It must have been the early 1970s. Peter Ford was up in the capital on a football trip with the rest of the Ballinrobe under-12s. He was a nifty young player, fervid, like his friends, at the notion of kicking ball in Dublin.

This was pre-McDonalds but O'Connell Street still had an aura, a shiny vastness that impressed in a lonely way. He had just started boxing then, maybe a few weeks earlier. Neighbours gave him some gloves and he and a friend went out to a field and began throwing wild shots at each other, the momentum and cumbersome padded mitts making them stumble like drunks. One of the lads who had founded the boxing clubs in Ballinrobe spied the pair from his passing car and told them to come along for lessons.

Ford was raw but hooked when the Dublin weekend came up. So the people in whose house he was a guest brought him along to see a Friday night card. Boxing was in the midst of its the lordly epoch, when names like Sugar Ray Leonard and Ali were common currency everywhere, west of Ireland included. He watched Charlie Nash box that night, sinewy and hallowed on the white canvas. Charlie Nash. And he saw Mick Dowling's last ever bout, saw him take his last bell and found his heart quickening as the crowd stamped and whistled and the boxers feinted through the warm, smoky air.

"That was what really set me on my way," he says.

"It was funny, because later, when I had a scholarship, Mick Dowling was actually my trainer, you know. I always remember him fighting that night."

God knows how many sporting journeys to Dublin since. The most famous one was, of course, a fortnight ago when he - the torchbearer in that traditional act of western pageantry - guided Sligo to Croke Park for the first time since 1975 - since Ford was a pre-pubescent boxer - and on to the most famous victory of this sporting summer.

Sligo's turn, finally, to paint the banners: "Last one leaving, turn out the lights." "The West's Awake." Ford loves Croke Park, its histories and attendant melodramas. The way it can spit on desires. In 1985, he was a full back on the Mayo team that lost to Dublin after a two-match tussle. Keeping time with Big Joe McNally.

"It's a different atmosphere when Dublin are playing. Incredible. Like, it's hostile but it's not really. The raucous Dubs. They are funny. When we were paying in front of the Hill end and the ball would be down the far side, you'd hear some of the comments coming in at you. About Joe and what he would do - he was a real cult hero on the Hill that time. It was funny, an interesting experience."

The bitter times came four years later, when Mayo was contesting the All-Ireland final against Cork. Ford was marking Dinny Allen, the Cork captain. For the best part of the afternoon, he was right there with him, watched him sweat and worry, traded water and few words.

"And then he was up there getting the cup and I was on the field. It was the old way then, when you stood on the field afterwards and I remember crying and asking myself why it was him up there, really feeling hurt. I think it was especially because I had been right beside him and of course it just brought home that fine line, you know, that closeness between winning and losing."

All his life, he has been accumulating such lessons. The fight game consumed him when he was a teenager. He talks of it now as if it was another world. Not an obsession but borderline throughout those quiet, wet winters on the Mayo border.

He was good - twice an All-Ireland champion, junior and intermediate at light heavyweight. Nowadays, you can still see the boxer's pent-up frame on him, the alertness and light step. Maybe he could have made a career out of it but no regrets. He gave it the devotion but he was not a natural solipsist. He found himself leaning towards the craic that went with the Gaelic football life, the humour and warmth.

"Boxing - ah, it's a monastic way of life. When you'd win, you would never celebrate, you'd always be afraid of your weight or of being ready for the next fight. So the satisfaction was purely personal. And I suppose I got lazy, drawn to the football."

But the real stopping point came when his father, Bob Ford, died in 1981. Peter Ford's mother had passed away when he was young, so as a teenager boxing was one of the ways in which the father and son formed a strong bond.

"He had an interest, would have boxed a little in college himself. So when he died, I kind of lost the drive. Because I suppose for me, the kick I used get out of the boxing was ... for him. When you'd come home. Because you didn't share winning with anyone, it was up to Dublin, fight, get in the car afterwards and go home. So that's what motivated me - I'd come home and he would be there. So that took the edge out of it."

Football took up the slack. Ford's athleticism made him a natural. Boxing planed his physique and nature allowed him "to run forever". All-Ireland minor and under-21 medals followed and after graduating from UCG, Ford gravitated towards a teaching post in Summerhill College in Sligo. Now he works in Headford, training kids in his spare minutes. The gym rat in his soul, the boxer, slowly took his leave.

Certain elements remain. It gave him a residual discipline, structured a fairly happy-go-lucky personality.

"And it made tension easier. The tension in boxing is far more severe than in football. Because you are on your own, you are lonely, you might go out and get hammered. In football, winning or losing is the worst that can happen to you."

He enjoyed his football days wholeheartedly, even if the entire decade seemed to pass in a nanosecond. And inevitably he harbours the regrets of those who came within a whisker of an All-Ireland senior medal. They are hardly a rarity in Mayo.

"If I knew then what I know now, maybe I would have won it. But that is easy to say because when you don't actually achieve, human nature makes you believe that there was always something more you could have done or a better way to approach it. And then suddenly your career is over and you don't have a way to approach it. But at least I know all those things for now."

Now is Dublin, now is Croke Park. How tempting to see all of Peter Ford's previous days as a predestined ascension to this point in time. Sligo's Leader.

"We were lucky with the way this panned out," he smiles. "You know, the bit of romance - we were the whipping boys and suddenly we beat Kildare and Jesus, next thing we are coming up to Croke Park again. Everyone loved us last time and there'll be big interest again but because it is Dublin, there will be no great expectations."

Ford admits he would rather face any of the other provincial runners-up. Dublin, he says, looked resolute against Meath and were unlucky to lose. All he can do is prepare, like it's a brand-new adventure.

Last time around, he was fastidious. The trip to Croke Park, on the eve of the match, calmed his team and he was mischievously tickled by the fact that a couple of them had their cars rifled. Dublin. First time up since 1975 and you still get fleeced.

He spent all week in contact with John O'Mahony, an old friend and a veteran of Kildare matches. He arranged that if Galway won against Armagh, their lads would wait in the corridor as the Sligo players ran out. Just a salute.

"But it didn't work out because the Galway dressing-rooms were over the far side of the ground. Our match was delayed because the first game was also starting so we had about three minutes before going out. John was caught by the TV crowd but he must have had us in his head because he came straight into us. And it was just the gesture that was important, to show he was thinking about Sligo. And they had been in a tight scrap, Sligo must have been thousands of miles away in his mind. So it meant a lot, it was a Connacht thing."

He understands the local way. Talk moves mountains in the west. Ford is respected on the sideline but afterwards he is like one of his players.

"Honesty is a big thing with me," he says. "I want the players to feel they can speak their mind to me rationally. At Christmas, we all headed off to Letterkenny for a night out and it was great, everyone together, having fun for the whole evening. You need that and then you can be serious on the field."

The GAC issued instructions this week that Sligo should revert to their white strip. The county board had already ordered a new set of menacing black gear. So had half the county.

"We can't change it now," grins Ford.

He did go back to the boxing. Maybe nostalgia got him. It was near the peak of his football career. In 1989 and 1991 he lost All-Ireland senior boxing finals. He didn't have the boxing discipline, the lifestyle. "You don't win them like that."

How do you win them? Peter Ford is still discovering. He has done admirably well so far. Back in the city tomorrow. The shine in his eye is keen. Bell sounds, new round. Once a fighter ...