Place of most potential has no past

Tom Humphries talks to Dublin's Jason Sherlock, a player irrevocably shaped by his past but one who has no desire to revisit it again

Jason Sherlock thinks too much and Jason Sherlock thinks too carefully. He makes Hamlet look reckless. He thinks for two days before he decides if he'll do his first media interview in a few years. He thinks too carefully to say that, of course. First media interview in a few years. He's not JD Salinger. He ain't Garbo. He doesn't want to make out the paparazzi have been door-stepping him remorselessly. Nobody has been asking and that's fine with him.

He thinks about what might be accomplished if he did the interview, what he might say. He thinks about what it might contribute, about what you might want to know. He thinks about the things he won't be saying to you about those things you might want to know. He thinks back to a team meeting earlier this year when he told the room he didn't think there was anything to be accomplished by fellas talking to the media. He thinks now maybe he's being hypocritical.

He thinks he'll talk, though. He thinks there's things he could get out of his system. He things there are things to affirm. He thinks about the venue for the interview. He thinks about the time. He sits down. He thinks he'll have a vegetable smoothie.

He makes conversation on a restricted visa. He says with a smile, again and again, "I'm not even going to go there." So if your specialist subject is Ancient Dub Civilisation circa 1995, well, you'll be disappointed. If your interest is the lost Empire of Tommy Lyons, well that's a region which remains largely unexplored.

Jason Sherlock wants to talk about a few hours which will unfold in Croke Park this afternoon. He wants to talk about today. And maybe, if he forgets his innate caution, he'll talk about tomorrow. But yesterday is a Beatles song. And yesteryear won't need dusting down till the grandchildren ask about it. Listen, though. Don't get up and leave because the main feature has a narrow focus. Narrow focus is what he is.

He says to you when he was young he had dreams about everything. Now he has just one dream. A blue September. And anyway, what Jason Sherlock is is still what he always was - one of the most interesting sports people of his generation. He was the first of everything. There is no need now to dwell upon the various manifestations of the Jayomania which gripped the capital a decade ago. Or to look through the backlash to that fabled season, a jag in fortunes which saw Sherlock being studiously ignored by his fellow players for an All Star and eventually being spat at by a county board official at an under-21 game.

No need because as he says himself, it all went into what he is today. He has jettisoned what he was, or more precisely what we made him into, and put all his memories to bed. That he should leave behind everything that went with the boom-boom-boom era is hardly surprising when you know him a little. The fuss was seductive for a teenager but he was sensitive enough to realise quickly it highlighted differences. He'd always wanted the opposite from team sport, he'd always looked to erase difference.

"Part of my make-up because of the way I looked when I was younger was always trying to be accepted. I always went into teams to be accepted. So it was easy to leave 1995 behind. That team broke up. I would hate to think I ever dwelt on it. There's friendships but for me being accepted as part of the new team was the challenge. I'd been doing that all my life."

This year he says is the first he has felt comfortable in team meetings even talking about 1995. He knows the guys around him, his friends and colleagues, will have their own successes to talk about.

"I don't feel they're nudging each other saying, 'listen to your man, Jaysus'. Paul Clarke being around makes it a little different too. Clarkey brings things up. It might be just a funny thing or something we did wrong or right. But it could be something about any year but I've always felt sensitive about mentioning 1995."

Some day he'll explore it all, but for now it's just another country. Life is about Saturday afternoon. Dublin and Tyrone. You can't help crooking a finger and tempting him towards places he doesn't want to go. To understand a man who goes from media saturation to being a columnist and a TV presenter to virtual blackout you have to understand that need for acceptance.

In the post-arseboxing, pure paranoid segment of the Tommy Lyons administration one of the supreme ironies was the whispers from those around the panel that the reason for Sherlock's unaccountable absences from first-team selections were that he wasn't trusted as regards the media. Too friendly. The accusation must have hurt deeply but Sherlock was mute. He'd learned a long time ago to turn a deaf ear to us chattering jackdaws in the pressbox. "I don't begrudge anyone talking to media," he says. "But I can see the side of how it can hinder performance."

Has media been a hindrance to you in the past? "No, but I think it's been a hindrance to other people in the past." With regard to you? "Yes. With regard to how I was seen."

"It's fair to say that the last manager thought you were too close to some people in the media." Smile. First restricted travel warning. "I'm not going there," he laughs. "I don't want this to be about the past. There's nothing to be gained."

He pauses. The Past. He has seen words straying from their context, words splurged carelessly, words twisted till they became something else, words used by other teams against the very mouths they'd issued from.

Leave it be.

"There's nothing to be gained. Not for me. This year we have 36 guys who are all accepted for what they do. I want to be part of that. I don't want guys thinking he thinks he's this and that. Which I have no doubt has happened in the past. I'm very conscious I don't want to be the guy causing any negativity in terms of the panel."

THE SUBJECT closes, another one opens. He was Gaelic football's first NBA devotee, the kid who once met Magic Johnson. For a while, of course, Magic Johnson was the hoopster who once met Jason Sherlock but all has changed. Don't go there! His friend Kieran McGeeney stole Michael Jordan from him. Back in the unmentionable summer of 1995 Sherlock arrived late to a Dublin training session because he couldn't drag himself away from the cinema where he was watching Hoop Dreams.

He loved the Boston Celtics back then but revered Jordan as the supreme inspiration. He had a highlights video which he often watched the night before matches. He lent it to McGeeney over a year ago. After the Leinster final, McGeeney texted his congratulations on a job well done. Jason texted back not to mind, where was the video? He laughs. He loves McGeeney, finds him as inspiring in his way as Jordan.

Anyway he's not wanting for inspiration. Mossy Quinn got himself a Jordan DVD recently and Jason swooped for a lend. He enjoys that still. Casting about for other sports, looking for examples of excellence, grit and endurance. He takes little pieces all the time. Jordan's 63-point game against the Boston Celtics in the old Boston Garden still gets him out of his chair but he is nourished, too, by Jordan's observation that in a career which culminated with a championship-winning shot in the last second of his final game, he lost over 300 games, missed over 9,000 shots, was given the ball 26 times for the last-second shot and missed each time. It all goes into the bank.

The Dubs took a look at Michael Johnston's career earlier this season. The point to be extracted was that from being an average college runner to being an Olympic champion all Johnston's work and effort was bent towards improving by 1.5 seconds.

Sherlock liked that, too. To master the game is to be the god of small things. Other figures manifest themselves like benign, helpful spirits. He took the week before the Leinster final off and went, as is his habit, with Louise and the kids down to Wexford. He likes to get down there every weekend during a championship summer. Certain things draw him. The sea. The pitch at Shelmaliers. Liam Griffin

"I've been in touch with Liam a lot over the last couple of years. I met him on Monday. It's nice to chat to him about football. He sees things that other people mightn't see. There's stuff there that I have done on the pitch I've felt I have been right and he'd have noticed. He'd have watched, for instance, when I came on against Wexford and the game against Laois. He has this thing, 'feedback is the breakfast of champions', he says. He sees things in games and he gives me feedback."

And with Sherlock that's the main difference you notice between now and 1995. He has company. He has touchstones. Ten years ago he was just standing alone in a madding crowd. The Dubs have changed, too. Every administration subsequent to Pat O'Neill's has had a different character and perspective on Sherlock. He emphasises he isn't being interviewed with a view to saying 'yis were all wrong, look at me, I'm still here", but his endurance and his abiding passion must surprise those who have always damned him with faint cynicism.

And he is enjoying the time of Paul "Pillar" Caffrey. Pillar brought as many scars into the Dublin job as the team already had. He'd been there on the bad days and Sherlock has been impressed with the manager's courage when it comes to examining things under a bright light. "He'll look at where we went wrong. He'll scratch those wounds that we all have."

Pillar came with scars and one item of baggage. He'd been a lieutenant in the shadow of Tommy Lyons. "I knew Pillar at Na Fianna," says Sherlock, "and knew how good he was. Under Tommy, I suppose his role was different. I can't judge what his role was or how Tommy judged his role, all I can say is Pillar as manager has the great strength that he can accept other people having an important role . . . if that means Ski Wade talking to a back or Kieran Duff talking to a forward, well Pillar is happy with that. The mechanics work well. That's his way.

"We've only gotten as far as we have two times in the last five years. We got to the quarter-final in 2001 and 2002. Pillar would be the first to say that. The day of getting out the parade for Pillar isn't here yet. We still have a long way to go. Pillar would be the first to point that out. The Leinster final wasn't the high point for us. The high point hasn't happened yet."

Caffrey started his tenure with a meeting one Friday night last winter in DCU. As it happened, it was the night of the All Star awards for which Sherlock happened to be nominated. There was no conflict in Sherlock's head about where to be. "I was never going to get an All Star and even if I was it was all about being there in DCU, looking forward. The All Stars were about last year. The meeting was about this year."

He'd seen meetings like this before. Practically any manager can do the first-night gig pretty well. What impressed Sherlock though was the people Pillar Caffrey was willing and able to bring into the room with him. Clarke. Brian Talty. Wade. Duff. It was the end to paranoia.

"There was a period, I suppose, when the management was having to show the players that it was different, Pillar would have no problem saying that. There was so much baggage from the previous years, we had to trust Pillar again. We had to feel that yes, the way he is doing it is the right way. To be fair that came very quickly. "

The difference is evident everywhere. They socialise as a panel. They went to Andrews Lane together to see A Little Bit of Blue. On the days after big matches they get together as a group rather than going their separate ways. "You have your Armaghs and Kerrys, etc," says Sherlock, "but we're the Dubs. We're unique in what we do. Part of our make-up is having the crack and the banter. The bond and the unity comes through. We're the Dubs."

AND THE conversation comes full circle. The Dubs. Tyrone. If you want to talk about where the Dubs are at now, it involves Tyrone, who coincidentally were there at the beginning - the All Ireland final 10 years ago. For any serious county, time begins the day after the last All-Ireland win.

Sherlock marked Chris Lawn in 1995. From the game he remembers Peter Canavan's omniscience and as he does so he makes a little note to himself. Why be worried about Stephen O'Neill? Canavan scored 11 points in 1995 and the Dubs beat Tyrone. He remembers the respect he had for Tyrone, how they handled themselves.

"After 1995 every time we were beaten in the championship, there was a part of me that wanted Tyrone to win an All-Ireland. It was like I'd bonded with Chris Lawn that day."

When Tyrone won their All-Ireland in 2003 they played Dublin in the league first match out. Lawn wasn't playing but Sherlock remembers telling his marker, he thinks it was Ryan McMenamin, to be sure but to tell Lawn he said hello and that he was pleased for him. "But when they won the All-Ireland, for me the slate was clean."

He can hardly enumerate the ways the game has moved on since 1995. You ask him if he still regrets not becoming a full-time athlete and he answers sharply he is a full-time athlete. Diet. Lifestyle. Training. It's a different world to 1995 when Dublin played at the same level for four seasons and seemed to finally win an All-Ireland by getting through a season without a crucial mistake. Everything has got to be perfect on the ascent. "It's different now. Tyrone are our litmus test now . . . we're going into a game looking forward to the test."

And Sherlock has changed, too. Not merely in the thankful embrace of a lower profile but in his game. He knows, for instance, he wasn't the most natural kicker in 1995 but he's been working on it for a long time. Indeed as far back as the championship in 2000, his kicking of points had become a feature of his play. He has gotten stronger and knows he will get better in that department. All those little things which make 1.5 seconds' difference over a career, he's obsessed with putting them all together. The Dubs have changed and he has changed and the game has changed but some things are eternal.

Last weekend he was down on the pitch in Shelmaliers. He likes to go out on his own and kick 50, 60, 70 balls over the bar. Afterwards he'll jump in the car, hit the beach and leap into the cold arms of the Irish Sea. And last Monday in Wexford the sun was hot enough to set the heather blazing. He kicked ball after ball. He thought of his own childhood summers spent in Ballyhea in north Cork. "I was on my own in the middle of a pitch in the middle of nowhere, trying to visualise where I would be five days' later, trying to close my eyes and feel the crowd and the pressure, trying to visualise doing the exact same thing in Croke Park or the place of most potential we've been calling it this year."

It struck him he's all his life been dreaming the same thing. "It's been such a part of my life. That's what made me competitive as a kid. Seeing that and wanting to be accepted for doing that, having that hunger to do things and be a part of something. I went to all the Dubs matches. Sitting in the old Hogan Stand right at the front, I loved those, the two benches over the stone wall. I can still see Ray Hazley in 1983 going down the wing and crossing that ball to Barney Rock in the last minute. That was always the ultimate. It still is. There's something beautiful about it. I feel very proud to be still here, still playing. It's a privilege and an honour. We respect what we do. It's special and it should be special."

Today is written for him, apart from 70 minutes mid-afternoon. He'll get up. Have breakfast. Potter about. Head back to bed for a little energy gathering sleep. Then Louise and Caoimhe will drive himself, Senan Connell and Alan Brogan to Parnell Park. Brogie's mother always gives them a little bit of wisdom. And away they go.

Hitting Croke Park grass is still an electric thrill. He'll look for Louise and Caoimhe and his best friend, Gareth, in the stands. He loves it. Having begun intercounty life as the finishing touch to a matured team the pleasure of the past few years has been growing with a learning team. For various reasons which he doesn't want to get into, he was dropped this year for the Wexford match. It hit him hard.

"It's done and dusted the Wexford thing but coming out as a sub it was hard to feel a part of it. I saw something John Allen said a little while ago about the strong personalities in the Cork team making the tone for the team. I suppose I like to think I am in that bunch by now. Against Wexford that was the real disappointment. Wondering if maybe I'm just tagging along. I'd hoped by now I was part of bringing this along somewhere not just coming along for the ride."

But listen, he says, that's yesterday. He doesn't want to finish on yesterday. He wants to talk about the one dream. The house of most potential. His comrades in arms. The possibility of an All-Ireland series that could culminate with Tyrone, Armagh and then Kerry. The trifecta. Nirvana.

"It's about looking to the peak, looking up and taking the step," he says. "We all have our stories but we don't look back. There's Tyrone in Croke Park. We think there's Kerry or somebody in an All Ireland final. Kerry is the dream. We don't care where we've been. It's where we want to go."

You can tell he's thought about that. All his life he's thought about that little bit of blue heaven.