All-Ireland SFC Quarter-final/Laois v Mayo: Keith Duggan is impressed by the sense of purpose, unity and enjoyment Mayo's coaching team have brought to training

At precisely 6.30pm, just as promised, the navy blue, Northern-registered car pulls into McHale Park in Castlebar. The chariot of Mayo football dreams has sped through the football citadels of south Derry, touched upon the hinterland of Tyrone, motored on through the lush Fermanagh country of Kesh, Boa Island and Belleek, fled through Ballyshannon, up past Yeats's grave, through Sligo town and at Charlestown turned right for the home straight through Pee Flynn heartland as far as Castlebar.

It is, by any standards, a bitch of a journey, and no matter how Mickey Moran drives it the digital clock never fails to record 309 miles, marvellously illuminated when the Derry man reaches home again some time after 1am.

In the passenger seat sits John Morrison. The Moran/Morrison axis is one of the most respected coaching forces in contemporary Gaelic football, and after a fairly smooth inaugural year, their Mayo team is one of only six still left in the grand chase for the Sam Maguire.

They are very different men - Moran lean and polite and reserved, Morrison sallow and mischievous and good-humoured - but both are definitively products of Ulster, which is what made their appointment by the Mayo County Board so intriguing.

"I remember telling the interview panel to throw hard questions of it because we would do the same," says Moran as we sit on the stone bleachers overlooking the haunting vista of an empty McHale Park. "And that if all parties felt it wasn't working out at the end of the year, we would shake hands and walk away."

By most counties, an All-Ireland quarter-final appearance would be deemed a successful maiden season. But Mayo is a tough mistress to please. Because of that, Moran has kept his training sessions and overall profile as low-key as possible, not rejecting publicity outright but not courting it either. Open training sessions were ended, and on this night, the last of Mayo's sessions before tomorrow's intriguing clash with Laois, the big, open park feels lonely as Morrison lays out the equipment.

"Hate the trip, always did hate the road, but once you are here, you forget about it and enjoy it," he says, setting out speed ropes and heavy-contact sacks along the town goal. Players who have worked under Morrison still talk wistfully about how ingenious and enjoyable his sessions were. He has written logs of every single training session he ever took and his golden rule is to repeat nothing.

"We do not repeat drills," he shouts, as if it were a mantra. "The same thing bores the mind."

As selector Ciarán Gallagher, former Mayo minor and Sigerson-winning coach with Sligo IT, explains, though, the changes are subtle: "There is practically no standing around listening to instructions."

The players are familiar with the concept of the drills if not the purpose. Early on, they take turns bursting through the contact bags, shouldering into them with intent, a quick way to get the adrenaline flowing for what Morrison and Moran want to be a short, intense session. At the beginning of the year, the squad were taught how to hit the bags and deal with the impact while holding them, stepping down and into the oncoming shoulder so the body absorbs the hit easily and no one loses balance or risks injury.

Five Mayo players make the journey down from their workplace in Dublin for at least one training session a week. Because of injuries accrued in the Mayo club championship, Moran invited three members of the Mayo development squad to come in and help out for the centrepiece of this session, a full 15-on-15 match. After the tumult and magic of close championship victories, it is almost obligatory for captains or managers to dutifully remind the public that all 30 members of the panel contributed to the result. And it always sounds pat.

But when Morrison and Moran begin to put the Mayo team through a series of fast, sharp, ball-orientated games, the importance of the panel - the young fringe members or veterans no longer commanding a place or guys coming back from injury - is striking. The first 15 would be nothing if the players who know they almost certainly won't be playing in front of the madding crowd the following Sunday were unwilling to turn up week-in and week-out prepared to challenge and goad and push the household names into higher performances.

Getting a group of competitive and ambitious footballers - all of whom must, naturally enough, have an abundantly healthy self-belief - to buy into the idea of a greater glory must be the most difficult task for any management.

Not so long ago, the Mayo squad went to a specialist training camp in Portugal popular with Premiership teams and elite rugby clubs. They were on the field at 7.50am and trained for 90 minutes each morning and again in the afternoon.

"In between, we sat the players down in a chalet and we had one-on-one talks. And it was amazing what you heard," Moran says.

"And it wasn't a spying exercise; it was just to find out how players felt and to give them a chance to have their say. We had a night out on the Friday and the next day, most of them were in the gym or the pool or lifting weights. But I remember this Englishman, Kit, was there, actually holidaying with his wife and three wee youngsters. And he went out of his way to tell myself and John that they were just astounded at the courtesy and the way these boys conducted themselves all week. The manageress said the same. It was just a small thing but it spoke volumes."

John Morrison reckons they got about six weeks work covered in six days in Portugal.

The sessions are highly tuned at this point of the season, with minds sharpened by the enormity of a quarter-final. For five or 10 minutes before this session begins, the players appear from beneath the famous tunnel in McHale Park and begin kicking footballs at the posts. Given the strange assortment of gear, it is harder to immediately identify all the players but it is easy to spot the sinewy frame and locks of James Nallen, the busy blond wraith that is Conor Mortimer and the casually athletic Ronan McGarrity. Ciarán McDonald wears his socks precisely as he does on match day. The sight of McDonald kicking points is an aesthetic marvel and he floats a series of shots through the dead August air just for the pleasure of it and then sets about practising on the ground.

"Like nothing I have ever seen," says Moran, half to himself.

Before the start whistle, the mood is light and skittish, but once Morrison initiates the training, conversation ceases, replaced by the uneven sound of heavy breathing as they are put through a rapid series of stammer steps, sprints and toe-taps to get the heartbeat racing. After stretching, the players break into groups of seven (and a goalkeeper) and play a rapid-movement passing and scoring game called "stop the runner". It is played in a confined, 20x30 metre area, and with defenders swarming in the tight space, the idea is that a player knows where he is passing before he receives the ball and that one killer pass can open up territory for a team-mate to exploit.

The players work like demons, with Morrison demanding - "Stop Trevor Howley, stop Trevor Howley, he's walking through yez."

Small poles act as goals and scores are kept and, like schoolboys at 11-o'clock break, the best football men in Mayo shout the tally as if their lives depended upon it.

In the full-blown match, the heroism of the "hidden" half of the panel is again apparent. David Brady, on his way back from injury, is on the red team along with Austin O'Malley, the Louisburgh sharpshooter, and Pat Kelly, who started the 2004 All-Ireland final.

James Gill, the Westport man who was an automatic choice for many seasons, suffered a dip in form but came storming back only to suffer a hamstring injury, is training in isolation, stoically running half-sprints under the watchful eye of the team physiotherapist.

On the field, the team wearing the Mayo "red" jerseys start in demonic fashion against the "green" team, which will be announced on television later in the evening as the one chosen to face Laois. The first team weave together some magical passages of play but their opponents are stubborn and motivated and they are keeping the scores down. At one point, Kevin O'Neill, frustrated by the lack of ball coming his way, raises his hands to the skies and screams, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph."

Whether that constituted a prayer or not, things click shortly afterwards and the green team bang over a series of sweetly taken points.

A short break and they are straight into the second half. Everything is designed to mirror game situations and frequently teams are set up in the shape and pattern of opponents. Morrison times the short break and then they are straight into another confined, passing game, this one on a slightly wider surface. No player is allowed dally on the ball and the interplay is lightning fast.

It is impressive stuff to watch, a far cry from the days when a Mayo team was instructed to push a car around a park. Morrison and Moran probably wouldn't blink at the eccentricity of that idea. But they would point out that you are unlikely to be marking a four-wheel drive in Croke Park.

"Coaching and training a team is about feel," says Moran. "You see how things go and adapt. There are times when we would scrap something straight away. You do work game plans tailored to the opposition but you wouldn't get carried away. One year with Derry, we went too far in trying to focus on stopping Tyrone and it became a fixation, it wasn't right. So we work on the principles of playing that we have."

After nine o'clock, the players play the last half of the speed-passing game, which lasts just four minutes. The impressive thing is that they wring every last second out of it, moving, hustling, enjoying the game, contesting each score.

"No way, Tricky," yells John Clarke when Conor Mortimer's shots flies by him and the makeshift post.

"I'm takin' that one, Clarkey," insists the forward.

At that minute, with 30 football players gathered in the heart of Mayo and lost in the inconsequential enjoyment of a training drill, the pressure and ceremony and loudness of Croke Park seem a distant thought. For Mayo, all visits to the high cathedral of Gaelic games are of utmost importance but when the squad gather together at the centre of the field for a brief talk, there is no evidence of a team under pressure.

"I was never as relaxed as I was on the line in the Connacht final," says Moran. "And I can get uptight but I hadn't a nerve. Because we knew the work was done and there was nothing more we could do other than tweak things on the line.

"And even when we went four points down, John and I said to each other we could still win it.

"And the boys just worked their way back into it. As far as the expectation goes, we are lucky, we get in the car after training and go. We don't see the newspapers or listen to the radio shows.

"No, that's not true. We did tune in one night and this lady was saying that John Maughan used to be criticised for being open and now we are being criticised for doing it our way and to give it a chance and see what happens."

That is all any of them can do. There are no guarantees. Moran and Morrison have trained teams long enough to know that. This is the business end of the championship. Over in Laois this week, they were training under the fervent eye of Mick O'Dwyer.

You can only do your best and guess at the opposition's best. Maybe Mayo will be back in McHale Park next Tuesday evening, maybe not.

After training, they sat down to eat a meal together, the town quiet and not a sinner around McHale Park. Sunday beckons and they have hope in their hearts. The headlights are beaming when Moran and Morrison, the last Ulstermen in the championship, edge out of the old ground. They have plenty to talk about on the long drive North.