Was Lavan Mayo’s most gifted athlete of all time?

The 1921 All-Ireland football championship was a peculiar one, to say the least. It was peculiar for a variety of reasons, and Mayo football had a significant role to play in the manner in which that peculiarity played out.

Not only did the final take place in the summer of 1923, Mayo made the final by overcoming the reigning All-Ireland champions Tipperary in the semi-final and without having to as much as kick a ball – the Premier County exited the championship having failed to field a team when they were due to meet the Connacht champions.

But perhaps the most defining moment of the championship arrived in the All-Ireland final between Mayo and Dublin. And as it happened, not one of the 16,000 strong in attendance were likely to have understood at the time the ramifications of one man's actions during the game. A single passage of play from a Mayo forward would nevertheless change how the game would be played across the country in time. One moment of experimentation revolutionised the game.

Kiltimagh native Sean Lavan was a man of many talents: he was a schoolteacher, a medical doctor, a distinguished athlete and a footballer with a flare for thinking outside the box. He even dabbled in the fistic arts, and won medals playing soccer and rugby at a high level while in university in UCD. During his time as a student he won both Sigerson Cup and Collingwood Cup medals, and also played rugby at the old Lansdowne Road.

Born in Kiltimagh in 1888, it was clear that Lavan boasted a healthy blend of athletic and academic prowess from an early age. He received a scholarship to train as a teacher at De La Salle College in Waterford. After graduating as a teacher in 1919 he began his career in the classroom in Cloongullane National School a short distance outside Swinford. But he soon returned to university to study medicine in 1923. Despite clearly being an immensely committed and ambitious student, he remained a phenomenal athlete with 15 national athletics titles to his name. And as you'd expect from a man that juggled many pursuits at once, he was also very versatile within the track and field arena. He won events at every distance between 100 and 880 yards, and excelled at both the long jump and discus.

Yet arguably the most noteworthy action of his distinguished sporting career came in Croke Park when lining out for his native county in the All-Ireland final.

In the 1921 championship decider, Lavan was positioned at wing-half forward where it was clear that he was Mayo's most prominent threat on a day Dublin dominated. Though Dublin would emerge with a 10-point victory, Lavan's stock still rose. His background in athletics came to the fore throughout the game, with the following morning's report in the Irish Times pointing out "one or two spectacular runs" from the 24-year-old that helped Mayo remain within three points of the Metropolitans at the interval.

The Kiltimagh man continued to attack menacingly in the second-half, even as Dublin built a healthy lead, scoring his side's only point of the half and hitting the crossbar at the end of one particular Mayo attack. But it was his style of running at defenders that drew eyes.

The Irish Times reporter referred to a style that "invites danger" which could only have been a reference to a solo run, the very first time the skill was executed in the game. Those in attendance at the time will have been blissfully unaware, but Lavan had just introduced a unique skill that would become fundamental to the game in time.

One of those in attendance that June day was Seamus O'Malley, a teaching student at St Patrick's College in Drumcondra who would later captain Mayo to their first All-Ireland title in 1936.

Author Jack Mahon spoke to O'Malley for his book, History of Gaelic Football, published at the turn of the millennium, in which the former Mayo captain recounted Lavan's performance.

"I first saw Sean Lavan play for Mayo versus Dublin in Croke Park and clearly remember him getting the ball around midfield and soloing to within 20 yards of the Dublin goal and scoring a point," he said. "It was the first solo run I ever saw, and to the best of my knowledge the first exhibition of the skill in a Gaelic football game."

With that run alone, it could be fairly argued that he became one of the most influential figures in the history of the game's development.

Less than a year after unknowingly revolutionising the game of Gaelic football, the man that would become known as Baller Lavan for his exploits was broadening his horizons once again. Given his abilities in track and field, he was unsurprisingly invited to become a member of the first Irish Olympic team to compete at the Summer Games in Paris. Lavan competed in both the 200-metre and 400-metre events at the Stade de Colombes, missing out on a place in the 200-metre final by a narrow margin. Four years later, he returned to the quadrennial event and captained the Irish team that participated in Amsterdam. Once again, the Mayo man took part in the 200-metre and 400-metre events. Despite his rise within athletics, the magnetic force of home comforts was too strong to ignore and he continued to play football for Mayo, even touring the United States with his home county in 1932.

He was perhaps the most naturally gifted and versatile Mayo athlete of all time. And though his name isn't instantly recognised in the 21st century, certainly outside Kiltimagh, the results of his creativity and imagination are still observed every time a team takes to a GAA pitch. A century on, innovative sporting minds like Lavan's are few and far between.