Munster SFC/Kerry v Tipperary: The most talented footballer on the field on Sunday will not be a Kerry man. Keith Duggan talks to Declan Browne

In the strait-laced and frequently humourless environment of elite Gaelic football, Declan Browne must qualify as the resident eccentric. Since 1996, he has been consistently recognised as one of the classiest ball players of his generation. On his best days, Browne can be an extravagant joy to watch, taking score after score in a style of easy accomplishment that has long made him a mouth-watering prospect for managers across the country.

His perceived plight, of course, is that he was born in Tipperary, first and foremost a hurling county. Browne has often been portrayed as the Robinson Crusoe of the Big Ball scene, a consummate artist whose feats with Tipperary's footballers heightened the idea of a man trapped and to all intents alone.

Over consecutive summers, the public have watched Browne cut loose against superior opposition rendered helpless against his repertoire, but despite his solo heroics, the stronger team comes through in the end. And such defeats invited the thought that it was a shame that Declan Browne was not involved with a county that represented a more handsome stage for his talents.

Tomorrow, in Thurles, the 26-year-old will captain Tipperary against the All-Ireland champions and the general expectation is that Kerry, without any real desire, could inflict one of those murderous lessons of know-how on their opponents. Sitting over a bacon and cabbage dinner in Barnes' pub on the main road from Cahir to Clonmel, Browne agrees that where Tipperary football is concerned, the public attitude is bleak.

"People never expect anything of us," he shrugs. "I am going into my 10th championship and I have lost to Kerry teams in seven of those years. And we took the odd hammering from them, but in five of those years, we were there or thereabouts. I think we have earned respect from Kerry. And the Kerry players are fair lads, they are pure footballers, that is their tradition. Any footballer who doesn't like playing Kerry is off his head.

"My own feeling is that I am going out to win. I believe that. If I stopped believing that, I'd give the whole thing up, I'd stop training and walk away. We know there is a difference between Kerry and us, we know they are capable of hammering us by 20 points. But that doesn't stop you from believing in your own team and going out there with nothing to lose."

It began for Declan Browne against Kerry. "On a rainy day in Clonmel nine years ago," he says ruefully. "Hard to believe."

1996 marked the uncertain origins of Kerry's grim and single-minded renaissance to their present incarnation as the cutting edge team of All-Ireland football, the county to admire and to emulate and to fail against.

Browne squints as he tries to recall his marker on his debut Sunday and pinpoints the name of John O'Driscoll. After that, it always seemed to be Séamus Moynihan. Tipperary were level with Kerry after 60 minutes before the pale gold and green shirts began to dazzle them and ran up a flattering late scoreline.

In 1997, they were all square again with 10 minutes of football left and Kerry advanced with just four points to spare, ending their campaign with their first All-Ireland title in 11 years. In 1998, Tipperary lost a Munster final to Kerry by 0-17 to 1-10 and Browne, at 18 years of age, was selected on the All Star team.

He was captain of the county a year later when a controversial Kerry goal - Gerry Murphy's shot rebounded off the metal stanchion behind the goal before it was goaled - was enough to dust off the latest Tipperary challenge. It was another scarifying day for Kerry. But Tipperary fell short.

"I suppose that was the low point. I was captain that year as well and just felt we had them on the rack. I said to Michael McCarthy, that was wide. And he replied, yeah, I know. And it's things like that make you wonder if you'll still be thinking about them in 15 years' time, asking yourself what you get out of the game. But I am a firm believer in having no regrets.

"Like, I don't consider myself a bad loser, but I do hate losing. I go quiet for a day or two, stick to myself and then snap out of it. Because I still enjoy it as much as the first day I lined out for Tipperary. The difference, I suppose, is that back then you feel like you will go on forever. Like Séamus O'Hanlon of Louth, who played until he was 36 or whatever. You imagine it will be like that for yourself. But it is a young man's game and, even at 26, it takes a couple of extra days to recover from the knocks.

"And in terms of winning a Munster medal, you begin to realise that if you haven't got one by the time you are 29 or 30, then maybe it won't happen."

FRAMED ON THE wall where we sit is a black and white photograph of Donal Foley playing for Moyle Rovers in the 1996 county final. Browne explains it took his clubmate 18 years to win a county medal, but he finished his career with five championships, retiring at 40. Patience and stubbornness are the twin virtues for Tipperary footballers.

Browne was still a teenager when he made peace with the fact that he would never win an All-Ireland football medal with Tipperary. A Munster championship was, he felt, an attainable ambition, even if the last Tipperary representatives to succeed were the 1935 team.

Football was in his blood: his grandfather John Lonergan was known locally as "The Footballer". He passed away four years ago and Browne can still hear the critiques the senior man delivered when he would visit after games, sometimes handsome, sometimes stinging.

Browne was a fanatical follower of Tipperary football as a boy, travelling with his family to other unfashionable football counties in the depths of winter, observing the way guys kept on competing on the thankless days such as the 0-22 to 0-6 damage report Cork handed them in 1989.

It is easy to be inspired if you are a youngster from Kerry, from Dublin or lately from Armagh, but it was to the eternally up-against-it Tipperary cause that Browne was drawn.

It was not as if Tipperary had never seen a good footballer - Derry Foley and Peter Lambert being obvious examples of the recent era. But Browne's maturation was once-in-a-generation special. While his talent has set him apart, though, Browne's attitude is what truly distinguishes him. The contemporary era is governed by a near-homicidal devotion to winning at all costs and the popular complaint is that representing one's county has become an almost impossible burden, particularly among those teams accustomed to challenging for elite honours.

That is why Browne's perspective is so refreshing. He counts the day Tipperary played Donegal in Croke Park in the 2003 qualifiers as his most memorable game and, though the team lost the match, he remembers the occasion with the kind of radiant fondness that other players recall winning All-Ireland finals.

"We were told on the Monday that the game was fixed for Croke Park and I was on a high. Could hardly sleep. It was my first time playing football there. When we went out on the field, our supporters were gathered near the tunnel entrance and we weren't used to that.

"For home games we might get 200 people - and families only at away games. And we just relaxed and played out of our skins. We were 0-8 to 0-7 down at half-time and I think Donegal knew they were in a game. And they pulled away, Brendan Devenney got a goal, but we had guys out there who just gave everything on that field and in the dressingroom afterwards, we were all very proud. We felt we left Tipperary football with something to be proud of."

Browne struck nine points that day, five from play. Afterwards, Donegal manager Brian McEniff declared it had been a pleasure to watch him play, labelling it Declan Browne's day. The performance probably secured Browne his second All Star.

HE HAS, of course, played only one championship match since because of last summer's odd and disquieting situation when Tipperarywithdrew from the All-Ireland championship qualifiers, handing Fermanagh a walkover. In his job with Clonmel Oil, Browne meets people daily and during those distressing weeks, it seemed the entire county had an opinion of the hitherto-invisible state of Tipperary football.

A dispute with the county board over the decision to fix a club championship game three days before the Fermanagh game escalated and led to Andy Shortall stepping down as manager. The players unanimously backed him.

"People didn't get the real story on how we were affected. People thought we were selfish and should have played under protest, but we just couldn't. We didn't strike, we made ourselves unavailable because there was no management team in place for the Fermanagh game. Who was going to pick the team? Giving a walkover in a championship game was a low point and I could understand the opposite point of view to ours. And people had no problem coming up and saying it to me. Fair play. It was a desperate time, but it passed. We moved on."

The difference is that before the 2004 championship, Tipperary had pushed hard for promotion to Division One. This year's league was a shambles, the nadir being a gale-force loss to Waterford, who trailed 0-0 to 0-3 at half-time. Browne aggravated a muscle strain in March against Louth and Derry pulverised them in their last competitive game by 29 points.

Browne is sanguine as he chronicles these woes, noting that for Tipperary footballers, turbulence comes with the journey. You ride it out. "That's us. We get knocked down. We are stubborn, we keep getting back up."

For Browne, though, there was an alternative to this school of hard knocks. Hurling medals at All-Ireland minor, under-21 and intermediate grades weren't won for sunny good looks. Although Moyle Rovers is football heartland, people like Mick McCarthy and Eileen Boland noticed he could conjure scores with a stick as well and kept bringing him to county hurling trials.

He broke through with Eugene O'Neill's minor team, gaining his first-team place in the 1996 All-Ireland replay, watched by 66,000 Meath and Mayo folk. It was his taste of September. Three years later, Nicky English encouraged him to make a break for the senior team and gave him a fair shot, but Browne was compromised. "You need to hurl four and five days a week to play at the top level and I just wasn't getting it."

CALL HIM a heretic, but he just loved the big ball that little bit more. He has no qualms, watching his former hurling colleagues and friends win the McCarthy Cup in 2001 without a flicker of self-examination. There was no voice in his head telling himself he might have been out there instead of slogging it out in the lower divisions of the football world. There was never a choice, just as there was never a dilemma when he used to receive calls from ambitious football counties enticing him to come and work in their part of the island.

"It was always football and always Tipp. That's it," he grins.

And that is the most delightful aspect to Declan Browne. Tomorrow, he will meet Kerry footballers who would probably be hard pressed to physically locate all the Munster football medals won over the years. A single such medal is all Browne desires and achieving that looks like a long shot this summer. He is sensible enough to realise it may not happen, romantic enough to believe that it could. All he can do in between is to persevere with playing the chosen game with all the splendour he can muster, regardless of the location or the scoreline or the damnable odds.

"I get a better buzz out of playing football for Tipperary. I suppose I am a home bird and this is what I grew up with. I wouldn't change any of it. And people probably laugh at me and think I am weird or that there is something wrong with me. But I play what I want to play."