The magic of the GAA is found in the people and the places. It was a truth realised by getting lost on the backroads and trains of Ireland…

The air in the carriage was hot and humid as we trundled through Dublin’s north-west suburbs. A miasma of sunburnt football supporters, dazed faces, in surround sound. I was on an Irish Rail service to Longford and having the time of my life.

It had all been very last-minute. I’d decided to watch my beloved Tyrone take on Kerry in the All-Ireland Football semi-final. Tyrone would surely win, you see, and there’s nothing better than football FOMO to get you into the car and on the M1 to Dublin.

I was late. The classic queue of congestion over the Boyne Bridge outside Drogheda crept over the horizon. Some cars were escaping up the slip road, and I’d a decision to make. There’d been talk online of something strange and alien called the ‘M3 Parkway’, with a train to Croke Park mentioned. It sounded perfect, so I stuck on the sat nav and hoped for the best. It would turn out that a tour of every back road in County Meath awaited.

Soon, I was in the townland of Oldbridge, on a winding path barely fit for a car, crossing the River Boyne itself. It was the 12^th of July after all. I drove over the Red Mountain and into Corballis on roads to nowhere, with everything a possibility. Beware the boreens, I thought. A woman was walking, sunglasses on, and it was hard to know where she’d started or would finish as there wasn’t a house for miles around. Around the next corner, badly overgrown with cow parsley, two Grandparents wheeled a child in a buggy. These were their roads. I was merely a stranger, passing through, blissfully lost.

This was also Royal territory, with Meath flags everywhere. I fidgeted nervously with the collar on my Tyrone shirt. Some while later I shot through a crossroads in Skryne, passing Swan’s Pub. The door was open, and the cool shadows spoke of pints and craic with no lift home. ‘Headstone Memorials’ were available, too, at Swan’s of Skryne.

At last, the desolate looking M3 Parkway beckoned. I reached into a carrier bag and took out my home-made chilli con carne wrap, a packet of crisps and two little bars of chocolate. A spectre appeared in a salmon-coloured shirt and shorts, hurrying by with a backpack.

‘Excuse me, are you heading to the match?’ I croaked.

‘We are surely, hi. Here’s the train now. I think them ticket machines are busted with the hate’.

This Fermanagh Friend would prove to be my guiding light on the final leg of my trip. I joined him and his son at a table on board.

We put the world to rights on the mental health challenges facing young footballers and hurlers and the demands our sport can place on them. Is anyone to blame? As adults, as coaches, as parents, what’s the inevitable conclusion if children are being asked to represent their school, and club, and county? Burnout.

The train stopped. Clonsilla. Everyone got off and I followed like a lost puppy to the connecting service for Drumcondra. This felt complicated.

‘Is this your first time going this way?’, he asked.

‘It is, yeah.’

He leant forward, his blue Belnaleck eyes boring into mine. The son was laughing.

‘Well, look: for the way back, get to Drumcondra Station early and get the 18.51 to Maynooth. Make sure you get the Maynooth train; not the Longford one. Alight here at Clonsilla, and make your way back on the other train, which’ll be waitin’ for you. Got it?’

I said I did but I hadn’t a clue. I was too busy sneaking glances at Colm O’Rourke, who’d taken a seat beside us. His cool eyes caught mine, and the unmistakeable voice declared, ‘You wouldn’t know where’d you’d spot a Tyrone jersey these days.’

This was a bona fide GAA figure and, with O’Rourke’s RTÉ and Meath credentials, a man of clear footballing authority. Later, I felt a small chill of magic when I found out that O’Rourke is originally from nowhere other than Skyrne itself.

Soon, our train rolled into Drumcondra where the track is elevated superbly over the north-Dublin skyline. I still had hope that Tyrone would do it.

Down on the street, the old Quinn’s Pub came up beside me, now boarded up and forgotten. I’d cut my teeth in there nearly 20 years before. The young wans down today would never know its secrets.

I arrived at Croke Park with 15 minutes to spare, the sweat dripping off me. We’ll not dwell too much on the match, but there had been real belief for Tyrone in that first half. They will come again. Today, though, was a day for the journey and the people, with the actual football an irrelevance.

Later, on the train home, a conspiratorial gentleman sat down. I only know him as Eamonn from Kildare. The fantastic white hair and strong voice caught my attention, but it was his soul that taught me. In what it means to be a GAA man. In what it means to talk to strangers and not give a damn. To connect over football and yarns and tall tales. Here was a Gael.

Eamonn told a marvellous story about Dublin’s Seán Doherty (recently deceased) and Kerry’s Mickey Ned O’Sullivan, who were ferocious enemies on the pitch in the 70s. Doherty’s notorious tackle on O’Sullivan in the 1975 All-Ireland set in stone the legend of an ageless Kerry-Dublin rivalry. For years, people spoke of the supposed hatred of the two men for one another.

But Eamonn had the scoop.

‘I spoke to Seán Doherty one day, and I asked him, “Now, what about ye and Mickey Ned?” He said, “Eamonn, we’re like that”, and crossed his two fingers tight in front of my face. A few weeks later, didn’t I bump into Mickey Ned O’Sullivan? I says to him, “Mickey Ned, would you’ve much time for Seán?” Mickey Ned smiled, held up the two fingers, crossed them and says, “Ahh, sure we’re like that.” ’

I think I made a best friend myself that day. As we pulled into Clonsilla, I shook Eamonn’s hand – twice – and squeezed out the doors. ‘That’s the GAA there’, I thought.

One more connection, into the car, and then home. But no backroads this time… there’s never any magic in doing it twice. For now, the M50 would have to do.