Connacht Football Championship Interview: At 32, his career could be winding down, but Shane Curran remains with the Roscommon set-up because he believes they can win an All-Ireland, writes Keith Duggan

It is all Pat Jennings' fault. The allure of Arsenal made it as far as Tommy Curran's house in Castlerea and in the 1977 season, his son Shane decided it would be good to follow in the northern giant's footsteps and wear the number one.

"He was the figurehead in the sky," laughs the Roscommon captain now as he faces his 11th championship season.

Shane Curran is the dual player people rarely talk about. A cult hero with Athlone Town soccer club, he has served Roscommon as a goalkeeper and a forward over the years. These days he is back between the sticks because his back became problematic and at present, he is holding Derek Thompson - his friend and a goalkeeper he considers his equal - to the substitutes' bench.

"We just train as goalkeepers, working together on a specialised regime. I think we help each other, complement each other and between us have as good to offer as anything else in the country. At the moment, I'm starting but sure that's just the lie of the land. My doctor tells me I am mad to still be at it anyhow."

But isn't the theory that all goalkeepers are perfectly crazy? Curran, engaging and droll, has his idiosyncrasies and slightly off-kilter way of seeing things that make him a perfect example. "Clane mad" is a colloquialism that has been attributed to him once or twice. In the last minute of the league game against Dublin this year, Ros needed a goal to salvage a result from an entertaining, summery game. Not even pausing to don a cape, Curran left his front door wide open and dashed downfield to hover in the square of his opposite number. He could not have caused a greater commotion had he cycled downfield.

"Ah, look, it was a no-win situation. We needed a score, I decided to do it. If you have to travel 50 yards to help out, you do it. It would be the same in an All-Ireland final." Curran actually fielded a ball sent in from a free but the perfect ending was spoiled by Dublin's swarming defence. Dispossessed, the keeper made a long, worried sprint back to his house. "I have only just recovered from it."

But don't think Shane Curran isn't serious. At 32, he is relatively young in life but in terms of sports, he is on the last few grains of sand. The reason he is hanging around is to win an All-Ireland. He fires the quoted odds at you, 33 to 1, and allows that the people who make such figures believe themselves to be fair and right. He doesn't care. The rest of Ireland can think what they like about Ros. He believes.

After last year, it might have been easier to slip out the dressing-room door and never come back. Undistinguished, at best, in the championship, Roscommon were damn near a laughing stock after being literally exposed in a tabloid scoop for high jinks in a hotel during a training weekend. It was an embarrassment and a bad way for John Tobin, their highly regarded manager, to be let down. Curran does not blink when he talks about it.

"Firstly, there were rumours emanating from Roscommon about that which were ill-truths. Just lies and rumour-mongering that hurt the players and was disrespectful to them. That has been put in the hip pocket. It was a typically Irish solution to an Irish problem, to hit someone when they were down. We have turned that into a motivating factor.

"As to whether we let John Tobin down - well, we let ourselves down. I know for a fact that John holds nothing against the Ros players for the way things ended. We didn't exactly do ourselves proud and we realised that we are far from blameless."

But Curran reckons the fallout far exceeded the original crime. Being plastered all over the front of an English tabloid that at best paid lip service to Gaelic games was a culture shock to a modest team to whom back page headlines were a novel enough experience. The story carried close-circuit footage stills to substantiate its claims of foolish behaviour.

"What that did was take Gaelic football players into a new sphere," he argues. "It was shocking. Because aside from the lads involved - good friends of mine - it was very hard on their families. And afterwards a lot of people both inside and outside Roscommon took a high moral tone and really, they should have known better. What went on was foolish but it was innocent enough fun taken out of context. I have been on soccer weekends and sports weekends where a lot worse went on. I think if most players - and fans -looked at themselves, they would say the same."

With that hanging over them, it was not difficult to understand Roscommon's - then the Connacht champions - dismal defence of their title.

"Well, that would be easy, to say that it was a distraction. I think it is true that even professional sportsmen find it hard to operate under those conditions of innuendo and rumour, let alone for amateurs. But maybe it is too easy for us to blame it on that."

In any event, it left a sour taste. So when Tom Carr agreed to take up Roscommon, Curran was determined that he would want nothing from the squad. He was pleased and half surprised that a man used to the hot seat of the city game would consider a relatively unfashionable county.

"I just thought, Jesus, he is going from the frying pan to the fire. I think it says a lot about him that he took us on at the time he did. That took a lot of balls on his part and he has instilled us with the belief that he has in the game. Like, whatever Ros has is owed in no small measure to John Tobin. Now Tom has come in and he really lives it with us. I'd say he is a true Roscommon man by now in that he cares so much."

A poignant aspect to the contemporary Roscommon story was the tragic death of Gerard Michael Grogan. His presence is still felt and missed in the dressing room, reckons Curran, and even now he finds it hard enough to talk about the young player.

"He was a really good prospect but more than that, he was a really nice young lad. We were all fond of him. We didn't do his memory or ourselves any justice last year. And it would be just nice to maybe do that this time around."

So tomorrow, Shane Curran will stand between Galway's shimmering forward line and his goal. Already, he is a rarity in modern football in that he has a young family to think about. He is in the minority also in that he is expressive and natural in talking about why it is he loves Gaelic games so. In 1991, in a fit of pique, he walked out on the Ros panel, tendering his resignation as a protest over playing time. Aghast, he received a message to the affect that Master Curran's departure has regretfully been accepted. He followed the county all the way to an All-Ireland semi-final, bit the bullet and came back the following winter. Now, the seasons are finite and already, Curran is planning the day when he can give something back to the game. But he cherishes these magnificent hours. The nervous energy they bring, the excitement that rings through the county.

In Pearse Stadium, he will put on his right boot first, his right glove first. A small bottle of holy water will come with him onto the field. With Galway's forwards, he sometimes reckons he may as well go the whole hog and bring the stakes and garlic as well. He is where he wants to be, standing on Roscommon's last line.

Shane Curran is a goalkeeper and Pat Jennings still has no idea he is to blame.