Ray Cosgrove is talking about the business of scoring goals. In a few hours, after Ray has vacated a leather chair and exited the gleaming, whispering lobby of this plush city centre hotel to become one among the throng of solemn young professionals hurrying through the icy dusk of Dublin, Ryan Giggs will score a goal.

The superstar will humble Juventus in Turin with a simple, classic goal and then his pensive, slightly forlorn face will be on TV screens all over Europe.

And Giggs will adopt the familiar machismo stance and will lift his arms to point to his surname on the back of his Manchester United shirt and his message will be clear. F . . . you. That's my name. This is what I do.

Goals are the opiate and, in Dublin - like all cities - the Welshman will be lauded and the beer taps will hiss. Ray will probably watch as well, kicking back on the family sofa in Stillorgan because he has that most rare of commodities, a free night and he just wants to relax because his job has him driving a lot and lately, the traffic has been a killer.

But all this will happen later, when the clock rolls on. Now, he is explaining the art of goals, as he has been asked to do a million times since.

"I have always been a better soccer player than a Gaelic football player. Anyone will tell you that. My whole background is soccer, let's be honest. Maybe I even still think my way through the game like a soccer player, I don't know. It's all space and angles anyway so I don't think it makes much of a difference."

Cosgrove's goals somehow became the emblematic of the summer of GAA love that swept Dublin. In Lyons's land, when all the suburbs fell under a sky blue spell, the Cosgrove goal was a sure sign all was right with the world, that the dream and fun and togetherness would live for another Sunday.

It was no coincidence that, when Dublin finally lost after a fraught hour against Armagh, Cosgrove - despite giving his most complete performance - could not burst free for a goal.

He struck six times in that tight and glorious period for Dublin football and, in the aftermath of every execution, he wasn't afraid to smile and celebrate and show that he felt as if he was at the epicentre of the whole damn world.

Joyless winning is the dominant way in contemporary GAA and so Cosgrove announced himself a radical.

"It was more about just the joy of being out there. The thought that you might never get back to that place again. In a few years time, someone else is going to be in my place. It wasn't premeditated or anything.

"Like, people have asked me what I'm going to do if I score a goal this summer. Probably nothing at all. Just jog out and mark my man. The other side of it is that fellas were probably sayin', look at that tosser, showboatin' it and what have you. But it was 17 or 18 years since someone else scored six goals in the championship.

"It was just the sensation of being out there, 80,000 people in a stadium and the sun shining. You might react differently if there was sleet falling on your face or something.

"But being a part of those occasions felt really amazing. So I was a bit over-exuberant at times. So what? That happens in life."

It is hard to believe that he is closer to the promise and pressure of Dublin's next great adventure than he is to the embers of the last.

It caught him by surprise as much as anyone, the sudden outpouring of affection and need that stopped short of being spiritual, but that definitely made him think hard about the role of his team-mates in his native city during the summer of 2002, eternally wet and overcast, except - it seemed - on the days when Dublin played in Croke Park.

"It was incredible, just Sunday after Sunday. And during the week, it was all anyone was talking about, the game ahead and how we were going to do. It was an extraordinary feeling. I mean, I remember the All-Ireland win in 1995 and the passion that unleashed.

"We had to wait seven years for that and it was strange to be suddenly stuck in the middle of it, to be living the dream."

His first All-Ireland final was in 1983. He was six years of age, the unwitting observer of a game that, in retrospect, should have been rated X.

In the upper tier of the Hogan stand on that ominously overcast afternoon, he sat with his father and cheered for Galway. More specifically, he cheered for Gay McManus, his first cousin.

Ray's parents are from Mayo (Further proof that God likes to toy with the football legacy of the western county). His Uncle John, " a priest in Dunmore, Michael Donnellan's parish", was one of two relatives on his father's side that played for the county.

So it made sense, at six, to shout for the maroons and then go attend the commiseration ceremony in the Aisling hotel later that evening, when he met Brian Talty and Stephen Joyce and the rest, too young to know why they looked so stunned.

"Sure if I'd known then what I know now," he laughs. "I was still a Dub, but at six, I was cheering for Galway."

IN Cosgrove's first coming as a Dublin senior player 13 years later, the city game was king. Ray always saw himself as an accidental footballer. Opportunities in soccer were by-passed through injury and bad timing.

Derby County offered a trial, but he couldn't go and, by the time he was 17, he realised he was no longer all that keen on the notion. And anyway, there was a Gaelic revolution right on his doorstep. In 1995, Kilmacud bucked the south Dublin trend by capturing the All-Ireland club title and, suddenly, the next winter, young Cosgrove was attending training with the heroes of the Hill, the All-Ireland champions, one of the young blades drafted in when Mickey Whelan took over. "It was hard coming in, being young and a southsider," he says with reticence. "Intimidating. Hard to break in."

The following years were tough - he would get a pre-Christmas league run before watching his name fall down the pecking order as evenings became bright and the veterans returned.

The disaster of 1999, when he was sent on and hauled off again during the Leinster final capitulation against Meath, was the nadir.

He bears no ill grace to Tom Carr, the manager of that period, just reckoned they never saw eye to eye.

"I was devastated, yeah. I thought I was doing no worse than anybody else was and, given a bit more time, who knows. It's not something I want to harp on about. Our relationship was sticky, but he rang again when training started up the following year.

"I just didn't have it in me right then after what happened. We decided I'd stay with the club and see what happened." And there he remained, patient and watchful until last year when Tom Lyons called and Cosgrove got an unsuspecting city all tangled up in blue.

Three league games into Lyons's second season and the flags are back in the attic and temperance has set in with the frost. Cosgrove, returning tomorrow after half a league campaign in cold storage through suspension, wonders where the months have gone.

As he wandered through the great wait, mad for football, he encountered low wattage flickers of recognition. Out of context, away from the field and the television replays, "lots of people know they know me from somewhere but aren't sure where". Others recognise him instantly and prevail on him to relive the glory days. Again and again.

They talk about the goals.

And the 24 points.

Oh, and wasn't it you that hit the post against Armagh?

He has made peace with himself about that famous free in the dying seconds. "I was nabbed for a radio interview on the way out of Croke Park and I didn't finger that moment out. I still reckon that was my best game. . .

"Look, I won the free, took the free and it didn't go over. That's life. I will admit that I didn't kick the ball quite so confidently as I would have if it were two minutes in. But I tried to keep it accurate and put too much curve on it.

"It didn't happen. And maybe that sounds cocky as if, ah, this guy's spoofing if he says it's not hurting. But that's how it was."

He shoots without guilt see, regardless of the consequences. It is what he will do in Killarney, if he gets a run. The history between the counties isn't his history and as such is irrelevant to him. The attraction is the mere game.

"Just to get a ball in my hands again. I won't be match fit but just to run."

But then, he remembers who he is and grins and says, "yeah, 1-6 would be nice in Kerry all right," because he knows he shouldn't, but he can't resist.

Ray Cosgrove is 25 and somehow remains optimistic and true to himself despite riding the vicissitudes of the urban game. He is durable and likeable and unshakeable in his belief.

The kid stays in the picture. Any day now, he will be appearing in all our homes again. The Dublin Daily has made a TV advert featuring Cosgrove and the other boys of summer in between the adverts for tea and Coca-Cola.

"God knows how it will turn out. It will be a bit strange. It will mean more slagging, like after the 007 thing. But sure what harm? You have to take it."

007. Before Christmas, his employers at Bank of Ireland requested him to help out with the new championship launch for a sponsorship deal that runs until 2007.

They dressed the All-Star in a tuxedo and got him to pose like Bond beside pretty models and a flash car.

And he was mortified and flush with embarrassment but could see the fun in it and, anyhow, the bank has been great to him. They didn't slip him the car afterwards, though.

"Nah, no such luck. But I still have the gun."

Bullet the Blue Sky.