What goes around comes around. It is 1994, a balmy mid-July Sunday. In Pasadena, Brazil and Italy are sending the world to slumber in a sedate, drama-free World Cup final. Nick Price has blitzed all comers on the last day of the British Open at Turnberry. Miguel Indurain has coasted remorselessly along the hard roads of Montpellier. And Tyrone's Fay Devlin is dancing attention to Mickey Linden of Down in an Ulster final which would fall tamely one way.

"I still think about that day. They gave us such a hiding," said Devlin earlier this week. It was a strangely muted conclusion to the Northern campaign at a time when Ulster teams could do no wrong. Well before the end of the match, the Down crowd had disregarded even the remotest possibility of anything other than a win for their team.

Pete McGrath's side was at its sharpest, steam-rolling out of defence, delightful and sweeping in attack. Devlin marched out on to the pitch that day on the back of a glittering summer and spent his day chasing Linden's shadow. Three points he gave to him and an abundance of possession. Same story virtually all over the pitch. Although the final score read 1-17 to 1-11, Tyrone were cast aside like rag dolls.

"Well, they went on to win the All-Ireland that year, they were in flying form. But that's the thing about Down, they are like Meath and these teams that can just switch it on come the championship. You have to be wary of them. That beating they gave us was five years ago but they have a number of those players still around and good youngsters coming up. This is going to be tough."

So on Sunday, the sparks will fly between Devlin and Linden once again. Time seems to have ignored these two diminutive stars. Just a few weeks back, Linden could be found merrily torturing Antrim, nailing 1-2 over the hour, while a week later, Devlin masterminded an awesome defensive display against Fermanagh, who had come into the game as real contenders.

Fermanagh had thumped optimistic ball in towards Shane King and Devlin nonchalantly read every angle and supervised the clinical withering of their neighbours' plans.

Later, Devlin played down his own role in the 10-point win. "We did expect a tougher game, to be honest. I mean, I saw them against Monaghan and they were a good side, they have the footballers. It just didn't come off for them against us and there's very little you could do about it. We were putting them under pressure, they missed a few chances early on and our boys were knocking them over. Things just swung our way."

Since joining the Tyrone senior panel at the beginning of the decade, Devlin has experience enough of such similar days to recognise them. There is a sense that Tyrone somehow slipped through the net during Ulster's golden era, that they got squeezed out when All-Irelands were raining down upon the province.

"Yeah, I suppose you could look back and say we left one behind. You do wonder about that occasionally but there is just no point in getting caught up in it. Deep down, you have to believe that your chance will come around again. That's why you stick at it, go to the efforts to reach such fitness, want to win games so badly," he says.

The narrow loss against Dublin in the All-Ireland final of 1995 and the crushing semi-final exit to Meath the following summer precipitated an apparent slide in the county, a time when the county team seemed riven by injury and internal dispute. They spent the winter in healing though, carving out notable results in the National League and performing with genuine cohesiveness against Fermanagh.

"We had some good results in the league, against Galway for example, but we still missed out on the playoffs. Things are going fairly well but we had a long, nervous wait before we finally got going in the championship. We need to be playing at our best if we intend to stay around."

The sight of Peter Canavan on song and firing points is enough to convince many folk that all is well with Tyrone. But others see the duties as being more evenly split these days. "I don't think we are over-reliant on Peter now," said Devlin. "There was a good spread of scores against Fermanagh and through the league and lads like Mattie McGleenan and Adrian Cush are really hitting form at the moment. And Eoin Gormley and Adrian both take frees as well. So it takes pressure off Peter and gives us an attack with a lot of options.

As for the defence, the prognosis is simple. "We'll just try and mark tight and keep their chances low. These are crafty forwards we'll be meeting and I'm sure we'll have our hands full."

Just as he likes it.