CASTLEBAR BARRACKS. Late. Not too late. Should get away with it. Suddenly Maughan looms beneath a slatey lintel. Instant presence.

Howya John.

Howya.

Busy?

No. Just waiting for you.

Maughan smiles to himself. He stretches out his hand and pulps your fingers.

Late. Didn't get away with it.

Bruised fingers. He has a way with words, but a better way with body language. Words make up a small part of the overall impression he leaves you with.

Print fails here. You have to have Maughan in front of you to understand the charisma. See him and you understand why grown men run through walls just to make John Maughan happy.

Words, though. He can dismantle sentences like rifles. He speaks about words. The art of using soft words about hard things. Things he's had to say. He understands the hardware.

For example, certain players aren't part of this year's great adventure in Mayo. Players with big names around the county are sitting high in the stand watching the parade. Maughan gave them their chances.

I marked his cards," he says of one celebrity absentee.

He did too. He took him aside and marked those cards.

"Think carefully now. It's your choice. If you want to miss this match. Just think carefully now. I'd like it if you came along."

He recounts this in the tones of a game show host encouraging a contestant to come back again next week. He stretches and sighs. Shakes his head.

"Jesus, it was plain enough what was going to happen next."

Suddenly it's Goodfellas. "You think `I'm jinny,'" says Joe Pesci. "Yeah, I think you're a very funny guy," says Ray Liotia.

"So I said to him: `Look. Just don't come back'." And Maughan smiles to himself again. "No messers. I'm very serious about that."

No messers. John Maughan is 34 and perhaps tomorrow will be the day that divides his life into two parts. Before the All Ireland. After the All Ireland.

Few people ever come to such a bridge in their lives but Maughan has a genius for handling people and a genius for football. He has the stature of the athlete he once was and the presence of the natural leader he is.

Thirty four years old and these past two weeks have been his greatest test. Having brought Mayo to the borders of the promised land he has had to herd his team home to Mayo and get them set again.

Tomorrow he thinks they will breach the borders. Tomorrow might he the day which divides his life into two parts.

ON the way to the drawn game two weeks ago John Maughan and his selectors, Peter Forde and Tommy O'Malley, shared the car drive to Dublin. As is their wont before big games they visitalised everything that might happen. How the game would unfold in certain sectors. What would happen if a player was sent off, two players, injuries.

Big match days are a pleasure for control freaks. Maughan organises the motor cycle escort from Westmanstown, checks the injuries, sets his watches, notes what time the team will arrive at the round, what time they will hit the pitch. Everything unfolds as it should. Even in the course of a game, every contingency that can be covered is covered. Maughan, O'Malley and Forde plan every detail.

Two weeks ago they laid contingencies for everything except a draw. When the whistle blew John Maughan had to think quickly.

He hustled his players in out of the mayhem of Croke Park to the sanctuary of the dressingroom and filled the void of anti climax with his voice.

It's six years since he first addressed a senior intercounty team. He has never found it daunting. He was 28 when Clare came looking for him to manage their footballers. Nine players showed up on the first night. Only a fool would have felt nervous amidst such disarray. He remembers that on the eve of Clare's first game against Tipperary he was "wittering on a bit" and drew his comments to a close suddenly.

He can't remember, though, ever feeling ill at ease with players or not being up to the demands of the occasion. Never anything but certainty.

So two weeks ago he buried his own disappointment, gathered his Mayo team together and subtracted the dejection from their thoughts. "That's the first half," he told them, "we've come from division three to within minutes of an All Ireland and it's still hanging there for us to claim. There is still 70 minutes left but if we take anything away from here it's not that we drew a game we should have won but that we know we are good enough."

He went around and spoke to players individually, shaking hands and patting sweaty backs. There was the odd casualty to be spoken to also. That could wait.

The press were banging on the door and the players minds were still racing but he bellowed his message out. Then the doors opened and he lost the team until Monday morning when he spoke to them informally before the lunch in the Burlington Hotel hosted by the GAA.

"You need to get your message in before they head out and their mothers and fathers and girlfriends and. friends hit them with their opinions.

On Monday morning too he spoke at length with John Casey. Maughan's full forward had come to Croke Park with a summer's worth of good reviews. Then he'd been blown away. Maughan had to tread carefully.

"Yeah, John Casey had to be spoken to. The following, morning did that and then again during the week. He was disappointed. We sat down and talked about it and eventually we picked him up again. We rationalised it, tried to ascertain why. Were there any contributing factors. If everything was OK with him. Being positive, I would point out to John that he is still a good footballer. One bad game doesn't mean you can't go out and do it again. We talked as well about the service John got, what made it hard for him to make an impact. John will be OK."

Home then. On Tuesday night he took the team to the beach in Enniscrone.

To clear his own head he arrived an hour or two before the team did and walked the beach taking the air. He loves Enniscrone. By the time the players cars starting arriving he felt good.

"I was in jolly form. I saw the lads coming in, I could read their body language. The dejection was gone, they were piping, ready to go. We did a little run, shook the lactic acid out of the legs. I wanted them to go down there to the beach before I took them back to a football field. We went to the steamroom and a had a seaweed bath. Good crack. Thursday night then we came to Castlebar again with our heads cleared."

Last weekend then he took them to Clare for some serious work, some meetings and a look at the video. The had two tough training sessions, one in Sixmilebridge, the other in Cusack Park, Ennis.

EVERYTHING has been executed with the feel for perfection which is Maughan's hallmark. The team stayed at the Clare Inn because Maughan likes its leisure facilities. On Saturday he got them together to watch the video which he had already watched three times.

There were things which he wanted to point out to them.

Mayo played poorly. Thirty one attacks in the first half, 22 of them via the high ball. We are not, he stressed, "a high ball team."

They watched. Again and again the high ball dropped down on John Casey's head with snow on it. Colm Coyle dropped back for the breaks, Martin O'Connell moved in from the left for the same reason. Three Meath men. One Mayo man. All they had to do was render Casey immobile.

Maughan examined the congestion in the midfield, how Enda McManus was always there flaring with menace on the forty, how Colm Coyle dropped in behind him and how Trevor Giles swept right across that line. Every time Liam McHale or David Beady get the ball there was a thicket of Meath bodies in front of them.

Twenty two high balls.

He proceeded slowly through the last 10 minutes of the game.

Mayo's full forward line pulled forward line back into midfield. Ray Dempsey around the middle looking for breaking ball. Meath with Mark Reilly and Colm Coyle forward; Graham Geraghty dropped back, meanwhile, trying to rid himself of Pat Holmes.

Through all of this chaos one constant nagged nagged at Maugan. Mayo's kickouts were unvarying.

Each one aimed at Liam McHale, dropping over McHale's head and into Enda McManus's arms. Worse. A couple of Mayo attacks ended up with balls dropped short into the goalkeeper's arms. Bad day. Bad plays.

He takes the team out to Ennis the next day and works them hard. Watches them. Makes decisions.

Decisions. An eternity of decision this year. For the past couple of months he reckons his sleep patterns have been all messed up. He goes to bed most nights and his head is racing with football thoughts. Last week for example, take last week.

At the weekend he spoke to Kevin O Neill. Good footballer, nice guy. O'Neill played the last 90 seconds of the drawn game and with David Nestor struggling to make a physical impact O Neill might have burst into the team for tomorrow. He just had to prove it.

On Sunday morning in Cusack Park. Kevin O'Neill struggled in training. Playing on Gary Ruane, a no nonsense reserve defender O'Neill couldn't locate his form. Down the other end, meanwhile, Torn Reilly, the veteran, was scoring seven points. Decisions to be made.

Maughan, Forde and O Malley spoke at length on Sunday. Called each other again on Monday afternoon. By then football was getting in on Maughan's head a bit too much. He bolted for the escape route.

I called Audrey (his wife) from work on Monday evening, told her to get the kids ready and we headed out to the woods in Tourmakeady and just walked. Beautiful out there. You need to get away. At this time of the year every small thing can look like a crisis. Everything has to be done quickly. You have to recharge."

They walked the woods. He slept badly on Monday night. Spoke to O'Malley and Forde again on Tuesday. Bad day. Hard decisions.

Imagine that," he says. "How horrible that is to have to tell fellas that they won't be on. On Tuesday night I had to have a chat with David Nestor and with Kevin O'Neill."

"I had to tell David he wasn't playing, that his friend Anthony Finnerty was taking his place. I had to tell Kevin that he Just wasn't going well, and with the need for a balance of midfielders, defenders and forwards he wasn't going to make the subs. I called them to me after their shower before the team had something to eat. They must have known when they saw me crooking the finger at them. I spent Sunday night and Monday worrying about that. Then Tuesday lads give you everything and sometimes you have to do that to them. That was hard on them both.

He knows how they must both be feeling. At this level, football dominates life completely. He has cleared the panel out so only the obsessives are left. Through the winter he pushed lads to the limit, demanding more and more. He knows about obsession what it feels like, where to find it.

"Yeah. I'm pretty tired a lot of time these days. I go to bed and think about football. I'm not home as often as I should be. There are things I'd be supposed to do around the house, I'm having to gel fellas into do it for me. Other things suffer.

"Bringing the kids swimming or something, I just don't have time to do it. Kids are happy enough, I hope. Last Monday we went out to the woods. I know we should do things like that more often. I rang the local swimming pool to find out when they have the public hour, but I haven't got down there yet with them. I feel guilty. I don't do as much as I should. Time is at a premium.

"The bottom line is that you love it. I love it. Love football. Liking it isn't sufficient. Football has to be in the body and blood and veins. Life revolves around it. Football was on a par with two extra subjects in the Leaving I went away every weekend playing football from 13 years of age onwards. I joined the army and the first weekend I was off with the army team. In college, irrespective of what was on academically, I'd play football if it was there to be played.

I met Audrey after the Sigerson in 1984 at a party. She realised from the start what was involved. Weddings, christenings, anything. I went football training instead. I'm lucky that she understands that. I'm lucky to get the latitude. Lucky to be involved in all this."

You look at him and absorb the sudden burst of animation. You know why Kevin O'Neill and David Nestor told him they didn't agree but that they'd back him 110 per cent anyway. You know why fellas run through walls for him. You know that some people aren't lucky at all, they make their own luck.

TOMORROW, when the hurly burly starts, Tommy O'Malley will watch the opposition, Peter Forde will lookat the Mayo backs and notionally John Maughan will keep an eye on the forwards. Up in the stand Seamus Rodgers will view the big picture.

In this aspect of things, Maughan feels he is the weak link. He follows the hall too much, gets sucked in by the match. He remembers a few times this summer during big games lurching up and down the sideline trying to attract the attention of a player and glancing behind to see Peter Forde on his hands and his knees as calm and as absorbed as a child watching a trout in a pool.

They have done well this summer Maughan, Forde and O'Malley. One of them spots a weak link in the chaos of the game and the others hone in on the weak link for two or three minutes. "You see pretty quick when a guy is struggling," says Maughan. Then they act, pulling out one of the many options they have provided themselves with in the planning process beforehand.

"We all know what we will do, what we have planned for. We don't have to talk much. We've been playing the game, all day, every day in our heads for the past two weeks."

More than the game. Maughan has pictured the scenes of victory, the coming home, the jubilation, the bonfires. Two weeks more have made him fractionally more stale, he thinks, but in terms of the big picture what does two weeks mean?

"Forty five years, that means a lot. It means a lot to people here in Mayo. The bad years haven't sat well with us. Two weeks extra have been difficult but we are pushing on.

Tomorrow might be the day, the time when it all ends, when Connacht football walks tall and Mayo folk light bonfires and John Maughan's life becomes a story of two parts. He thinks so too. Too big a man to entertain doubts.

"We've decided that we are good enough. We've done everything we could. There will be no post mortems. That wouldn't sit well, either. I'm happy enough that I'm not going to be kicking myself to death for 10 years over things I should have done."

He stands up. Instant presence. Interview over. He strolls off towards the bridge, towards the next part of this final, towards the second half of his life.