'He still wonders what might have happened if Kieren stuck to boxing' In the first of a three-part serialisation from Kieren Fallon's new biography by Andrew Longmore, the author takes us to the village of Crusheen in County Clare, where Fallon was brought up and cut an early dash in a very different sporting arena.

'He's never forgotten his roots, never forgotten where he came from.' Jim Regan, boxing coach JIM REGAN can remember the little figure now, sitting on a stool in the front room of his house, waif-like and pale, his feet barely touching the floor. He'd often wonder whether the boy didn't need a good meal once in a while and he still wonders what might have happened if Kieren Fallon had stuck to boxing instead of becoming a jockey. He had all the basic skills - the courage, the coolness, the aggression and, most surprising of all, the power.

Mossey Clabby's wife said she felt sorry for young Kieren because the gloves looked so big on him, but Regan had seen the Fallon boy fight and that was enough to know the truth. He remembers a representative boxing match, Connacht Under-13s v Munster Under-13s, when Kieren was due to box an older, bigger and more experienced opponent. Regan had warned the other coach that he would pull his fellow out if the going got too rough. He'd said the same to Kieren.

"He's only got two hands, same as me," Kieren had said.

"But, you know, Kieren pulled the house down that night," Regan recalls. "The other fella came out like a tornado, throwing punches from everywhere, and Kieren came back to his stool at the end of the first round and said he'd never felt a thing. Kieren knocked him out in the third round. 'He's only got two hands, same as me.' I'll never forget that."

When he wanted something badly, Kieren Fallon could be disciplined enough and he liked boxing, liked the physical buzz and the sense of danger. Some boys had talent but no discipline. You had to look out for those, persuade them to come and train. But you never had to worry with Kieren. He'd be there, in the hall at the college in Gort, on the dot of 7.30, and he would always be the last to leave.

One time, Regan's assistant trainer, Michael, was driving home from training and noticed a familiar figure walking along the road out of town towards Crusheen. It was Fallon. When Regan asked later what he was doing, Fallon replied: "Well, Michael didn't say anything about giving me a lift, so I thought I'd walk it anyway." Gort to Crusheen is a good seven miles and it was getting late.

The boy still comes back to visit.

After he won the Oaks on Reams Of Verse, he brought a photograph, which is now hanging up on the wall of his old school. He would sit on the stage and the boys would gather round, curious to hear his tale. One of their own had gone away and was starting to make a decent life for himself somewhere else. "It's not all roses," Fallon would tell them, "you have to clean the shit out as well." But, Regan remembers, Fallon was able to attract people to him in that quiet way of his and he would always be courteous and always pay a visit to see Jim's mother. "That little lad came by again," she'd say, though he was close to being the champion jockey by then.

Quite where Fallon unearthed his love of horses is a matter for debate. The family kept cows, sheep and chickens and one story has it that Fallon would hop on the back of the most docile cow and pretend to ride it for all he was worth with an imaginary whip. The family had a couple of Connemara ponies and Fallon loved to ride those, too, clinging on to the mane, gripping with his legs, for as long as possible across the fields. His father took him to Galway races once, but, in the rare moments when he recalls his childhood, he does not regard either that visit or the Irish love of a bet as being significant in his choice of dream.

jjSo many similarities with Keane "BOXING helped me develop as a sportsman. Skipping and sparring made me more agile. I also acquired a certain confidence when confronted by physical aggression. I was still very small for my age and the techniques and disciplines learned in the boxing ring provided me with a psychological edge. I could look after myself even though I was small and shy."

Who wrote that? Roy Keane. But it could just as easily have been Kieren Fallon.

Translate Keane's conviction, his will, tenacity and anger into Fallon's slim frame and you have the genesis of the sixtime champion jockey. In place of Keane haranguing the referee in a fit of rage, you have Fallon pulling Stuart Webster off his horse at a nondescript meeting at Beverley in 1994, an incident prompted not just by a surge of anger but a sense of how justice really worked in the ring and in life.

It was a matter of SOS, according to Jim Regan - Stretch Or Starve. Stretch for the last piece of bread or starve. Fallon turned the racetrack into a form of mental combat, asserting his will on his rivals every afternoon of the week, daring them to snatch the last crumb. If someone tried to get in your way, then retaliation was compulsory, a matter of instinct and honour. Keane played like that and Fallon, at his height, when alcohol hadn't dulled his senses, rode like that, with a drive and a wit that mocked racing's unpredictability.

But Fallon and his fellow Irishman were different in one significant way. The Keane family were steeped in football - Keane just took the family's talent on to a much bigger stage. Fallon had no such support, not because his family didn't care but because they didn't know.

"Loyalty to family and friends remains a cornerstone of my life," Keane wrote. Fallon would share the same philosophy. Keane just developed a better understanding of how the outside world worked than Fallon did. Fallon always seemed shy and self-conscious of his own success.

"I'd put him right up there with Keane," says Regan. "They're streets apart from anyone else in their field. With them both, there's a strong sense of taking life as it is because things could be a lot worse. That's inherent, perhaps because we were so long in oppression and we weren't able to express ourselves so strongly. You knew with Kieren that he would always give his best, you would never be ashamed of him."

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