By John Harrington

Over the course of our conversation, Paddy Gumley regularly flashes the smile of someone who can’t quite believe his luck.

When you ask him how he would have reacted had someone told him two years ago he’d play in an All-Ireland Final, the smile is accompanied by a shake of the head.

“I'd have said, here, go away and do the lotto or something, you'd have a better chance of doing that”, laughed the Nemo Rangers full-forward.

Gumley has definitely journeyed along a road less travelled to get to Saturday’s All-Ireland Club Football Final against Corofin.

He only joined Nemo Rangers two years ago and came through what he likes to call ‘their over-age system’.

He was 33 at the time and figured his best days were behind him and it was no longer worth the effort to drive home to Cavan and play for his home club Redhills.

The plan was to just play a bit of junior football with Nemo Rangers to stay in shape and feel more involved in the local community.

No-one in the club realised he’d previously played inter-county football with Cavan so he started off with Nemo’s Junior C’s, but they weren’t long figuring out that the new lad from Cavan was a bit of a baller.

He was quickly promoted from the Junior C to the Junior B team and didn’t hang around there long either before he was a fixture in the club’s intermediate team.

Within six months of joining Nemo he was called into the senior panel, and by the end of the season had forced his way into the team that won the County Senior League.

He was a fixture at full-forward by the time the 2017 championship swung around, and has been hugely influential throughout their march to Saturday’s Final.

“I’ve done alright, I’ve held my own,” said Gumley, showing a real flair for the art of understatement.

“I was 33 when I joined Nemo so there was no, 'I'm going to come in here and I'm going to do this, that and the other'. It was more of a gradual thing.

“Then just the competitive streak that's in you, once you got a taste of it you wanted more and more and more and then you wanted your place. I was happy getting five minutes and then I wanted 20 minutes and then I wanted to start.

“Then you start believing in yourself a wee bit again, I suppose. They believe in you and you believe in yourself after that, that's the way it was.

“There are a lot of quality footballers in Nemo Rangers and sometimes the belief mightn't be there, 'Am I capable of this?'

“Especially at my age. It would have been different if it was ten years ago, you'd say, 'I'll have a crack at this'. But the more I settled in...and the training was very good. Robbie O'Dwyer does the training and the drills.

“They just look after you very well, they tailor for everyone. If you're anyway injured at all, sit it out, you know. They just know their stuff, they keep it very simple.”

The adage that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks clearly doesn’t apply to Gumley.

He was always a very talented footballer, but he believes the experience of training and playing with a club like Nemo has developed his game more than ever.

“I'd say watching a lot of the lads in training at that level, I've picked up on things I would never have picked up on,” he said.

“I suppose at home in Cavan I was allowed do my own thing. I'd go out and if I wanted to pick the ball up and do whatever I wanted with it then I done it or I got away with it.

“But whatever about them there, you just see how they do things. I played a game once and got caught for a few short kick-outs.

“I was corner-forward and I got caught for three or four kick-outs. I was just like, 'Jesus Christ, this is not good!'

“I just watched the lads at training one night and I just picked up a little thing they do to stop that, to counteract that. It's just positioning yourself, and that stopped that.

“Because if you're a corner-forward and you're getting cleaned out on kick-outs! It's not the way to go!

The graph of Gumley’s Gaelic Football career is far from the standard, and not just because of this unexpected Indian summer he’s currently enjoying.

He actually didn’t play any football at all from the ages of 15 to 21 because he fell out of love with the game, and so can’t help wondering just how good a player he might have become had he benefited years ago from the sort of guidance Nemo are now providing.

“Yeah, I do, to be honest, no point saying otherwise. I'd love to have 10 years ago, or 15 now. I used to say 10, but that would only bring me back to 25!

“Maybe I had no-one to say, 'here, this is the way you go about this'. Or, if you pick up an injury, this is the way you go about this.

“I was kind of left to my own devices in what I wanted to do. Whereas in Nemo you can see lads who have walked the path.

“The likes of Stephen O'Brien or Larry Kavanagh. They'd say, 'Paddy, sit out this training, you don't need to train every night.'

“Maybe if I had more guidance, for want of a better word, on how to keep myself fresh and interested. Probably, yeah. I probably wish that, yeah.”

Despite not playing football from the age of 15 to 21, there’s a good chance Gumley would have belatedly fulfilled his potential in his mid-twenties were it not for a long-standing heart-condition.

From the age of 12 he’d occasionally feel dizzy and short of breath after exercise.

When he felt those symptoms come on he’d make a bee-line for the nearest toilet because he knew what was coming next – he’d lose consciousness for a couple of minutes.

Because he was so adept at hiding the symptoms no-one knew he had a problem until he was called up to the Cavan panel in 2009.

He collapsed in front of his team-mates and management during a training session before he had the chance to find a quiet place to himself, and so his secret was out in the open.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) was diagnosed, Gumley was told to take a complete break from all sport from six months, and so a potential inter-county career was halted before it could ever really get going.

“Yeah, pretty much,” said Gumley. “It didn't help. I was getting on well and then I had to take six months out from training and when I came back there was probably a lack of a little bit of confidence.

“Knowing there's more in you, but not pushing yourself. Any training you were doing you just kind of had it in the back of your head not to push it. Even though you knew it was there.

“It's frustrating at times, knowing there's a little bit more in you but you just have to hold back.

“Now, I don't always hold back, I still push it as hard as needs be. But it probably did have a bearing on it (unfulfilled inter-county career).”

He might be a late bloomer, but that’s only made Gumley all the more determined to enjoy his moment in the sun.

A calf injury he sustained in training before the All-Ireland semi-final win over Slaughtneil and then aggravated in that match is threatening his involvement on Saturday.

But whatever role he plays on the day, he’s determined to enjoy his first opportunity to run out onto the Croke Park pitch.

“I'll go out and jog and warm-up anyway and kick a ball over and make sure someone sees me do it anyway, and then I'll die a happy man!,” said Gumley with a smile.

“I'd be able to say I got out on Croke Park, even if it was only a warm-up! It's something that I would never have envisaged ever. Who would, like?”