimistic, he didn't suspect the worst until somebody else did. He was taken to the Clare team medic, Dr Tom Nolan, who shook his head gravely.

Days later, in Cappagh hospital, they were scraping away damaged cartilage - the good news - and telling him that he had bust his anterior cruciate ligament - the bad news. They told him that he had a year of lonely physio to look forward to, and that they would get him a bed as soon as possible.

1992 was a bad summer to miss if you were a rising footballer in Clare. They took down Kerry and went all the way to a well-fought All-Ireland semi-final with Dublin. People were good to David Keane and included him in all that happened. Being an insider yet an outsider was difficult, though.

"I was part of it and everyone was kind to me, but you couldn't but feel left out a bit. People sympathised and always gave me a mention, but you'd be thinking about what it would be like to be playing. The best part was that I thought we'd be back for Munster titles in '93 or '94."

Clare didn't come back and David Keane hasn't played a championship match since. He got 15 minutes at the end of the last day against Cork and that was the first full-blooded action he has seen. He looks like a symbol of Clare's lost potential and surprising rebirth.

He had his first operation under the celebrated knife of Dr Brian Hurson in January 1992 in St Michael's hospital, Dun Laoghaire. There followed the inevitable year of solitude, working on weights and bicycles and in swimming pools, until eventually the ligament was fully reconstructed.

He never felt entirely comfortable with his right knee when he came back to playing, though. It was always tugging at the sleeves of his consciousness. A little twang here, a little pull there. On the afternoon of a mucky winter McGrath Cup game against Limerick, in 1994, his anterior cruciate ligament made a familiar sound. Snap!

In January 1995, he was back where he had been precisely two years previously. The groundhog day of injuries. He had played a couple of league games and a handful of club games in the previous 12 months and he was back to the healing, the cycling, the weights and the swimming.

"The second time the knee went was harder, because I knew everything that was ahead of me. I knew the chances were still 80 per cent or four out of five and I knew everything I had to do and what a long road it would be."

He got back out on a football pitch early in 1996. The knee felt strong and he went in search of the footballer he once was, the powerful, jinking runner who had tormented defences through the summer and winter of 1991, right through to the spring of 1992.

Clare felt they were going places again under John O'Keeffe's careful rebuilding scheme. Hopes were high. Not long before the championship David Keane went over on his ankle in Cusack Park and ruled himself out for another summer.

His heart broke. For the first time he thought about packing the whole lot in. He survived.

"I just thought to myself that I'd come this far. I knew I was injury prone. I just decided to live with it."

Before the Cork game, O'Keeffe told him that he was going to spring him for the last 20 minutes or so. He sat fidgeting on the bench for most of the game as Clare yielded up the benefits of a good start and went in to the last lap struggling.

"I came on and I got three touches. One wide I think. I can't say that I enjoyed it - we had our backs to the wall for most of it and we were desperate looking for points. When it was over, though, it was sweet. It was great to get the time on the pitch and great for us. We have always thought Cork beat us with an illegal goal in 1996. Everything comes full circle."

Full circle. Here he is again on the cusp of a championship clash with Kerry. Clare are once again emerging. David Keane is coming into his potential.

His days are filled with football. He's working as a full-time coach with the Clare county board, doing the lap of the summer camps flogging the game to the next generation.

He's not spent too much time mulling over the lost years. He doesn't think that the fact that he is actually starting will hit him till he is marching around in the parade on Sunday, looking at the Clare flags waving in the sun.

He won't know it's real till he feels the ball in his hands and the space opening up in front of him.

"That's my story," he says cheerily. "It's been a bit of a struggle. I've missed out on five years and sometimes I don't think I'll ever be the player I was, but I'm happy and a bit surprised to be on the first 15 for Sunday. My first Munster final. I thought it would never come."

And the right knee?

"I'll say a prayer for it before I go out and hope that's the last time I'll have to think about it all day."