Galway v Sligo: Keith Duggantalks to Sligo midfielder Kieran Quinn ahead of tomorrow's Connacht final against Galway.

In Strandhill, the surf kids look bored as they hang around the small arcade forlornly listening to the chirpy tunes of the pinball games. Down at the seafront, tourists walk in rain-gear trying their best to appreciate the Sligo peninsula through the heavy squall. June was a washout and July shows no signs of summer.

In the comfort of a nearby restaurant, Kieran Quinn sits at the bar counter saying hello to staff and customers. Those who follow Gaelic football know the midfielder from his exploits in the black and white county jersey but probably as many know him from playing piano there during weekend nights when the place is jammed. He takes it in his stride either way. There is more to life than Gaelic games in Strandhill and that is a good thing as far as he is concerned.

The community - his home place is Ransboro on the other side of the hill - is steeped in GAA but Strandhill has never been explicitly about GAA. Even on a Connacht final week involving Sligo, the seaside village is not exactly decorated in flags and banners. It is laid-back and easy in itself, and in that sense Quinn is imbued with his locality.

"I know I was lucky," he smiles. "I remember the first year I played under Peter Ford, I would room with Paul Durcan when we went to away games. And it became this fantastically exciting summer, with Sligo getting up to Croke Park for the first time since 1975. Paul would just look at me sometimes and he'd say, 'Ya f**ker ya. I've been here for 10 years at this craic and you just walk in and next thing you're playing in Croke Park.' It made me laugh. But I knew what he meant."

Even knowledgeable Sligo football people were taken aback at the sudden appearance of Quinn on the intercounty team. He was 6ft 4ins and full of pace and energy. It was as though he were a creation of Mickey Moran's, willed into being by the Derryman's sincerity and faith in Sligo. The truth was he did kind of spring from nowhere. He had kicked a little bit of football as a teenager but more or less forgot about the sport when he went to boarding school at Clongowes College.

He was a beanpole country boy in Gordon D'Arcy's year, and though he never had the strength to quite make the first-team grade, he enjoyed rugby and went along good-humouredly with the pomp and ceremony of the Leinster Schools' Cup. After his Leaving Certificate, he spent a year in Sydney, where Clongowes has a sister school, St Ignatius in Riverview.

When he came home, he began turning out for Strandhill. But Sligo is a small county. He was soon called along for under-21 trials and had made the senior panel within six months.

Before he knew it, he was a Sligo footballer. His debut gave him an inkling of the kind of purgatory that could involve. In 2000, Sligo had beaten Mayo in the first round of the championship and hosted Galway in optimistic mood.

But it wasn't even a match: Galway were 1-15 to 0-0 ahead at half-time. It was just as well they taught them about perseverance and fortitude in James Joyce's alma mater.

Peter Ford saw something in them, though. At the first team meeting, he stood there and told them they would win a Connacht championship. He spoke in short, sharp sentences and was very direct. He was confident and inscrutable. Ford moved Quinn from midfield to wing forward and along with Dara McGarty, he provided Sligo with a memorably huge three-quarters line, two athletic auxiliary midfielders charging forward at every opportunity, looking particularly mean after Ford requested an all-black strip for his team.

"Peter had this presence. He was used to winning. At training, he usually got someone else to take us and he would stand there watching. We never knew what he was thinking, really. He could join in the fun as well but his attitude was that he expected us to be winning. And it was the right way to be. But it was hard for us to downplay games where we were heading up to Croke Park because it was the most exciting thing that had happened Sligo football in years."

Sligo were one of the great stories back in the years when the qualifiers were genuine magical mystery tours. It was good fortune that they drew Kildare and the game was fixed as a double header in Croke Park. They got to train in headquarters on the Friday evening. It was Sligo's first time in Croke Park since the 1975 All-Ireland final, and while they marvelled at the stadium, a few of them had cars broken into.

It seemed a blackly comic reflection of the kind of luck that had dogged the county football team down the years. There was nothing to do but laugh it off. By Sunday afternoon, it had been transformed into a good-luck charm.

"I suppose that Kildare game was the most exciting day because it was the first big success. I got to understand what it was about then, meeting lads from the club afterwards and having strangers come up. All the clichés came true - there were old men with tears in their eyes."

That evening, they were drawn against Dublin in the next round and Sligo supporters headed home on the train daring to boast of further through-the-looking glass adventures.

The championship finished with their next visit. Sligo held Dublin in a tight first half that ended 0-8 to 0-7, but the Metropolitans gave the impression they owned the joint: not exactly cocky, but they expected.

Two early goals sent Dublin on their way. Quinn can still see Wayne McCarthy retrieving a ball from near the sideline by bouncing it behind his back and then nonchalantly firing it over the bar.

Sligo went down by 15 points. But the following year, Eamonn O'Hara gave one of the great virtuoso performances as Tyrone were slain and Sligo came terribly close to beating Armagh, the eventual All-Ireland champions of that year. That was the high point.

In 2003, Sligo were flat and Ford quit after a tame qualifying defeat in Donegal. Sligo looked convincing in the league the following season and lost out on a semi-final place on goal difference but Roscommon edged them out in the first round of the championship, and a week later Clare put them out of the championship.

"We were gone by mid-June," Quinn says. "It was a bad feeling. And I wasn't happy with the way I was playing. I needed to get out."

Quinn might have been one of those players who drift in and out of the championship jungle. His everyday life naturally pulled him away from Gaelic football. He headed to Trinity to study among people with absolutely no knowledge of the All-Ireland championship. And he became increasingly interested in music. He had played piano all through Clongowes, and in college he began to think about making a living through it. After quitting the Sligo panel, he enrolled in the New Park School of Music to study jazz piano.

Even when he was flogging his heart out for Sligo, his heroes had always been musicians. Ray Charles, Dr John, Oscar Peterson: these were the men who captured his imagination. After all, he had no strong references when it came to Sligo football. He was too young to remember 1975. And he was a self-confessed sunshine supporter.

His lone vivid memory of Sligo football was of a remarkable point Paul Taylor kicked against Mayo in the 1997 championship. Mayo won.

After he began playing with the county, he met Barnes Murphy and Mickey Kearins and his appreciation of the lore deepened. In 2005, he helped Strandhill win a county title for the first time in 98 years.

All of that mattered. But music was an escape. In Clongowes, he had resisted the repetition and restriction of the classical pieces. A teacher there, Liz Keighrey, helped him fight his corner, and at the school concert he got permission to play Bohemian Rhapsody and set some U2 stuff to a choir. In Dublin, he began playing in bands and he moved back to Strandhill a few months ago to play music with a jazz trio and with a rock band in the evenings. He had also started training with Sligo again.

"The funny thing was that when I left Clongowes, football and music were not important to me. And now they are probably the biggest things in my life."

Sligo has a strong music scene and many of those Quinn plays music with or for wouldn't have the foggiest notion of tomorrow's Connacht final but for the fact their piano man is playing midfield. His hands are his livelihood and he laughs at the notion a busted finger could lead to a lot of cancellations in what is the busy season for musicians.

"I probably should be worried. But I don't think about it. You get the odd knock but nothing serious has happened yet. It probably will do some day. And I should look into having them insured but I have never done it. You just tell yourself, ah, it won't happen to me."

So this is his seventh season and, again, his timing has been good. Big Paul Durcan has left the team now but must be shaking his head. Quinn comes back and Sligo make it to a Connacht final. Five years have passed since they almost beat Armagh. That was an All-Ireland quarter-final replay, an extra-time match in Navan and a one-point loss. Sligo even had a penalty denied at the end. It was one of those moral victories, and since then there has been precious little to shout about. But Sligo have earned the right to play in this year's Connacht showpiece despite desperate predictions.

Galway will start as the heaviest of favourites but, above all people, Ford will know there are plenty of Sligomen with the belly for upsetting the odds. Quinn accepts nobody outside the county is expecting anything other than the usual result.

On the radio the other evening, the Galway legend Pat Donnellan said if Sligo won, Galway people would be the first to congratulate them. That is probably true but it won't make the maroon team in any way charitable.

It would be a fantastic surprise in Sligo if they won - 1975 is a long time ago and it seems safe to say the county will celebrate. It could be a good week for footballers and musicians. They might get the big number eight to play a tune. Maybe the old Dr John classic I Walk On Gilded Splinters.

Mickey Kearins and other Sligo football men of the last 30 years may not know the notes but, damn it, they have lived the tune.