New Year's Day and not long after lunch time he comes sloping up through the car park. He has that gear bag welded onto his hand. It's strange to see him, to observe him. A hurling game is in progress and scarcely a head turns as he makes his way to the club house.

Makes you wonder. Must make him wonder. Right here in St Vincent's of Marino on the press night before the 1995 All-Ireland final he was mobbed and chased around the place like one of The Beatles. Full scale Jayo mania. They screamed, they chased, the stared, they gawped. Jayo! Jayo! Jayo! There was even a song. "Boom Boom Boom. Let me hear you say Jayo. . ."

At some point that evening the Dublin training session wound down almost imperceptibly, an invitation to the waiting media to move shyly towards their prey to extract harmless All-Ireland final quotes. Well, good men were lost in the stampede of followers looking to get to Jayo, to touch the hem of his garment. He took flight, elderly officials and young officials tried to intervene. Finally he took up residence at the door of a dressing-room and an ocean of worshippers formed a chaotic line like giddy kiddies going to Santa. He was trapped there for the night, signing autographs and talking the talk.

That was his summer. Full of crazy moments like that. He'll look back on it in ripe middle age and be at a loss to explain it. We all will be. Just three or four years later it seems unbelievable that Dublin football extracted so little from Jason Sherlock's comet streak across our sky.

Dublin had been battering on the door for so long that Jason's arrival with a key was enough to gain them access to the pantheon before they collapsed with exhaustion. By the following summer the team was dead and eaten manna was quickly forgotten.

How quickly. Back in 1995 the papers were full of speculative chat about just when Jayo would be borne off to England to the labour mills of professional soccer. UCD played Liverpool at Lansdowne Road and afterwards Roy Evans was reported as saying that Jason would be over. We calculated that the loss to Dublin football would be, oh, incalculable. By the end of the summer, necessarily, he had an agent. New ground getting turned over all the time. Incalculable. We all waited.

There was a feeling abroad that Dublin should give him a paid coaching job to nail him down in the position where his impact could be greatest, but by the end of the summer the politics within the county were against that. He served as a lightning rod of publicity and distraction for an easily diverted team but the old black-coats who haunt the county board resented even that service.

By the end of the year it was over. Bitter little jealousies festered like acne on the face of Gaelic football. For all the silly ballyhoo that surrounded the ugly business of confiscating the All Stars (a journalists award scheme) from journalists and letting players vote, the occasion was marred by the petty jealousy which denied Sherlock an All Star that year. No player had made as much difference to his team. His performances got better and better until he ran Tyrone dizzy in the All-Ireland final.

And there were little choruses of racist abuse whispered into his ear by markers during games. The following year he got spat at by a Dublin football official. People close to him said he should forget about Dublin football altogether.

He plugged away in the semi-private that is soccer for UCD and people forgot about him. He left his international basketball career behind and an Irish under-21 cap looked like being the high point of his soccer achievements.

He's tougher than that though. Jayo saw off the spitting official and he is still standing. He was in St Vincent's ground for another little bit of craziness late this summer. His Na Fianna team at last playing like contenders contested a county final in Parnell Park and afterwards he was whisked across the road to St Vincent's and into a helicopter which took him to Donegal to play for Shamrock Rovers that night.

A few years on and he has parlayed his talent and the residual of his fame into a living. It has taken more grit and determination than he might have thought back during that crazy summer when so many people wanted a piece of him that it seemed only a matter of time before they began giving Jason something back. Now he has a media career and his face beams out from posters extolling the virtues of Pepsi Cola. So Jason Sherlock arrives on the first day of 1999 for the Blue Stars game, a pleasant social occasion usually lashed by wind and rain. He's turned up early even though he expects to be on the bench.

It's a busy time for him. League fare against Finn Harps in Tolka yesterday, scoring a second-half goal. Shamrock Rovers' topsy-turvy season could be deemed successful if they enjoy a good Cup run. They play their Tolka Park landlords Shelbourne this Friday night, the nearest thing the FAI Cup provides in term of glamour.

`Who's at home?" we joke. "Not sure," he says, "but it's nice to get the home dressing-room. If we win that it could set us up for a good season." "What about today? You sitting on the bench?" "Probably. But keep turning up, keep hoping," he says.

New Year's Day and he makes his way off towards those dressing-rooms he was mobbed in a few years ago. He plays well when the football starts, plays in a way which reminds us of how misused he has been in championship games since 1995. He operates best inside the enemy 21 dealing the cards where the stakes are highest. Early on in the Blue Stars game he wins the ball and scores a goal, a small gem of a thing. He takes a knock as he is kicking but contrives a bouncing shot which deceives the goalkeeper.

"Jayo of course," announces Vincent Conroy over the tannoy.

Jayo's performance is a hint of what he can still offer if used well. He is tougher than he was four years ago, but he still has that knack for the unexpected. Dublin are looking at new faces for their full forward line yet for all their brimming potential one suspects that Mick O'Keeffe, Ray Cosgrove and Brian Irwin put together don't have the appetite or nerve for the big time that Jayo has.

It starts raining and the wind whips up. He's still plugging away. Jayo of course. Chewed up and spat out by the hype machine but still standing. You watch him on New Year's Day dodging the sleet and the big shoulders and you just know that an All-Ireland medal at 19 won't be enough for him. He'll be back for more.