This Sunday in Ruislip, two men will shake hands for the first time in 16 years.

When last they met, on a venomously hot August Sunday in 1983, Tommy McDermott stood numb on the turf in Croke Park while Stephen Joyce, the forward he had shepherded throughout the semi-final, offered a brief consolation and slipped away.

Galway's Val Daly had somehow ghosted through for a late goal and ripped the soul out of a Donegal team which had been lovingly crafted by Brian McEniff. Legend had it that the manager spent that night sitting alone on a park bench. Distance lends the image a quaintness now.

"Yeah, Stephen Joyce, I haven't seen him since then. It will be interesting to go up to him, find out if he can still remember the number on my back," laughs McDermott, whose London side hosts the Galway team on which Joyce is now a selector.

McDermott was a lynchpin on that emerging Donegal team, a mop-haired full back whose sunny countenance and languid style belied a steely ruthlessness. He emigrated to London in the winter of 1987 and despite his efforts, the lifeforce was drained out of his domestic football career.

"Late-night flights out on a Friday night, driving home, training on a Saturday, match Sunday and not arriving back until one or two a.m. It became too much. That's the thing that seems to be forgotten about London football. The sacrifices are greater, if anything, over here."

Since he took over as manager last September - after years of peripheral involvement - London have lost 10 regular panellists. Only five of the team that threatened to silence Sligo last year will run out in Ruislip tomorrow.

"Some have repatriated. Some just dropped away. You have to remember, people are in London primarily to work. Some of these lads were facing four-hour round trips just to make training. For a team whose prospects are written off on an annual basis."

And never have they been more assuredly dismissed than for this fixture. Everyone except those in the London squad are treating tomorrow's affair as an exhibition hour.

"No one gives us chance in hell," agrees McDermott. "Why should they? But, you know, we haven't trained our guts out for six months to go out and play a timid, defensive game against Galway. It's an honour to have the All-Ireland champions over here and the game has been very well marketed.

"But I heard someone from the Galway camp quoted as saying that they are worried about taking on Sligo in Markievicz Park, as if this game doesn't even exist. So we tell people we are looking forward to Sligo in Markievicz. Whatever the odds, you have to believe in yourself and we'll be giving these boys a good crack."

Talk to him for an age and McDermott still won't concede that the feat is beyond the London team yet the realist in him must know that winning probably represents way too steep a learning curve.

He says their immediate objective is to perform in this game, "but, long-term, we need to get a settled team back in London. Some of these years, London will make a breakthrough in the championship. Then the respect might come."

Sunday, though, is probably one for honest, thankless toil."