October's commemorative National Football League match between Kerry and Cavan in Downing Stadium New York may have been central to the jubilee celebration of the Polo Grounds final but the quality of the play was mundane.

The only memorable element of the match - as distinct from the occasion - was the performance of Maurice Fitzgerald. Only three weeks after sewing up every award in the game with a tour de force in the All-Ireland final which crowned his remarkable season, Fitzgerald contributed the flashes of light that illuminated this fixture.

One in particular remains framed in the memory. Towards the end of the first half, with the scores level at 0-5 each, Fitzgerald kept a ball in at the end-line by artfully back-heeling it to Michael Francis Russell who quickly returned the pass as Fitzgerald came around behind him.

The angle was still ludicrously acute. Thousands of miles away, in a pub in Killorglin, Billy O'Shea watched the match and heard it whispered in the crowded bar that even Maurice wouldn't try it from there. As the ball screwed over the bar, the drinkers in Kerry rose to their feet in acclaim.

In the press box in Downing Stadium another Kerryman, GAA PRO Danny Lynch - a man not generally given to childish wonder - exclaimed: "Good God almighty, will you look at that?"

We looked, but in 1997 we'd seen it all before.