He'd sat up all night tending to a sick relative and was fighting off the tail end of the flu. He had a 100 places to go, even more things to do and by the time he arrived for our chat he could only slump, exhausted, in his chair.

But it was easy to bring Fr Joe Young back to life again. All you had to do was mention kids and sport, Limerick FC, boxing, George Foreman and the sparkle was back in his eyes. Bolt upright in his chair, he warmed to the subjects dear to his heart. Two hours later he bade farewell, skipping out the door with renewed vigour, having reminded himself of all the things that keep him from despair. Behind him he left an audience firmly convinced they could swim across the Atlantic Ocean . . . if they really wanted it bad enough. But that's the power of Fr Joe. Ask the people of Southill, Limerick.

Twenty one years ago the then newly ordained priest made the Limerick city suburb his home, only half a mile from where he grew up. "The very parish I'm now ministering is built on the fields where I played football as a kid," he says. And for most of those 21 years Fr Joe and his parishioners have grown accustomed to Southill rarely being mentioned in the media without reference to drugs, crime and unemployment. It saddens him, but he loves the place to its core, its people even more. "The Bishop keeps saying `hey, it's time you moved on', but I don't know any other way of life. Southill is my home, always will be. "Ninety-nine per cent of the people in my community are nothing less than heroes because they have survived against all the odds. They built Southill in 1969 with the emphasis on housing people and nothing else. The only facility they built was the road in and out of the place. Is it any wonder we have problems?

"But one of the things we were taught in my family growing up, something that still sticks with me, is that you have to go out and create your own luck, nothing comes easy and I think that formed my philosophy in life, that you have to be the architect of your own future."

And it's that conviction that's driven him since he first became a curate at the Holy Family Church. The sight of "hundreds of children" kicking their heels around the sprawling estates of Southill, with nothing to do and nowhere to go broke his heart, but instead of despairing he resolved to do something about it.

He spends much of his time dealing with the casualties of life in his community through his work with victims of drug and alcohol abuse. Sport, he felt, could help at least some of these children break out of that crippling cycle of misery.

"Sport was my magic as a kid and I knew, given half the chance, it could be theirs too. The very least they're entitled to is to have fond memories of their teenage life, that's not asking too much. And sport can leave you with the fondest memories of all."

So, in 1984, he helped set up Southill Boxing Club with Tony de Loughrey, the former Irish middleweight and heavyweight champion, a man Fr Joe describes as "one of the finest sportsmen you'd ever meet." And then there was the athletics club and the trips to America where the Southill kids ran marathons. And then there was Limerick Football Club, "the most difficult project I've been involved in in my life, but the most worthwhile. "One winter's night, eight years ago, there was a knock on my door. The club was in total turmoil at that stage and these people were asking for my help. I didn't think twice about it because I knew how important it was to this city that the club survived."

Survived they did, with the help of Fr Joe's American-based friend Peter Hogan, who bought the land at Rathbane for £37,000 from the Bank of Ireland, which owned it after the financial collapse of the previous owner Pat Grace.

But if the new chairman of the club, one Fr Joe Young, was going to have his way a youth policy would be central to Limerick FC's future. Enter the Academy. Its mission? "To provide young people from underprivileged communities with an opportunity to pursue gainful employment in sports and leisure industries. It is a further goal to provide these young people with a `centre of excellence' environment, where they will also be provided with the opportunity to further their academic, business and personal development skills."

The FAS-backed Academy now has 40 young players on its books, about 70 per cent from Southill. But, says Fr Joe, "with the resources and the goodwill you could treble that number overnight. "I call it the `cap and gown' for the other half - I know only 0.5 per cent of the players will make it but there'll be job opportunities for them in the leisure industry and other areas.

"Above all, though, there's the whole question of self-esteem. It's about dignity, it's about giving them a chance, making them feel important."

The Academy is his pride and joy but it's been far from plain sailing. It's been a frustrating season for the club, who are 10 points off the pace in the First Division and a 3-0 home defeat by Drogheda United last weekend led to the departure of manager Dave Connell from the club. On top of that they are in desperate need of funds and improved facilities. "We have no gymnasium and we've been running that Academy on a field where it's been raining since May. There are times when the ball goes over the wall and that's the end of the game. We run this Academy in the most primitive of conditions - you wouldn't see it anywhere."

Much of the financial support Fr Joe has received for the Academy and his other projects has come from America, where his long-time friend George Kimball, the sports writer and columnist with this paper, has introduced him to many benefactors, including some of the boxing greats. "George introduced me to Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvellous Marvin Hagler, Gerry Cooney and George Foreman, amongst others, and he'd say to them `look, he's trying to do something for kids, what can you do for him' and next thing they'd be signing a cheque. Or, with Cooney and Sugar Ray Leonard, they turned up in Southill to meet the kids for themselves. I call George (Kimball) one of the great anonymous Christians because he has a way of doing God's work without ever mentioning God."

The friendship extends back to the early 1980s when Kimball interviewed Fr Joe for The Boston Tribune, where the story carried the headline `The Hoodlum Priest.'

In 1990 Cooney brought Fr Joe over to Atlantic City to see his fight against Foreman. He met Kimball who had just got bad news about his wife's health. "We were sitting in the bar in Caesar's Palace, Fr Joe watching me drowning my sorrows," said Kimball. "Next thing George Foreman walks in and he knew something was wrong so he asked me what it was. I told him and George says `we have to pray', so the three of us joined hands, George leaned back, tilting his head up in the sky, screaming `Ooooooooh Jeeeeesus' - I was sitting there thinking some day I might find this funny, but not just now. But I guess it worked because my wife is fine - anyway, that's how Fr Joe and George Foreman met up and became good friends.

"He's been planning on visiting Southill for some time now. A while back I gave him a copy of Angela's Ashes and he loved it, even bought a tape of it to listen to in his car. He said `Maaan, is it still like that now' and I said `well, why don't you visit Southill and find out'. If everything works out George Foreman will be in Southill at Easter."

Fr Joe expands on this point: "Can you imagine what that would mean to the kids around here. George Foreman in Southill. I tell you, I'm looking forward to him preaching here. If there's one thing I can be absolutely assured of is it'll be a packed house, I don't think I'll ever have seen so many in the church.

"And when Foreman comes here I can assure you it's not to play golf at Dromolin Castle, he's coming here so he can develop a love affair with what I'm doing with the kids. It's things like that that keep you going because it's so easy to despair. But we've all gone the distance in Southill, now we want to tell George Foreman our story."