You come to Declan Browne with handfuls of sympathy, identifying tenderly with his plight: a footballer trapped in a hurlers' county, a man living in constant fear of pogroms from the stickmen in the North Riding. And you find him whistling dixie. Life is sweet when you are on top of your game.

The statistics show the altitude he has attained in three of Tipperary's truncated summers. A fresh-faced introduction to the big time in the summer of 1996 yielded no joy, Kerry reaped them for the threshing. Last summer they operated at their own level and Browne began to find himself. Seven points from the first game with Limerick, two the next day, and then 1-1 in the provincial semi-final with Kerry. A goal and a point taken from Seamus Moynihan's pocket that is.

And this summer, what for Tipperary footballers is an epic sequence. Beat Limerick and Browne scored 1-6. Beat Waterford and Browne scored 0-9. Beat Clare and Browne scored 1-7. They face Kerry tomorrow and you offer Browne sympathy. No time for it. Last summer's experience with Kerry left him scalded. Eight points down early in the second half, Browne scored a goal in the 44th minute which nudged them towards heroics. The design of it was a precursor to inspiration. Derry Foley lobbing a ball from the midfield chaos, the arc taking it over the head of a frazzled Moynihan and into Browne's arms from whence it was skidded to the far corner of the net. By the 60th minute Tipperary were in front and laptops sizzled with news of the Titanic sinking.

"We died, though," says Browne, and his voice has no sediment of resignation at the bottom. He's not born to subservience in football's old order. Sympathy is for losers and old timers.

"But it showed people what we were up to. I was very disappointed after last year. For years people in Tipp would have said it's great just to run Kerry close. Those days are gone, but we have nothing to prove it and that's what is sickening. Nobody remembers losers. Kerry are still Munster and All-Ireland champions.

"After that, though, it was just heads down for us. Sickening to break up like that for two or three months till we got back into it."

They trooped off with sagging hearts and buzzing heads, absorbed the cool, tear-stained silence of their dressing-room and made quiet vows.

"We never sat and looked back at it. When we left the dressing-room it was dead and buried. Over the 70 minutes maybe the fitness failed us in the end. We busted ourselves coming back at them and we had nothing in the tank at the end." So this week the memories of it have floated back into his thoughts. There is a cruel circumstance being one of the country's best young footballers, but being hemmed into the southern precinct of a county obsessed with another game. It must be a temptation to look at the broths in the green and gold and envy them their ease with their people's affections.

"Ah, you'd notice alright that in Tipp the hurlers get great attention. This week now we'd enjoy the bit of hype, having the spotlight on us for a change. We play second fiddle, though, even if it is a Munster final. There's plenty of support for the hurling. I play hurling myself and I'd notice how it gets the attention. With the football team we'd have two or three odd thousand at the match. The hurlers get a lot in sponsorship and have everything provided. We're not too bad this year, but it's all fundraising. A golf classic last Friday and selling tickets and all that. It's a struggle to keep the footballers on the road, but there's a great buzz this year and you'd enjoy it all the more."

The hurling faith is a little arrogant in its expression. It nettles in the south of the county that whenever the Tipperary footballers are in action the hurling disciples of the north don't even bother with the genuflection of postponing fixtures. Hurling continues unabated and if the football team were to shave their heads and dance naked across the field at some wintery league game it wouldn't alter the north's view of their eccentricity.

In Moyle Rovers, where Declan Browne was moulded and made, there is still the rankling memory of the time a few years ago when the club were just breaking through and were scheduled to play one of the north's two football teams in a county quarter-final.

The north being lunatic hurling people who only turn their attentions to football when they have to, Moyle didn't want to risk the potential humiliation of being beaten by a team of super-fit hurlers, so they kept Derry Foley home from a family holiday.

The club from the north didn't bother to turn up.

Moyle Rovers grew to some greatness regardless, winning the county title in 1995 and 1996, beating old rivals Clonmel Commercials both times. Browne played in goal the first year, pushing Tipperary's reserve goalkeeper tomorrow, Seamus Delahunty, into an outfield role. The forging of that piece of club history ensured Browne's undying loyalty to the club and everyone concerned speaks of his exemplary devotion to the colours.

In the club they remember him banging a sliotar against the gable wall as often as he would have kicked a football. He won a minor hurling All-Ireland with the county in 1996 and is hurling with the under-21s this summer. He keeps word of his preference writ large, however, just in case the hurlers come to kidnap him, but there is a quiet hope around the place that one of these days the senior hurling selectors are going to elevate him from the county intermediate side. And maybe they'll be coming looking for the use of a footballer some Sunday.

"It'd be half a joke around the place, but fellas would say to you, `would you not give up the football, concentrate on the hurling'. You'd get a bit of slagging about transferring to a hurling club altogether and getting your priorities right. I'm a footballer, though. I've been with Moyle Rovers since I saw nine years old and growing up we'd have gone to see the Tipp footballers play as much as we'd see the hurlers. Fellas like John Owens and Peter Lambert would have been my heroes. I've always preferred the football, that's what I was reared to."

Beneath the foliage of hurling hopefuls, there exist a little subworld of footballers. Browne played on the Tipperary minor team which caused small ripples in the Munster pond when they won the provincial title in 1995.

They came on stream at under-21 level this summer and reached the Munster final, giving up some sucker punches to Kerry early on in the game and never quite recovering. Still the players are percolating through slowly.

"This Sunday is vital for us," says Browne. "It's a long time since Tipperary played football in August. There is potential there."

The funnelling of his attentions and abilities to this point in time has provided a welcome narrowing of focus. He began the year eligible for 14 teams between club, county and college (Waterford Institute of Technology, where he studies Recreation and Leisure management).

"During the winter I'd make the trip up from college in Waterford once a week, maybe a bit more, but I wouldn't do that much with the team. It was just to be there."

When Colm Browne, the Laoisman who teaches PE in the Garda College in Templemore, arrived in the Tipperary football job last summer to succeed Paddy Morrissey he set out the tasks he expected the team to complete.

League promotion and a Munster final. Over 150 training sessions later and . . . "We're nearly there. We might have said at the start of the year, like Clare, that we could reach the Munster final. Now we are there we think we can win it. We know what we are up against. Everyone knows that Kerry will put you away, our aim is to stick with them for 15 or 20 minutes.

"In under-21 we were three goals down after 15 minutes and it's a losing battle. We'll give it a good shot if we are there or thereabouts at half-time.

"We are fitter this year, we are playing the ball better, finding men easier, good camaraderie. Limerick, Waterford and Clare have been three tough championship games for Tipp. As long as we have progressed we have felt we could get better."

Through it all Browne does those same things, progressing and getting better.

In Moyle Rovers, they expected it to be so. He comes from sound footballing stock on both sides of the family, the Lonergans and the Brownes all played well. Since he came to the club as a kid he has been under the wing of Mick McCarthy, who spotted the talent and kept it simmering when others were boiling over and wasting away.

This week the flags are out in south Tipperary. Moyle Rovers are looking forward to tomorrow and then Sunday week when they play the south Tipperary semi-final. And in every summer camp and every coaching course, meanwhile, Declan Browne is the idol, the poster boy.

A genuine star. One of the things Tipperary football has needed. They go in search of the other tomorrow.