In 1974 Dublin won the All Ireland Football final. It was a memorable year as the team, previously one of the least respected in Leinster, achieved one surprise result after another. The team became known as Heffo's Heroes and it captured the attention of an entire nation. Two years later the team won another All Ireland and then a third the following year. What this team managed to do in the sporting arena at that time and with their lives since is a story of remarkable achievement.

In his commentary of the 1977 All Ireland semi final between Dublin and Kerry Michéal O'Hehir said "twenty nine minutes still remaining in this game, hallelujah". O'Hehir hallelujahed for all of us. And the final 29 minutes of that game were commensurate with O'Hehir's anticipation of them. It was the greatest game from one of the great eras in Gaelic football.

It began with a team cal1ed Dublin and a man cal1ed Kevin Heffernan. One of the best players of his time, Heffernan had been involved as manager, selector and trainer of Dublin teams through the Sixties and early Seventies. He achieved little. For the season 1972-73 Heffernan removed himself from the Dublin scene but returned at the beginning of the fol1owing season.

The team which he took over was hopeless. Three years later it would be deemed one of the best in the history of the game. Heffernan's input into the making of the team was immense. Some of the players believe that the manager's role has been overstated. That may be true but it is beyond dispute that the initial impetus came from the manager.

Heffernan was fortunate in 1973 as he took over the managership of the team on the right terms. Jimmy Grey, the then chairman of the Dublin board, understood there was no future for the old, unwieldy five man selection committee and got his board to agree to the appointment of just three selectors.

Donal Colfer and Lorcan Redmond were Heffernan's fel1ow selectors and would remain his two lieutenants for 12 years. Heffernan believes that the roles of Colfer and Redmond have been greatly underestimated: "I would not want to emphasize my role because as the thing evolved there were recognizable differences of roles."

But the public, keen to personalize the success of the team, settled on Kevin Heffernan. The team became known as "Heffo's Heroes". It competed in six consecutive Al1 Ireland finals, winning three times. The achievement of 1974 when the team came from nowhere to win an Al1 Ireland is unparal1eled in the recent history of Gaelic games.

Heffernan was definite about his starting point: "There were four fundamental points: the team had won nothing, it had done nothing, morale was at a low ebb and confidence just was not there."

A pragmatist, Heffernan knew that he was not going to turn his ugly ducklings into swans in one season and so he settled for what he could do:

"We wanted to create in the players a sense that they had an asset which nobody else had. We were going to make them the fittest team in the country. Winning itself would be a boost but it was more important in justifying our emphasis on the fitness."

At the time the team was in Division Two of the National League and the standard of the opposition permitted a run of low key successes, Heffernan opted for the participative approach to the building of the team: "In our dealings with the players we adopted an open approach. We believed we should be able to justify, in front of al1 of the players, our decisions as selectors our tactics and we also wanted to be able to discuss the performances of individuals."

Heffernan had a preference for physical1y strong players but also players with the mental capacity to benefit from a thought out approach to football: "I did not want strong dummies. At that time intelligent guys were available and that is a very rare happening in sport. My contribution was to get the best out of them. Loyalty to each other was a hugely important factor in our approach."

That the players possessed unusually high levels of intelligence is evident from the success achieved by so many in their professional lives. It was a team of doctors, engineers, solicitor and economist, executives and entrepreneurs, schoolteacher and publican.

Although it went on to achieve outstanding success, the team rose from a very humble beginning. Heffernan recalls a league match against Kilkenny in 1974, about six months before the team beat Galway to win the 1974 All Ireland: "Our match against Kilkenny was supposed to start at 3.0 and we arrived into Nowlan Park at 2.30.

"We could not believe the number of cars that were parked outside the ground. We thought to ourselves that football must be more popular in Kilkenny than we had imagined. But when we got inside the ground we saw that a hurling match was starting. It was the Kilkenny county minor championship final.

"I went to Paddy Grace, the Kilkenny county secretary who has since passed away, and said that our match was scheduled to start at 3.0 but that the minor match was not going to finish until after 3.30. He was not in the slightest put out: .Ah you can have the points, if you want them,” he said.

"After the minor match ended the crowd of about 10,000 got up and went home. There were about 20 supporters left in the ground when we played and most of those had traveled from Dublin."

The thing which most strikes you about Kevin Heffernar is presence. Without saying much he controls the flow of conversation, the depths to which the conversation is taken and he is an expert listener. He uses silences to force the other person to give information and, often, to give ground.

Tommy Drumm worked with Heffernan from 1976 to 1984: "That presence, it remains the same even when you know him for years. I remember being impressed by it when I first met and I am still conscious of it today."

At the zenith of Dublin's success Heffernan was industrial relations manager for the ESB and it is certain that the skills which made him effective in his professional life were useful in his sporting life.

Having spent ten years managing the ESB's industrial relations, Heffernan accepted early retirement in 1985 and joined the Labour Court: "The ESB was hectic and I was glad of some- thing less trying." Recent reports have linked Heffernan with a high profile consortium seeking of the licenses for Dublin Local Radio.

Heffernan demanded shocking loyalty from his amateur players. Keaveney had to train three times a week with the team, he had to cut down on the number of drinks he liked to have at St. Vincent's on a Saturday night and he had to avoid the fattening foods to which he was addicted. Determined that he would, Heffernan personally supervised Keaveney's performance in all three areas.

But if total commitment was forthcoming from the player, Heffernan would give enormously in return. The team knew it was being better trained than any team in Ireland, better than teams anywhere according to Dr. Pat O'Neill: "Since I have become involved in sports medicine I have seen a huge amount of sportsmen and training methods.

"More and more it is becoming clear that what we did with Kevin was as good, if not better than any methods I have subsequently encountered. He must have read widely on the subject of team preparation because all of the stuff that I have come across in the best books, stuff about the science of training, is stuff that I have experienced at first hand with Kevin."

Heffernan offered more than an excellent training regime. He was confidant to the players, ready to listen to any matter which concerned the players. When Bobby Doyle considered changing jobs in 1977 he went to Heffernan, other players came with their financial concerns, others with domestic problems.

The players could see that Heffernan was driven by the need to succeed and were encouraged by that. Sean Doherty did not mind doing whatever Heffernan demanded: "He had been there himself, we knew that. I was 27 when we started out on the road in 1974, I had not won anything at county level and the harder Heffernan made things, the more I liked it. There was going to be no easy way."

With his own belief in Dublin football, he inspired them to believe that the ultimate victory was attainable. Heffernan convinced the players they would beat Cork in the 1974 semi final. Part of the manager's attempt to instill confidence was his absolute insistence that a Dublin team would always beat Cork.

Heffernan's greatest strength was his understanding of foot- ball but there were other qualities. He was obsessive about the game. John McCarthy, a guard stationed at Mountjoy, recalls working night duty and Heffernan turning up at the station to see him. It was seven o’clock in the morning. Robbie Kelleher tells the story of arriving home at 1.30am after a night out to find a message which read: "Kevin Heffernan rang, call him no matter what time you get in". Another football matter.

He was also a winner. Kevin Moran believes that Heffernan would have been an excellent manager of an English First Division team: "Kevin was a winner and only wanted winners around him."

If Heffernan was respected by all of his players, they did not all like him. But then, the players agree, he sought not their affection. Many felt that Heffernan lacked sensitivity and that this led to disappointment and even a little sourness when the time came for the manager to forsake his old soldiers.
Heffernan deliberately chose players with intelligence and character. The players agree that what was achieved stemmed primarily from strength of character rather than natural ability.

The thoroughness of the preparation set a benchmark in Gaelic football. When Mick O'Dwyer's Kerry team sat down to work out how they could beat Dublin it was clear to them that they needed to make the sacrifices that their rivals were making. Heffernan's panel spent hours on the training ground, hours in team discussions and hours before the video recorder.

They used copies of RTE recordings but found they were not enough. Heffernan asked a man called Tiernan McBride to video all of Dublin's matches and from a very particular perspective. When Dublin attacked McBride's camera encompassed their opponents' half of the field, when Dublin defended the camera switched to that half of the field.

The idea of having the camera span one half of the field was designed to show the manager what players were doing in the seconds before the ball came their way. Arguments raged as a consequence: "We would spend an hour trying to identify the player at the corner of the screen who had not moved into the right position before the ball was played into his area," recalls Anton O'Toole.

Many of the Dublin players will not recall Heffernan fondly, but they will continue to recall him. "Everybody," says Pat O'Neill "was afraid of him. He would say it was respect, but it was fear."

When Bobby Doyle was dropped for the 1975 a number of players complained to Heffernan. One of them was Gay O'Driscoll: "I told him that I thought Bobby should be in the team. He said to me that he would drop his mother if he considered she was not worth her place." O'Driscoll would not have had the slightest doubt about that.

1. Paddy Cullen.


Partly because he was an optimist and a dreamer, it was Cullen who first considered that Dublin might be going somewhere. During training at Parnell Park jets flew overhead and Cullen spotted them. Turning to whoever was nearest he would say "see that, we will be on one of those bound for America next year". That was early 1974, Dublin had not won a thing and did not look likely to win any- thing. But Cullen never let up.

At first it was a joke, then a dream. Mullins recalls being fascinated by it: "Paddy had been out as a replacement All Star the previous year and was always telling us how good the trip was. He said we would win the All Ireland and would go to America as the Dublin team. We laughed at first. It was his little dream. But, in time, it became our dream too."

Unlike most Dublin players of the time, Cullen claims to have seen the success coming: "After we were beaten in the 1973 championship, in a replay against Louth, Heffernan came into the dressing room in Navan, stood up on a timber bench and said he would get a team that was going to win.

"He was not involved with the team that year but he was very interested and he had it in his head to get a team together. And as everybody will tell you, when Heffernan said it you were inclined to believe. Early in 1974 we were beaten by Kildare in a Division Two playoff and everybody was sickened by the defeat.

"There was a function in the Grand Hotel, Malahide that night and the players were going around saying how they had let themselves and Heffo down. All the time vowing it would never happen again. The reaction to that defeat really impressed
me."

Cullen first played for Dublin in 1966 and needed optimism to sustain him through eight years in which the county failed to reach a Leinster final. He could have played League of Ireland soccer as Shelbourne considered him good enough but his roots and his heart were in Gaelic football.

Heffernan liked him. As much as a person as a goalkeeper. He warmed to Cullen's easy and personable manner and especially admired the goalkeeper's ability to laugh at himself. That quality hangs along the wall of the pub which Cullen owns in Ballsbridge as eight photographs show the sequence which resulted in Mike Sheehy's bizarre goal in the '78 final.

It was not funny at the time and Cullen felt bad about what happened for six months. Time has altered his perspective and he has learned to find fun in the episode: "For a while I had to take the wrap for that goal and, in a sense, for Dublin losing the All Ireland. I would meet a guy and he would' jaysus Paddy, I lost a fortune on ye'. Now, ten years on I'm behind the bar and a stranger walks in and says 'hey Sheehy, give us a pint there'. Another guy comes in and asks me do I really know why Kerry got that free. When Mike Sheehy is in town he will drop in. I tell him that I made him a star, he will say that he made me a millionaire." What stung Cullen at the time was in the unending series of debates about the goal, people forgot everything else. Like the fact that he was a good goalkeeper. He wanted to play well in 1979 and experienced immense satisfaction when he did. His performances that year earned him a fourth All Star award and restored Cullen's absolute belief in his own ability.

About his goalkeeping, Paddy was serious. In one of the video examinations of their matches the Dublin panel was reviewing a National League semi final against Derry in Sachs hotel. They had RTE's recording of the game and the recording which Tiernan McBride did for Heffernan.

Dublin won the match comfortably but had conceded three goals. Heffernan believed Cullen was at fault for one of the goals, Cullen disagreed. They argued for an afternoon, replaying the goal over and over on both recordings. Heffernan says Cullen eventually accepted responsibility, over a decade later the goalkeeper says he never did.

If goalkeeping talent constituted one part of Cullen's equipment, an affable nature was another and it is not certain which was the more important. He served his time to be an electrician with McNaughtons, beginning at the age of 15 in 1960 and years on he owns a pub which the auctioneers say is worth about 600,000 pounds. And all the time every body said Cullen was easygoing.

His business success has much to do with the endearing personality. After McNaughtons he joined Merchants Warehousing and spent his working day fixing cranes that hung over the River Liffey. Three years later he went to work for a Swiss company, Brown Boveri, in Dundrum. He was the first electrician employed by the company and as business expanded, the number of electricians grew to 16: "Being first in gave me an opportunity to go into management as I started dealing with the unions. If there any problem I would meet the Union on behalf of the company."

In dealing with the unions Cullen found that being the Dublin goalkeeper was an advantage. People felt they knew him before they met him. He worked with Brown Boveri from '69 to '78 and left only when Listers came along with an offer he could not refuse. They wanted him to supervise the sales of electrical generators and the salary was too good to pass up. But the new job meant being away from his wife Ann and their two children from Monday to Friday and so it did not work out. Within a year Cullen left Listers to become personnel officer at Musgraves Cash and Carry: "I was moving into Musgraves soon after the '78 final which was not ideal. But what was it Brendan Behan said; the only bad publicity is your obituary. I spent eight good years in Musgraves." The idea of a pub first came from Tony O'Donnell, a friend of Cullen's and a builder by trade. He rang one day and asked if Cullen would be interested in buying a pub in Ballsbridge. O'Donnell's proposal was to buy the pub, he and Cullen would be partners having equal shares, O'Donnell himself would do the extensive refurbishing which the pub needed and Cullen would run it. There was a further stipulation that Cullen could buyout O'Donnell at some time in the future if he so wished.

Jimmy Keaveney was present when news of the purchase of Paddy Cullen's came through: "A group of us were on our way to Shannon as we were flying from there to the Los Angeles Olympics. We stopped in Matt the Threshers outside Limerick for a drink, Paddy told us to order while he made a quick phone call. He returned to the bar almost immediately and told the barman to change the order, everyone was having a double brandy."

Paddy Cullen was one of ten children, his parents ran their home on the premise that they could spend only what they had. They never borrowed. Before agreeing to O'Donnell's proposal, Cullen had to accept the idea of borrowing:
"My wife Ann was a great help. Her people had a shop in Stoneybatter where they baked the gur cake and she was not afraid to venture. She used to tell me that I was an electrician and she was a nurse and if everything failed I could return to the toolbox."

Helped by the charm of innkeeper, Paddy Cullen's of Ballsbridge has become of Dublin's better known pubs.

Cullen did buyout O'Donnell and is now the sole owner of his pub. He drives a nice Mercedes and says he has no wish to change his station in life: "I don't want to be a millionaire. People have asked me to go into something bigger again but I'm not interested. You buy bigger, you buy problems.

"We have established this place as a family run and easygoing pub. We know the fellows who come in. Friday night is Keaveney's night and a good few of the other lads drop in from time to time. Pat O'Neill comes here most weekends and I would see Robbie Kelleher, Bernard Brogan, Gay O'Driscoll, the Doc and Brian Mullins on a regular basis."

The innkeeper is now well settled. He and Ann have three children. Anthony is 18; Liz is 14 and Andrew six. The eldest boy has started auctioneering with Hamilton, Osborne and King, Liz is at school in Mount Sackville, Andrew is at St. Brigids. Anthony likes cycling, never much cared for football but Andrew could be the footballer. The Dad likes to kick around with Andrew, go to an occasional film in town and get out to Stackstown Golf Club when he can. Is he easygoing about the golf? Is he what?: "Whatever the top handicap is, I playoff it."

About the closest you get to a serious disappointment in the life of Paddy Cullen are medals. Two years ago his home was burgled and the medals were taken. Six of them; two All Ireland, two League and two Leinster championships, were part of a gold bracelet which Cullen had had made. Every medal was taken, apart from one All Ireland medal which lay inadvertently in an old jug. There were many appeals in the newspapers and on radio for the return of the medals but Cullen never saw them
again.

How could anyone burgle the home of a nice man like Paddy Cullen? To that question, the innkeeper would probably suggest asking Sheehy.

2 .Gay O’Driscoll


One evening at training Hickey and McCarthy decided to do a'Driscoll. McCarthy would line him up as he came out with a ball and Hickey would collide at speed. The plan worked as the schemers intended.

O'Driscoll went down. Hickey and McCarthy waited for the reaction.

Getting up quickly O'Driscoll spat into the palm of one hand, rubbed it into the palm of the other and said to fellow defender Kevin Moran: "Okay, these guys are not getting another score, not another score". From Gay O'Driscoll there could be no com- plaints. He gave it, he took and he forgot it.

When the Dublin players consider the hardest, O'Driscoll and O'Neill share a desk at the top of the class. He was, of course, more than a hard man. O'Driscoll was bright, he could read the game, his marking was tight and he was quicker than he looked. But greater than any physical attribute was his attitude. He was obsessed by the desire to do his job within the team.

If his opposite man did not have the stomach for trench warfare he was wasting his time on O'Driscoll. Before the 1974 final it was expected that Galway's skilful corner forward JohnnyTobin would hurt Dublin's defense. O'Driscoll allowed himself to be dominated by the responsibility of marking Tobin. Before the game he vowed to his team mates that he would outplay his opponent. Under the weight of O'Driscoll's will during the match, Tobin hardly stirred.

He was, by nature, more a hurler than a footballer. At the age of 19 he had played both games for Dublin's senior teams. In 1967 he played left half back on the Dublin hurling team which lost by a point to Tipperary in the U-21 All Ireland final. His marriage to Catherine Campbell in 1972 inclined him to opt for one game and, on a whim, he chose football: "Both Dublin teams, hurlers and footballers, were hopeless and not going anywhere. It did not seem an important decision."

O'Driscoll had six good years from 1974 to '79, although he recollects the final championship campaign without enthusiasm:
"I believed I should have been in the team for the 1979 final against Kerry and that Heffernan was wrong to leave me out. Through the first half of that game I became convinced I should have been in the side and at halftime I said to him 'for jaysus sake, will you put me in the team'. He did and I think I did okay in the second half."
He was then 32 and the following day announced his retirement from football. The decision came easily. His enthusiasm for the game had been drained over the previous six years and a man with his pragmatism was not going to dream about romantic futures. O'Driscoll cut himself off from Gaelic football, telling his club St. Vincents he no longer wished to play.

There was but one moment of regret: "Each year I associated the first smell of cut grass with the start of serious football and the following spring there was the smell but not the excitement of a forthcoming football championship." When Heffernan talks of wanting strong men in his team but not wanting strong dummies, it is easy to understand how he liked O'Driscoll. He was born in West Cork but moved to Dublin a few years later when his father got a job with the Port and Docks board.

They went back to West Cork on holidays during the early years and thirty years on, O'Driscoll's own family holiday in West Cork. Local people recall the ten year old Gay holidaying in West Cork. He owned a football and brought it with him to Owenahincha beach. O'Driscoll sat on a wall and waited for the local boys to come along and play. When they went home he would return to his position on the wall and wait for another group to come and play.

"As a businessman I tend to say why not, rather than why."

Sitting and waiting might have been the thing at that time but it was not something O'Driscoll cares for in later life. After schooling at Scoil Mhuire in Marino and Joeys in Fairview, he served his time to be a fitter/turner, eventually qualifying as a toolmaker.

He first worked for an engineering company San bra Fyffe. It was a well paid job but the company had young management and O'Driscoll little prospect of quick promotion. At the time he knocked around with his Vincents and Dublin team mate Jimmy Keaveney who sold office equipment and furniture for T&D Nortons. Keaveney was doing well and when a position at Nortons arose O'Driscoll was in. That was 1969.

Dublin's success in the 1974 final convinced O'Driscoll the time had come to leave the cliff edge and flyaway on his own. He left Nortons on January I, 1975: "I was always a bit ambitious, never looked at the n

Club BK

egatives. People say to me you were great to take the chance but a lot of it was ignorance."

He began selling office furniture from a base in FitZwilliam Place and bought his own premises in Dorset Street a year later. Business grew steadily. In 1984 O'Driscoll set up his own manufacturing company. It produces office furniture and is sited on Church Road in Dublin's North Wall. It employs twenty people fulltime and with the office staff in Dorset Street, O'Driscoll is not short of responsibilities: "It is a lot of bucks to find on a Friday afternoon."

Nowadays he sits behind a desk at his spacious office in Dorset Street. The light brown hair is now graying but precious little else has been conceded to Time. The office furniture is wood, painted black, with aluminium frames. On one wall there is a
A copper engraving of "the" Dublin team, on another wall a photograph of O'Driscoll with the Taoiseach, Mr. Haughey; a map of Ireland hangs on another wall and there are family photographs on the desk.

"What we are selling," says the Captain of Industry, "is not desks and chairs but an office environment. A design package."

The man looks as if he has got it made? O'Driscoll considers that thought uneasily: "The quality of life is the important thing and I don't believe that is necessarily improved by wealth. As a businessman I tended to way why not, rather than why." The O'Driscolls have two children, Karen (15) and Colin (13). Karen is a strong swimmer and has competed successfully in international competition: "A very determined girl," according to her Dad. And Dad should know about determination.
His fellow players from the seventies talk about how badly he wanted to be in the team. Once he stood before them at a team meeting and said that if he were watching his understudy Jim Brogan wearing the No.2 jersey for Dublin he would will Brogan to make mistakes. Brogan would have been present and would have understood.

Heffernan recalls the team meeting before the Leinster quarter final against Offaly in 1974: "Gay was a sub and he stood up and told the lads on the team that if any of them were feeling the pressure or wanted to opt out there were subs ready and willing to take their place. And he asked them to keep this in mind as they ran onto the pitch. That was Gay."

Between O'Driscoll and Heffernan there is obvious respect. Each had the capacity to appreciate what the other was about. Affection did not enter into it. When they speak of each other now it is still without affection: "Heffernan was never a fellow I would ring up and ask out for a drink." They differed on how the press should be handled.
Heffernan wanted to keep newspaper people at arms length. Certain journalists got closer and O'Driscoll was believed to be one of the moles: "In my view Heffernan was wrong about the media. Even if it was an evil, it still existed. But he saw it simply as an evil."

Heffernan resented O'Driscoll's openness to journalistic enquiry: "There was an understanding within the group that we would not say anything and Gay, for his own reasons, did not abide by this."

After retiring from Gaelic football O'Driscoll trained and played with Malahide's junior rugby side. He later turned to golf: "I need physical exercise. Without it I will wake at two or three in the morning, totally unable to sleep, and end up making myself a cup of tea down in the kitchen."

Like football, he played rugby and golf for keeps. He could not resist competition. Heffernan re-entered his life last year: "Since I stopped playing football I did feel pangs of guilt about not putting something back into Gaelic games. When Heffernan asked me to take over the Vincents hurling team I was glad to agree. He said he wanted somebody with commitment.

There is a certain romance in the thought of O'Driscoll finishing his days in charge of a hurling team. The prospect of a gradual sporting fade-out stings: "I am not fucking finished yet," he says.

Through the eyes of a majority of Dublin players John Egan was Kerry's best. O'Driscoll, generally, ended up marking him. To survive O'Driscoll, Egan had to be hard. But if Gay had to be hard then, he can be gracious now:
"John Egan was the classic forward. Everything he did was for the team. Never wasted a ball. I would have marked Sheehy or Spillane any day before Egan. We often recall his point in the 1977 semi final. As, he came through I shadowed him, waiting for the moment to use my shoulder.

"When I hit him I made perfect contact. He had to go down. He did but he just bounced back up in the same movement, feinted left, moved to the right and put over an exceptional point. What could anybody have done?"

3. Seán Doherty.


Had you stood on Hill 16 for the 1973 All Ireland final between Cork and Galway you might have encountered a tall, fair haired man acting as a steward for the day. As Billy Morgan took the Sam Maguire Cup at the end of the match the steward turned to the man alongside him, who happened to be Phil Markey (now chairman of the Dublin County Board), and said what he wouldn't give to be in Morgan's position.

Sean Doherty was the Hill 16 steward. On that afternoon in '73 his hopes of playing in an All Ireland final were only marginally better than countless other stewards who might have longed to swap positions with Morgan, If, in the course of serious conversation, Doherty had mentioned the possibility of he captaining a team to win the All Ireland people would have wondered what troubled the man.

But, exactly a year on, Doherty was back in Croke Park. This time stewarding the Dublin square and Galway's Liam Sammon. When the match ended Dublin's left halfback Georgie Wilson told Doherty it was his job to go up there and receive the Cup. And the man who operated as a steward on Hill 16 probably thought to himself that he'd like to be in Doherty's place.

Now, no matter where he goes, somebody comes over and says "you were captain in '74, right?” He enjoys that. Even more when somebody introduces him as The Dublin Captain. They were good days for the man that the lads called "The Doc". Hickey and O'Neill might have come through medical school but on the team there was only one Doc.

The Doc says he had three ambitions in life: "I wanted to win an All Ireland, see the States and become a millionaire. I have achieved the first two and I owe a million." Jokes aside, the Doc will not be far off the mark. A plumber by trade, Doherty went out on his own in 1972. If he has looked back since then, it is merely to check how far he has come.

First there is the Dublin company. Sean Doherty Plumbing Contractor. It employs ten plumbers and involves the Doc on a day to day basis. Now there is another plumbing company, Glendoher Ltd., but this one is based in London and has a team of five: "Ray Farrell, who has been with me since I first set up on my own, is looking after the business in London.

"I had been getting lots of offers of work in London and eventually agreed. Better profit margins over there. I fly over every second week, spend two or three days there, just to check things over. But Ray is very good. With all the time I have been involved in football I could not have survived without two people, Ray and my wife Theresa."

And now there's the pub, Doherty's Tavern of Rockbrook. It used to be Leslie Aliens, the small country pub at the foot of the Dublin Mountains. Now it's the Doc's place. Nice bar for the men, spacious lounge for the men and women. The Doc tries to get around to the place each evening, just to keep an eye on things.

He's got this dream about a hotel, a city hotel, owned by a Dublin footballer. He knows a site he thinks would be suitable.

It might never happen but who would have thought that the Hill 16 steward would lift the Sam Maguire?

With the Doc it's not simply the money: "It's the challenge to be successful. That's more important. Going to London was a new challenge, that was the point. It is the same as the football. The satisfaction of walking away with a win, that's what I'm after."

Originally the Doc was from Wicklow, born and reared for 13 years in Ashford. Then the family moved to Ballsbridge and the conversion to the sky blue and navy was underway. It happened slowly and Doc was recalled to the Wicklow fold when the county played Kildare in the 1967 U-2I Leinster final.

Hurling and football were his games, preferred hurling but was better at football. In Dublin he played with Ballyboden Wanderers and got into the senior county team in 1969. The Doc can remember the call-up: "The thing about being asked to join the county team is that when the offer first arrives you are astonished.

"You think 'me, in the county team'. You never thought you were good enough. Then you play for two or four or six years and one day somebody decides you are not good enough and the funny thing is that you are again just as astonished. Now you can't believe that you are not good enough."

The Doc does not know why Heffernan appointed him captain but feels it may have been because he was so willing to submit himself to whatever was demanded: "When Heffernan took over I reckon that of the team which would play in all three All Irelands Cullen and I were the most committed. In the autumn of '73 Keaveney was in retirement, Hanahoe was messing around and O'Driscoll was in the subs."

Being captain in '74 was an experience of a lifetime: "I recall running out on the field, leading out the Dublin team and wondering whether I was running fast or slow. I could feel nothing in my legs. But Heffernan had told us to expect this feeling, that it would wear off early in the match. He was right. Once you got the feel of the ball, it was gone."

The Doc was again captain in '75 but after the final loss to Kerry, Heffernan changed his skipper, bringing in Hanahoe: "One evening at training Heffernan told me he was thinking of making Hanahoe captain and what did I think? What could I think or what could I say?"

Heffernan's clinical approach suited Doc: "My principle in business is that if you think a man is not doing the job you selected for him you replace him with another man who can do the job. It is as simple as that.

In Heffernan's defensive formation the Doc was there to protect the Dublin square. He did that job efficiently for six years only losing his place for the final in 1979. He was then 33: "One evening at training I was asked to go to the opposite end of the field, that is to take the full back position on the team made up of the subs and panelists.

"I reckoned I would not be in the team for the final but when the team was announced A N Other was named at full back. I was a bit disappointed they had not the guts to tell me. For a guy like me, who was around for so long, there was no need for A N Other.

"But I have nothing to complain about. There were so many great footballers from various counties who never won an All Ireland. Fellows like Mosie Coffey and Pat Baker from Wicklow, Mickey Martin from Leitrim, Mickey Kearins from Sligo, a Derry comer forward O'Connell. Can't remember his first name but he was some footballer."

And the Doc was left not just with three All Ireland medals but also the memories. Of his spectacular catch three minutes from the end of the '77 semi-final, at a moment when Dublin led by just two points. From that game there is another incident which remains vivid: "In my career as an inter county full back I only once had a shot for goal and that was in the '77 semi final.

"Sean Walsh moved so far outfield that once when I got the ball I found myself within scoring range. I struck for a point. But it landed on Con Houlihan. You know where Con stands, on the Canal End over at the Hogan Stand side. That's how close I came to scoring in an All Ireland semi-final."

The Dublin players never stopped being amazed by the Doc. He never, ever, sweated. No matter how punishing the training session or how warm the day, Sean Doherty did not sweat. There was a dressing room joke about a rumor to the effect that the Doc had sweated but nobody ever believed that.

Like O'Driscoll in the Dublin full back line, the Doc played it hard. He' was there to protect the goal. It was as uncomplicated as that. There is story told about Kerry's planning to beat Dublin in one of the big matches. Some of the Kerry players believed that Cullen could be unnerved if hit early in the match.

Different forwards said how it could be done. As the different methods were discussed Paudí O'Sé intervened to say that "the problem would not be getting in to hit Cullen but how to get out after hitting him." The Doc and 0' Driscoll inspired that kind of respect.

The Doc was a man of enormous physical strength. There were definite limitations in his game but his physical strength combined with an equally formidable mental toughness meant to ensure survival. You think of the Doc and you have a man who would enjoy the challenge of the jungle. If he were allowed have just one team mate alongside?:

"That's easy for me. Hanahoe. You could always fully depend on Hanahoe and he never let you down."

4. Robbie Kelleher.

One of the fundamentals of the Heffernan approach was that everybody participated. At team meetings he invited each panel list to contribute, encouraging them to criticize each other and offering them a platform for self-criticism. Having set up what he considered a participative structure, Heffernan selected people with the intellectual capacity to benefit from the system.

Through the years the Dublin team meetings were serious business. The players reveled in the group introspection and sometimes went further than Heffernan had in mind: "There were times," says one player, "when he was hanging on for dear life."

The meeting most often recalled is the one which took place on the Thursday night before the 1976 All Ireland final against Kerry. It was customary to have a team discussion in Parnell Park on the Thursday before important games. On that Thursday evening Heffernan presided over a meeting that went on for about an hour.

When he had said as much as he wished to say he sensed his players wanted to continue, with or without him. Robbie Kelleher's memory of the evening remains vivid: "He said 'I have nothing else to add, you guys can get on with it'. After Heffo left a discussion started and everybody got involved. It was intense stuff and an hour and a half later we were still talking.

At the end it became like a séance." During the post match discussions Heffernan criticized individuals. To their faces and in front of the group. Players criticized each other. The approach depended upon the players being big enough to accept criticism. It was also important that the criticism be seen as an attack on the footballer, not the person. The degree to which the players coped with the criticism was apparent all through the Seventies and when the same players crossed paths in the Eighties.

At the end of the 1986 championship the Dublin County Board discussed whom it wanted to train and select the senior football team for the following year. Brian Mullins, Sean Doherty and Kelleher comprised the outgoing selection panel. Mullins had indicated that he was not prepared to continue and the task for the County Board appeared to be to find a replacement for Mullins.

It was proposed that Tony Hanahoe would be the third man and that he would come in as team manager. Under the Mullins/Doherty /Kelleher leadership, responsibilities were shared and there was no team manager. Kelleher was unhappy about a team manager being imposed upon himself and Doherty.

At the meeting to sort things out, Kelleher declared he would not agree to Hanahoe becoming team manager. He would resign first. Even though Hanahoe attended the meeting and listened while Kelleher stated his position it did not prevent the two from leaving the meeting and retiring to a Haddington street pub where they got drunk together. No hard feelings, nothing personal. The rules were as before. Kelleher recently spent two weeks in Dingle. He met some people down there and they talked football. He ran into Paidí O'Sé, a man he never really knew. They went back on the days of the seventies and, once again, Kelleher was left with the realization that it must have been t something special.

"You could sense from the things people said that the Kerry/Dublin thing really did mean a lot. You could see the respect they had for the Dublin team. Paidí O'Sé says he was never subsequently hit as hard as Dave Hickey hit him." The stars on centre stage cannot savor the performance. Kelleher feels that so strongly:

"We missed out on something. The success of the team brought the city alive. The crack on the Hill. In the pubs before and after the match, we could not be a part of that. Before the '74 final we were in the tunnel at Croke Park, on our way to the dressing room when a few of the lads ventured f out to see what it was like. They saw the color on the Hill 11 and said 'Hey, Jaysus, have a look at that'. That was as much as we got.

Then there was the buildup in the dressing room. Different guys doing different things. Kevin Moran would disappear into shower room to be on his own for five or ten minutes. He would walk up and down in there, all alone. You stood for the National Anthem, all the time thinking about the first confrontation. You walked in the parade but only saw the legs in front of you and you never allowed your mind to stray. In the end if you won and there were a couple of seconds on the pitch when you savored it. That was all."

Kelleher is not sure how it all came to pass. A friend from his club Scoil Ui Chonail and he were skipping through old programmes recently and found some which went back to Dublin matches in 1971 and '72: "It surprised us to find 11 or 12 of the guys who won in '74 together on Dublin teams that were hopeless two years earlier.

A myth has developed that Kevin Heffernan came like a knight in shining armour in 1974. Heffernan was involved through the sixties and from 1970 to '72. His influence on my game was greatest in 1971 when he schooled me in the principles, of defending. I never tired of his listening to his analyses. He was the only coach I ever had."

Kelleher's life as an economist survived on his ability to dissect and explain. He sees three reasons why the team made it: "Dublin's tradition in football. We knew Dublin teams before us had won All Irelands and if we got to a Leinster or All Ireland final we were going to believe we could win. Secondly Heffernan's experience as selector/manager of losing Dublin teams prepared him for what was to come and, finally, the guys themselves were special characters. The success they achieved in their private lives afterwards was not unrelated to the quality that made them special."

Special characters. Not special footballers?: "Absolutely not. In my view there were five footballers on the team; Paddy Cullen, Kevin Moran, Brian Mullins, Dave Hickey and Jimmy Keaveney. And of that five Hickey never fully realized his potential. The rest of us were not footballers but we milked what we had to the fullest. The team was a great complement of talents."

Kelleher grew up in Glasnevin, went to the Irish school Colaiste Mhuire and managed an A in honors maths at his Leaving Cert. He thought this meant he should do maths at University. He had to take another subject at UCD and he chose economics. He did not care for maths at University but economics became his life.

At first he worked for the Economic Social Research Institute (ESRI), moved to the Central Bank in 1974, to Irish Life in 78 and three years later set up an economic consultancy firm with his former Central Bank employee, Colm McCarthy. They linked with the stock broking firm Davy to form Davy/Kelleher and McCarthy. DKM, as the company became known, grew steadily. The link with Davys strengthened and four years ago Kelleher moved from DKM to Davys. He is now head of Davy's research group, advising the company's own dealers and its clients.

Kelleher is considered one of the brightest economists in Ireland. Twelve years ago he was the country's best left full back and far better known for that than he is now for his eminence in economics. Within the Dublin group, he was one of the lesser personalities. As the open decked bus paraded the team through the city after the '74 final Kelleher got off and mingled with the crowd. In the crowd he was another Dubliner, nobody recognized him.

The appeal of Robbie Kelleher, footballer, was to the purist. His four All Star awards are unsurpassed for a left full back. Heffernan quickly spotted that he was slow on the turn but Kelleher had the intelligence to ensure he did not often turn. For those who felt uneasy about O'Driscoll and Doherty, gatekeepers who shot on sight, the subtleties of Kelleher were reassuring. But purists tend to lack worldliness and it was the gentleman in Kelleher who handed the ball to Mikey Sheehy for the most famous of all goals in Gaelic football. Kelleher's reflections, of course, go beyond that act of decency.

There was the Tuesday evening at Parnell Park after Dublin had beaten Wexford in the first round of the '74 championship and the return to arms of the portly Jimmy Keaveney: "I saw him coming in and I thought to myself 'Holy fuck, typical Dublin. We win one match and they bring back the old guy from Vincents." So much for the Analyst.

Then there was the '77 semi final. He got married a week before the game in San Francisco, flew home on Tuesday, fitness 'test on Wednesday, in the team on Thursday. His new wife flew in from San Francisco on the day before the game and the Sunday newspapers went mad: "Wife of Star Flies in for Match".

Now Kelleher wonders was it that big? After the game he went to the Scoil Uí Chonail pub, Kennedys of Drumcondra, and as he walked in the entire pub stood as one and applauded. Fame at last. The end of a great week. Seventy nine he hated. That was the year he broke his leg, two operations, screws inserted and the long haul back to fitness for the championship. He made it but Heffernan refused to pick him. It hurt. He is sure Heffernan was wrong. The others might have been over the top but he was only 28. Still good enough.

It was enough to make him retire. He did but Heffernan was enough to make him change his mind. This time Kelleher was wrong: 'I got out, that was the correct decision. I should never have come back. In 1981 it got to a point where I was almost hoping that we lost because I wanted it to end. What could we do for an encore?"

Kelleher did not form lasting friendships within the team. Occasionally he sees Jim Brogan and they agree to call each other. They call, arrange a lunch or a pint and wait until they bump into each other again.

Sometimes there will be a function or a reception "which gets a group of the guys together. Last year there was something in the Mansion House: "Anton, the Doc, Keaveney and myself ended up in the Dawson Lounge. We got very nostalgic about the old days and agreed it was a pity we did not get together for one big reunion. So the Doc said why not organize it. We said we would. And I went to Doc's pub the following Tuesday night. We were going to go away for a few days, all of us. We would bring golf clubs and videos of the old matches and have a great time. But the most that actually happened was that Doc and I got drunk that night."

5. Tommy Drumm.

The weather is hot, the suntan is free, the money is not as good as the people back home think but what he misses about Dublin is the football. He could have played in the '85 final. It would have been his seventh All Ireland appearance. But that afternoon Tommy Drumm was driving around Doha.

Doha? A town in the country of Qatar in the Middle East. Drumm has been in Qatar since October 1984. Four years of a man's life in a country where the population is 260,000 and the needle of the barometer rises to 115 degrees in summer. But if you live in Qatar in summer, it's the humidity that gets you.

Football was such a central part of his life that he took it for granted. Just accepted that it was there. Then, he was gone to Qatar and there was a void: "I had to fill that void. And I filled it with work. I still keep in touch with guys like Anton O'Toole, Mick and Dave Hickey, Mick Holden, Brian Mullins. Out here there are lots of water sports, you spend free time in and out of water but you use work as a substitute for what you had at home."

When Drumm left the Dublin team he was 29 but the kind of player who would have survived into his thirties. The team needed him to stay. He told Heffernan about the offer to work in the Middle East before the 1984 final: "I was

Club BK

about the offer to work in the Middle East before the 1984 final: "I was not going to play in that final and disappear. Anyway I was committed to him and I wanted to get his advice. He was very supportive."

Drumm is a civil engineer. He looked around Ireland in 1984 and did not see much activity in the construction industry. Two of the companies which he had worked for were threatening redundancies. When McInerneys asked him to work in the Middle East, he was interested. Three weeks after playing in the 1984 he emigrated.

He was first appointed construction manager of a McInerney company in Qatar. Four years on, he is acting general manager of the same company. He worked as hard at his work as he did at his football:

"Coming here was a career move and it has worked out very well. I would like to return home but being made acting general manager tempted me to sign another two years contract. The experience I am getting in management is invaluable.

"The indigenous Qatar population is just 60,000 and I go to India three times a year to recruit the engineers, masons, carpenters, painters that we need. What I am doing does not have much to do with engineering but a lot to do with the logistics of keeping 550 people manfully employed. The thing about the Middle East is that you get more responsibility thrust upon you than you would anywhere else."

Tommy and Rosemary Drumm will make out. Rosemary misses home even more than her husband but as personal assistant to the manager of British Airways in Qatar she gets home regularly.'

Drumm's strength on the pitch and elsewhere was his application. He sets his mind to achieve something and watch out. He went to Dick Keane, the career guidance teacher in St. Aidans CBS, and said he wanted to do engineering. Dick wondered was he overstretching himself. Drumm knew he was but that was how he wanted it.
He enjoyed St. Aidans, played on the same Gaelic football team as Liam Brady: "In the soccer games at school Liam would take the ball from one end of the yard to the other without anyone being able to touch him. Even then, everyone agreed he had exceptional talent."

Football was Drumm's game but he also played soccer. He went to Trinity because his cousin Frank was on the soccer team there and had introduced Tommy to the guys he played with. Liam Tuohy coached the team and Drumm became a central defender. He made the Combined Universities team in '74 and considered giving up Gaelic.

But his natural bent was for Gaelic and he could not get away from it. He opted to play both games at University, Collingwood and Sigerson Cups. For Trinity's Sigerson team he played midfield, again overstretching himself, but benefiting from the experience.

One evening he arrived home on the bus from Trinity and a friend told him he was in the Dublin senior panel for a tournament match the following Sunday. He expected to be No.27 but in the dressing room Heffernan looked at him and said: "you go in left half back ".

Drumm felt Heffernan was bestowing a great gift: "I immediately wanted to prove to Heffernan that I was prepared to do whatever was necessary. I wanted to prove he was right to give me the chance. I had a feeling for what he wanted and I desperately sought his respect."

When things fell asunder for the great team in '78, Drumm was 23. There was an enormous distance for him to travel. He found '79 chastening. Feeling ignominy in the second, even more comprehensive, surrender to Kerry. After that there was nothing more to be said, no excuses or promises to come back and beat Kerry.

He was there when the county hit the bottom in 1981 and saw the signs of a fresh beginning in '82. Heffernan asked him to be captain in '83 and he began to find out about the man he so admired but knew so little. The closer he grew to the manager the more he admired:

"What Kevin Heffernan did with the 1983 team was deserving of the highest praise. During the seventies he gave the orders and the lads got on with it. Cold and clinical. That was not going to work with the '83 team and Kevin changed his style. He cajoled them; he spoke with individuals outside of the group discussions and did many things completely different to the methods he used in the Seventies. I would not have believed he had the capacity to change but I saw how he did."

Lifting the Cup for the gallant 12 in 1983 was a moment to treasure. Heffernan approved of his captain and invited him on a week's golfing holiday to Spain. Drumm went and enjoyed the week greatly. He will not compare the Seventies team to '83 but wants to say that the Seventies team was "very, very special".

But life, even the football life, moves on. Mick Holden was as good a guy as he'd met, an endearing man with a wonderful wit. And there was a moment in 1983 that may stay more vivid than any other. It happened at the reception on the day after the stormy All Ireland final with Galway:

"There was an awful lot of tension in the banquet hall. Galway players not speaking to Dublin players and vice versa. Some Galway player had sung and a Dublin player was asked to reply. Joe McNally stood up and cut the air with a beautiful rendition of The Fields of Athenry. In an instant all the tension disappeared."

6. Kevin Moran.

A critic once wrote of the Coleridge poem Kubla Khan that it resembled a cow's tail; all it lacked was length to reach the moon. So it was with Kevin Moran's life as a Dublin footballer. He joined the Dublin panel in January 1976 and left it to join the Manchester United panel in February 1978. In between, there was Gaelic football’s Kubla Khan.

Heffernan has a picture of the first evening he came to Parnell Park: "He drove a 125 motor bike, wore a multi colored woolen pullover and he had a mop of unruly hair. As well as that he had a big grin. You could not but take to the guy." Moran was just 20 then. Two years later he was gone. leaving for Old Trafford, a little sad, a little excited and a little naive.

When the offer came he thought he would go there and just try to get into the United first team. One or two games with United and that would prove the point he wished to make. Then it would be back with the beloved Dubs: "I never went to United with the intention of making a living out of football. A couple of months, I thought, and I'd be back."

"If he saw a few lads kicking a ball around in a field he'd be likely to join them."

Twelve years on Moran, the competitor, still competes. He is now at the centre of Sporting Gijon's defense in the Spanish First Division. Joint fifth in the table and on course for a place in Europe next season. Last week's game was against Oviedo. Important? For Moran, they are all important.

But especially Oviedo: "It is a town just 25 minutes down the road, the next town. After that is four hours and 25 minutes down the road so you can imagine what it means. Since coming here I have had a marvelous run without injury but I have picked up a slight ankle injury and there is a doubt about the Oviedo game. Fingers crossed, I should be okay. Really want to play this game."

An old pal of Moran's at UCD Paddy Purcell once described the essential Kevin: "He would train with our soccer team in the afternoon and then have to go home to Walkinstown for a bite to eat before training with Dublin that evening. But if, on the way home, he saw a few lads kicking a ball around in a field he'd be likely to join them."

Gijon is a town in the province of Asturias, overlooking the Bay of Biscay on Spain's north coast. Kevin, his wife Eleanor and their two children Darragh, three, and Rachel, one have settled comfortably in Gijon. Mum and Dad attend Spanish classes three times weekly and Moran, the Dub, has already given his first interview in Spanish to local radio.

He is sure he made the correct decision in joining Gijon: "Leaving United was always going to be a wrench for me. If I had gone to another English club I would have been making comparisons. Here, everything is so different. The language, the food, the football. It is a completely new culture and there are no comparisons. It is good for us to get something so different."

Kevin's dad came from Leitrim, his mother from Monaghan. At first the Morans lived in Rialto but moved to the Long Mile Road in Walkinstown when Kevin 12 or 13. His first school was James' Street CBS, football was the game at school but on the streets it was soccer.

While in Rialto Moran played Gaelic with the St. Michaels club and transferred to An Caislean in Walkinstown. Or, at least he should have. Soon after going to Walkinstown he was asked to play for the club there. An offer Moran could not refuse but St. Michaels objected and the 13 year old Kevin was banned for a year from club football:

“Actually, that is where the soccer came in. As things stood at the time soccer and Gaelic at club level were both played on Saturday. I played Gaelic but the year's suspension meant I had to play soccer."

At the time of his entry to UCD, soccer was Kevin's game. First year at College he played for the Rangers youth side and then joined Bohemians the following year. He was a full back, John Doran was on the first team at Dalymount and Moran stayed in the seconds. The second team won the League of Ireland B championship in Moran's year.

But he missed Gaelic football and wanted to get back. His third year at College was divided between Good Counsel football team and the UCD soccer team. At this time Kevin Heffernan was looking for three new half backs: "After 1975 we knew we needed a new half back line. We had to dredge up three."

Heffernan, Donal Colfer and Lorcan Redmond tried to see as many games as possible. They also read newspaper reports of games in the newspapers. Every time they came across a report about a Good Counsel game they found that a guy called Kevin Moran had been outstanding.

The manager did not need to see much of Moran to understand that his was a special talent. More than that, Heffernan soon found that the player and he were on the same footballing wavelength. Both obsessive, both driven by the need to win and both naturally analytical about their sport.

In preparing for the 1976 final against Kerry, Heffernan watched the video of Kerry's runaway victory over Derry. The ease with which Kerry scored five goals that day worried Heffernan. From the video Heffernan understood how the goals came about: "They were using their corner forwards to draw the opposing team's corner backs away from goal and then getting somebody into the space created."

Heffernan asked Moran to ignore his man and cover in behind the Dublin full back line. Moran was not satisfied with the role, he wanted to study the video of the Kerry match for himself. Audacious, maybe but Heffernan was impressed: "We sat down with Kevin and spent a couple of hours going through the video with him and eventually he was satisfied."

In their semi final victory Derry, Kerry scored 5-14. Against Dublin in the final they scored 0-10. Time and again Moran picked up what appeared then to be loosely kicked passes behind the Dublin full back line. During the entire match, Kerry had few goal chances.

The respect and affection which developed between Moran and Heffernan during the seventies survived his move to Manchester: "Even now," says Moran, "we remain in pretty close touch. The great commitment which was in that Dublin team came from Kevin."

Since the Dublin boss Moran has had Dave Sexton, Ron Atkinson, Alex Ferguson and Jack Charlton. You sense he would not rate any superior to Heffernan: "I know Kevin would have made a very good First Division manager. The man is a winner and he only wants winners around him.

"I have worked with soccer managers who at the end of a team discussion would ask 'has anybody anything to say'. Kevin never did that. He turned to somebody and said "you, what do you think'. So in soccer I have rarely seen good team discussions, with Kevin we had them all the time."

Moran understands that other Dublin players do not share his absolute devotion to Heffernan. He is too fair to believe he is right and they are wrong: "No, I can see why they might have reservations. Kevin would not mix words and guys were going to find out in the newspapers that they were not in the side.

"But there is no easy way of telling a man he is not playing on Sunday. There is no sensitive way of doing this. In the English First Division big players find out they are dropped by reading the newspaper, it happens all the time. Worse than that you read the newspaper and find you have been transferred: 'Oh', "you think, 'I have changed jobs, better see the manager about this'. It might sound funny but it happens."

Hindsight tells Moran that Heffernan's pre-occupation with the game and the matches meant that other areas were neglected. When he heard that Georgie Wilson and Stephen Rooney used to hitch part of the way from Balbriggan to training, it disappointed him.

There was also the scandalous sprint at the end of training each evening. David Hickey says it was fastest sprint of all. Winners received the pints of milk which the Dublin County Board made available. Losers went thirsty. Moran thought the scarcity of milk was a testimony to pettiness.

He discovered for himself the ways of the Dublin County Board in 1978: "I had traveled back from Manchester four times for matches and paid the fare myself each time. I was told to apply to the Board and I would be re-imbursed. Even though there were other expenses I only asked for the price of four flights. It came to 240 pounds. When the cheque arrived 120 pounds had been deducted for old All Ireland tickets which I had received."

And yet it broke Moran's heart to leave Heffernan, the lads and Parnell Park: "I have always said they were the best years of my life. I hated leaving, I regret that it was so short but circumstances dictated that I had to go."

He was sure he would never meet another group of people like the Dubs of the Seventies and for three or four years at Old Trafford he pined to be back amongst them: "It was around then I made up my mind that football was my job and not just a bit of fun. So I got on with it. But I was never going to be able to get Dublin out of my system in one or two years. It was too good for that."

And Manchester did become home. He also realized that great guys exist everywhere. People like Gordon McQueen, Jimmy Nichol, Sammy McIlroy, Norman Whiteside, Bryan Robson, Paul McGrath, Ashley Grimes, became good friends. He continued to see fellows like Lou Macari, Stuart Pearson and Paddy Roche around Manchester. All people he liked.

Now Gijon is home and already there are new friends. David Hickey reckons Moran has made all the right moves. On the pitch always in the right place at the right time and blessed with a similarly shrewd positional sense off the pitch? Moran says leaving Dublin in '78 did not seem a good move to him but, yes, he has done okay.

He has two greeting card shops in Manchester which will mean a return to the English city after Spain: "We intend to go there after Spain but the eventual aim is to settle in Ireland." Twenty six thousand people attended Moran's testimonial at Old Trafford.
That constituted a significant thank you from the club's sup- porters. Then there was the deal to go to Gijon. It is said that the deal was, well, you know, lucrative: "You could say that," says Moran, "that would be fair".

7. Pat O’Neill.

Sent off in an All Ireland minor semi final for an off the ball punch, on a life support machine for two days at the age of 24, an All Ireland medalist at 26, he has spent the last six years of his life working in the Middle East. So far, Dr. Pat O'Neill has lived a full life. His life in the Middle East perfectly reflects O'Neill's capacity for taking on challenges. People in Saudi Arabia invited him to become Orthopedic Consultant to a new accident hospital at Riyadh International Airport. That was January 1982. He spent two years there. Immediately afterwards the Irish Healthcare Development Corporation, a government subsidiary, was setting up a hospital at a military base in northern Saudi Arabia. They asked O'Neill to become medical director at the hospital. That accounted for another two years. The next offer came from the Saudi Ministry of Youth Welfare who asked Dr. O'Neill to set up a Sports Medicine Hospital in Riyadh. He stayed with that for two years, going to the Seoul Olympics as orthopedic consultant to the Saudi team.

Back in Ireland now, he is doing a masters in sports medicine in London. He commutes between Dublin and London, spending weekdays studying and working in London and the weekends with his family in Dublin. His dream is to set up an elaborate sports clinic in his beloved Dublin:

"The crisis comes this summer. I will have my academic work behind me and I have to decide whether I go back to the middle east or try to get the sports clinic started in Dublin. In terms of sports medicine we are about ten years behind in this country and setting up a clinic here is what I would like to do.

"But I will only do it right and the kind of facility I have in mind would cost 500,000 pounds. There are people in the middle east and America who might back it. But going back to the middle east is a possibility. There are countless others. The guy they got to run the Sports Medicine hospital which I set up did not work out and they want me back to run it."

Those with a precise memory of Pat O'Neill, footballer, may smile at the notion of his medical skills being so much in demand. If you played against him in the seventies, there was a reasonable chance that at least one member of your team would be in need
of the good doctor's services.

O'Neill was a hard footballer, some would have said dirty. He did not view his style in those terms: "When I was a fairly young foot bailer I analyzed my performances and came up with a pretty simple conclusion. I played badly when I was afraid of my opponent and I played well when he was afraid of me. "I never hurt anyone in my life, I might have frightened them but never really hurt them. It is not a parlor game and no matter what is said or written people like to see their football hard. When I played I was determined not to be afraid and I was guided by the fear of losing."

Within the team O'Neill's brash acceptance of hard football became something of a trademark. During the great years he worked as Casualty Registrar at Dr. Steevens hospital. His ser- vice to the sports community in particular was enormous: "They came from all over Ireland, coming by train to Heuston and then walking across the road."

At the Dublin team meetings before a big game O'Neill amused his team mates by encouraging them to hit as hard as they wished: "You do what you have to, I'll look after them in Steevens on Monday." About the orthopedic surgeon in the team, John McCarthy used to say he was "the only one who could do you with or without a knife".

Other players reckoned he was the only one in the team who could create business for himself when playing football, "break them on Sunday, fix them up on Monday."

Heffernan's attitude to O'Neill was the critical factor. The manager liked his wing back:

"O'Neill did foul a lot. But what do you do with the Pat O'Neills? Some would say that you should not pick him at all. For me it does not work like that. You try to control and accommodate. More players from opposing teams came to O'Neill with their injuries than you'd ever imagine and he never turned any body away.

"When I was working on an ESB project in Saudi one of the Irish lads in our group had a bad accident and suffered terrible injuries to his leg. O'Neill worked in a hospital in Riyadh and agreed to do the operation on the young kid's leg and he did a marvelous job. The Americans out there saw what he did with the young fellow and then wanted O'Neill doing different operations on their people. As a footballer I remember his marvelous hands and his absolute fearlessness."

O'Neill was the way he was and made no apologies. His dad, an agricultural scientist, and his mum, a nurse, were working in Rhodesia when they got married. Dad for the United Nations and Mum in a hospital in Salisbury. While they were there, Pat was born. He was four or five when they moved back to Ireland, setting up home in Dublin.

School was Gormanston College where he played sport under the former Down footballer Joe Lennon: "Joe had come with a masters from Loughborough College and we were all excited about his appointment."

At school he was frail and only made the Gormanston senior team in his final year. Hurling was his better game and in 1968 played for the Dublin minors at both hurling and football. The football championship ended somewhat notoriously:

"We won Leinster and were playing Cork in the All Ireland semi final. I was playing centre halfback because the two centre backs in the panel had been sent off in earlier rounds. A long ball came and John Coleman, who was centre forward for Cork, bit me. I thought to myself 'okay, we'll leave it at that for a while.

"When our goalkeeper kicked out the ball and the referee was not looking, I hit Coleman. I thought I had been cut. But Sean Cleary, an umpire from Galway, saw me and although umpires had no official jurisdiction at that time he reported me to the referee and I was sent off."

Heffernan trained that Dublin minor team and so he had first hand experience of O'Neill as teenager. The demands of pre-med year at UCD forced O'Neill to chose between football and hurling. Even though he was a better hurler he opted for football: "Neither Dublin team was strong, but I believed there was the potential for a good football set-up."

He was in the Dublin senior football panel in 1969 and has not held a hurley in his hand since then. Illness meant he missed out on 1974. It first arose in January with swollen ankles being the first hint that something was wrong. A kidney problem was diagnosed, a week spent in the Mater appeared to sort this out and O'Neill was discharged.

Not long afterwards he was out on a Friday night but felt unwell: "When my Mum saw me coming home from town at nine o’clock on a Friday night she felt sure I was not right. I went to bed that night, awoke the next morning to find the sheets covered in blood and was rushed back to hospital. I had been coughing up blood during the night.

"The kidney complaint had developed and led to a lung disorder and when I got to hospital I was immediately put on a life support machine. I was on it for two days. I was in the critical care unit for about three weeks. I was still there on St. Patrick's day because the UCD lads, whom I played with, came to see in that unit having won the All Ireland club championship earlier in the day."

What O'Neill lacked in class, he made up for in application. One of the more lasting victories in O'Neill's mind is the Combined Universities success in the 1973 Railway Cup: "Eugene McGee, another tough man, was trainer of the UCD and also trainer of the Combined Universities that year.

"The final against Connacht, which I did not play in, was drawn and the Universities had a problem for the replay because their centre back was injured. Connacht's centre forward was Liam Sammon and he had caused big problems in the drawn match.

"The replay was in Athlone and before it started McGee argued that I should be picked at centre back. There was opposition as there were better footballers available. But McGee stuck to his guns and I got in. In the dressing room before the game McGee said' O'Neill come here, get your coat, we're going for a walk down town, to look at the shops'.

"So we went down town in Athlone, not saying very much. We stopped in front of a shop that sold sweets. We were both looking at the sweets when McGee said 'O'Neill, if you don't perform today, I'll be on my way back to Dublin at halftime'. But I did not mind that kind of responsibility."

The Universities won the game and O'Neill did a very effective marking job on Sammon. O'Neill finished playing with Dublin when he was 30. After the Leinster final of 1980 his ser- vices were no longer required. He was not in the panel for the League the following autumn and he quickly accepted that, for him, the county game was up:

"Although 30 would not be considered old now, it felt old then. At Dublin training I was okay against guys like Hickey and McCarthy, maybe a yard behind them, but I was being left three yards behind the new fellows, Ciaran Duff and Barney Rock. I saw the end for myself in '80 and was happy to continue playing just club football with Civil Service."

He believes he would have got out in 1978 if the team had won:

Club BK

"That was the encore, we had won the two previous years and '78 was to be the third in a row. I think we were getting a bit arrogant then, particularly in defense but it was incredibly easy to play football in that team. We understood so well what we should be doing.

Anyway it was a pity that we did not win because I would have willingly retired then as would Cullen, O'Driscoll, Hanahoe, Doherty and Keaveney. It was our shit or bust game and, as the Americans would say, we got shit on."

8. Brian Mullins.


In March 1981 Maire O’Higgins turned up at the Mater Hospital to begin a course of physiotherapy on an ankle which had been broken two months earlier. Maire was asked to do certain exercises which she found impossible. She was told to take a rest, to lay back on the pillow behind her. As she lay down she noticed a man across the floor who was doing exercises on his own.

He wore shorts and tee-shirt. Maire recognized Brian Mullins. She knew he had been in a bad .accident. She watched as he did his exercises: "He was clearly in great agony, lifting himself up, counting one second and then lowering himself back down.

"Then up again, counting up to two seconds before going back down. Up and down and always in agony. I could see that he was forcing his body to do things which it did not want to do. Watching him do that sorted out an awful lot for me. I decided that I would do my exercises, no matter what it cost."

The picture of Mullins lying on the floor of a physiotherapy room cuts close to the character of the man who was a force in the great Dublin team. It is not in Kevin Heffernan's nature to elevate one Dublin player above the others but it is sure that he has a special place for Mullins.

He speaks of him having a big heart, a big mind and a big body: "The greatest performance that I ever saw on a football field was given by Brian Mullins in a National League game in Cork at The Mardyke in 1975", says Heffernan. "It was an important game for us, he took on Cork on his own and we won."

Mullins is 34 and mellowing. The man who once told freelance journalist Liam Gorman that he had "no comment to make" and could "not be quoted on that" now smiles on all who smile. But there was always a chasm between Mullins' public persona and his private self.

John McCarthy recalls an incident from 1978: "We had played a Leinster semi-final in Portlaoise and were in the Killeshin Hotel afterwards. This guy came up to Brian, said he didn't like him and spat in his face. Brian looked at him and said' why did you do that, can't you see I am here with my wife having a quiet drink?' And he just left it at that."

After graduating from Thomond College in 1976 Mullins began teaching at Greendale Community School in Kilbarrack on Dublin's north side. He took 18 months leave of absence from Greendale in 1980 to do an MA in athletics administration at New York University. On his return here commenced teaching at Greendale and has been there since.

He teaches Irish, Geography and History as well as PE and stresses that teaching is a very important part of his life. With the pupils of Greendale he is comfortable: "I would like to think that I can have a influence on the lives of the kids that I come into contact with. I have been ten years teaching and I love it now more than ever." But to keep his wife Helen, his three children and himself in the style to which his former team mates have become accustomed, Mullins has tried his hand in business and in journalism.

With his former colleague Pat O'Neill and the former Dublin star Mickey Whelan, Mullins opened a health club in Clontarf four years ago. The business was a success but with the proliferation of health clubs in Dublin, Mullins considered that the return was not worth the effort. Consequently the business was sold.

More recently Mullins has become a columnist with the Evening Herald. That he should join the profession he continually tried to beat hints at the maturation which Mullins has achieved. As a player he was un-sympathetic to the needs of newspapers and often protested bitterly about what they wrote of him.

Once he passionately complained to a sports editor about a line which claimed he was paranoid about what appeared in newspapers about him. And Mullins, being Mullins, never saw the irony in his protest. But the years passed and Brian slowed down. He learned to mix his idealism with pragmatism. If a newspaper could help a man to put bread, butter and even a bottle of wine on the table then so be it. They were not all bad.

His memories of the great days are vivid. He points to a telephone on the desk in front of him: "You see that phone. If I had a major problem or an embarrassment in my life I could pick it up and ring any of the guys I played with at that time. You could not realize how it was unless you lived it. What existed between us went deep. Love? Yes, maybe. Looking back all I can think is it made my life worth living. There were bad moments but for me the overriding feeling is of the good parts."

He was tall, gangling youth who loved sport. Eventually he would play interprovincial football, hurling; rugby and cricket. On the day be fore his first match for Dublin he played with Leinster's U-19 rugby side: "That was at a time when Leinster had a real U-19 rugby side and we played Ulster in Ravenhill. I got a try and when we arrived back in Connolly Station that evening John Robbie wished me well in my first game for Dublin."

At the time Mullins was a student at Thomond College. Heffernan's training regime greatly impressed as did the willingness of the Dublin panel to submit themselves to it: "I was carried away by the things that I found. Training was so thorough, so professional. Since then I despise any effort that is lower. Since then it is harder for me to accept mediocrity. In my view, players are either in or they're not. The guys I played with then never funked it."

There was fun too. As a student Mullins had free summers. On sunny afternoons he would head for Portmarnock beach, with his football. There he met up with the Hickeys, Dave and Mick, Kevin Moran, Fran Ryder, John McCarthy. They played ball, went for a swim, played more ball and often left themselves just enough time to get home for a quick cup of tea before training.

If training started at 7.30, he knew some guys would be on the pitch at 7.15 and there were times when he was there at 7.0. Keaveney complained about students having nothing to do except train for football and Mullins told him where to get off.

Through the years Keaveney's loyalty to Mullins has been unstinting.

He will be remembered as one of the great midfielders of Gaelic football and that is as it should be. What tends to be forgotten, or never learned, is that Mullins is, as Heffernan says, a big man. Big Brian. Winning an All Ireland medal after the crash he suffered in 1980 was something that few could have achieved.

His Fiat 127 was traveling at high speed when it went out of control on the Clontarf Road late on the Friday night of June 27. Before colliding with a lamp post certain things flashed through his mind: "I could see the car was going to hit the post and I knew I was about to die. It was a surprisingly relaxed feeling. "Two thoughts struck me. 'Thanks' and 'Look after Helen'. I lost consciousness and when I woke up thought I was dead. For a while it was completely dark and I could not hear a sound. Eventually there was the sound of a motorbike and I said 'Brian, wherever you are, this life or the next, they have motorbikes'.

"I tried to move but could not. I reached down and could feel the bone coming through the skin of my right leg. I had a lot of damage to my jaws and had lost eight teeth. The thing that kept going through my mind as I sat in the car was having survived the crash, the car was about to go up in flames and I was going to die that way. I think I may have passed out again because the next moment there was a fireman at my side and I will never forget how skilful he was in removing me from the car."

Mullins was 25 when the crash occurred. It was two years before he was fit to play serious football again and even if he did achieve some notable performances after his return (most especially the 1983 All Ire land semi final replay against Cork), he was never quite the same. The weights and gym work which he needed to do after the crash lessened his mobility and he certainly lost flexibility.

This was obvious in the 1985 All Ireland final when Heffernan substituted him late in the game. At that time Mullins was 30 and past his best. There were four All Ireland medals to show for a career that had enjoyed ecstatic triumphs and cruel disappointments. With Mullins, it had to be ecstasy or cruelty. But, once the ball was over, the big and generous character was more apparent. As a teenager he promised his Mum that if ever he won an All Ireland he would give the medal to her. Her brother Bill Casey had won five playing for Kerry but Brian hoped she would like to have a medal won by her own son. Hardly had the 1974 final ended when, medal in hand, he went in pursuit of his Mum.

His wife Helen got the second, Helen's Mum got the third and he donated his fourth All Ireland medal to the Live Aid auction. It raised 2500 pounds. He also won an All Ireland club medal with Vincents which he gave to his sister: "I will always have the memories," says Mullins.

His thoughtfulness was also in evidence after last year's All Ireland final replay between Meath and Cork. Two weeks after the game he rang Meath's Gerry McEntee, who had been sent off in the eighth minute of the replay and invited him to lunch.

Five years before Mullins had been sent off in an All Ireland! final and he understood what McEntee had gone through:

"When we met it felt like we were two criminals. Gerry had been through two weeks of newspapers, of people sympathizing, of shame. But after a while you see the humor in it. You ask yourself, why get so upset? All you did was hit a guy and get sent off. If the team had lost it would have been different."

Those who got to see only the public Mullins were short I changed. So much more to the character than that. He speaks to his Dad on the phone. The conversation is in Irish as they always are when he speaks with his parents. Three years ago he said he would force every Irish person to speak the native tongue if only he could become dictator of the country. Is the feeling as passionate now?: "Yes, I think I would make them all speak Irish but, now, I would also make them love me."

9. Bernard Brogan.

At one time during the great years Bernard Brogan's form was not what he would have liked it to be and what Heffernan demanded. At a team meeting the manager turned to the mid fielder and asked what was wrong with his game. Brogan replied that he was not enjoying his football. "Enjoying your football," boomed Heffernan, "you're not supposed to bloody enjoy your football."

Just as Brogan meant what he said, Heffernan too was not fooling around. Their approaches to the game would have been different. Brogan's athleticism was the common ground. Heffernan wanted athletes and Brogan was the perfect specimen. Brogan also possessed acceleration, size and intelligence: three of the qualities high on Heffernan's list of priorities.

Heffernan recalls Brogan being more introspective than most of the guys and supposes that was a trait of the mentality which makes the man a good engineer. Brogan qualified as a mechanical engineer in 1974 but that was a mere starting point for a business and academic career which demonstrates an intellectual athleticism.

After the BE in '74, Brogan stayed at UCD and did a Master of Engineering Science in '75, went back to do a Master of Industrial Engineering in '83 and last year did a Master of Business Administration: "Strictly speaking the business degree is not necessary but it does not do any harm and it is good to have it to go with the technical qualifications that I have picked up."

He first worked for Atlantic Plant Construction, an engineering company in Bray. From there he went to Project Management International, an engineering consultancy firm in Fitzwilliam Square. While working for Project he was based in Kerry, Cork, Kilkenny and on an Oil Rig off the French coast.

He listened to the Leinster final that year in Cherbourg. That was '77 because a month later he played in the greatest of all semi finals and Michéal O'Hehir touched the right cord when Brogan's screaming goal smashed Kerry: "Bernard Brogan drilling for oil; he drilled for goal there and drilled right into the back of the net."

In 1983 he joined John Paul Mechanical Limited as general manager but moved on to Donnelly Mirrors Limited as engineering manager a year later. Brogan stayed with Donnellys for four years, moving onto his current position as manufacturing engineering manager at Microsoft Limited on the Sandyford industrial Estate:
"There are 115 employees at Micro. What I do now is not specifically engineering, it is much more a management responsibility. If guys like me have ambition it is to run a company like this and there are people of my age running companies."

Brogan was only 20 when Heffernan asked him to join the panel. His first game for Dublin was shortly before Christmas in 1973. He played midfield against the Combined Universities and considered that he did well against John O'Keeffe. In the '74 championship he played against Wexford in the first round, got injured, missed the second round against Louth, returned for the game against Offaly but was again injured.

"I think I would have been in the team for the '74 final but I damaged my knee badly against Offaly and have to have my cartilage removed. At that time it was two weeks in hospital, six weeks in plaster and six months physiotherapy. It was disappointing to have to sit it out but it was not like I was dropped."

In '75 he had taken Stephen Rooney's place in midfield but had an undistinguished final, being outplayed by Kerry's Pat McCarthy and substituted. He turned that round in '76 and it was McCarthy who was substituted this time. He drilled for goal in '77 and has vivid pictures of the horror of '78.

"When things started going wrong in that game I kept thinking that 'this is not supposed to be happening, it is not like this in the books'. No matter what went wrong in other matches we kept going and, like ants on the march, we always overtook our rivals. But not against Kerry in '78."

Brogan went with the Heffernan clean out after 1979: "At the time I felt I had still something to offer but I was not asked to offer it. If somebody had come along and said I was not good enough it would not have been so bad. But, with me, it does not matter now. Once you decide something does not matter, then it doesn't matter."

Heffernan's penchant for the unusual surfaced in 1982 when he asked Brogan to rejoin the panel. His idea was that Brogan would play full forward and that the team would be built around him. It seemed like a good idea at the time and Brogan returned.

The second or third match back was against Kildare in the League. Between Brogan and Paddy O'Donoghue there was the ill-feeling that one might expect between a Dublin full forward and a Kildare full back. When a Barney Rock 45m free carried all the way to the net Brogan said something which displeased O'Donoghue.

Soon afterwards Brogan remembers gathering the ball and waking up in the Dublin dressing room. He reckons he must really have aggravated O'Donoghue. He was taken to James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown and looked after there. The nurses were very good, he gave one of them his Dublin jersey.

Brogan is not sure if he played one more game for Dublin. He thinks Kildare was the last. Somewhere along the way, the idea of building a team around him was scrapped. All he heard was Lorcan Redmond's voice on the phone wondering could Bernard give the jersey back. But, once you decide it does not matter, it does not matter.
Doctors told Brogan to give it up when he damaged his knee in 1974. They were equally convinced he should stop playing when he suffered an eye injury in a club match six years ago. But Brogan kept on playing and still turns out with the junior team at Oliver Plunketts.

While he worked in Kerry, he trained with Jimmy Deenihan and through him met his wife-to-be Maria. They now live in Castleknock and have three boys. Alan is six and the eldest. Bernard brought him to his first All Ireland last year. He has kicked around with Alan and reckons he could be a footballer.

By the time the Athlete is forced to stop, he may have somebody to carry the torch for him.

10. Anton O’Toole.

The character of the Dublin team had its source in Heffernan. Through him it permeated into the team. Hanahoe, Doherty, Keaveney, Mullins, O'Neill and O'Driscoll were dedicated disciples. In their approach to sport, they felt as Heffernan did. Hard, unromantic, without a thought for the opposition. You did it not for the Hill, or the glory but for yourself.

There were a few in the team who did not perfectly reflect the group ethic. Anton O'Toole was one of those. Tall, almost ungainly; O'Toole gives the impression that he could have taken it or left it.

Heffernan's approach was full of psychology, constant analyses and occasional intrigue. O'Toole would have taken a less complex view and wondered what, in God's name, intrigue had to do with football. During the team discussions he listened and ventured forth with his view only when convinced that some- thing needed to be said. Now and then he would disagree with Heffernan, dismissing something the manager had said as "a load of rubbish".

When Heffernan tried to find the basis for O'Toole's objection he was as often as not disappointed. Anton's was not to reason why but to trust a reliable instinct. On the pitch he got on with the game, allowing his left foot to do the talking. Opponents knew O'Toole had only the left but it did not mean they could stop him. His performance in the 1977 semi final persuaded Mick O'Dwyer that Ger Power's future could not be at wing back. O'Toole was there when the ship went on the rocks in '78 and '79 and present when it fragmented in 1981. That afternoon Dublin lost to Laois. His best pals in the team were Hickey and McCarthy. After that loss they agreed it was unlikely they would ever play in the same Dublin side again.

Then 31, O'Toole would not have complained if he had been banished by Heffernan. For him the music had died. There would never be anything like the seventies and he had little zest for life without the lads.

He did retire but Heffernan knew that his kind of football talent did not age in the way others' did. The second coming of Anton O'Toole in '83 and '84 presented a different talent: a thoughtful full forward appeared where once there was a hard running wing forward. Only one with O'Toole's unusual gifts could have succeeded in both roles.
He was left with a career that saw him play in eight All Ireland finals. Four times a winner, four times beaten. Only Mullins and he played in the four winning Dublin teams. But the medal he claimed in 1983 did not mean as much as the other three: "I don't mean any disrespect to the guys in 1983 but that medal does not compare with the others. I knew I was capable of performing in 1983 but I did not want to.

"I did not, could not, have the same rapport with the new group. I really don't know why I came back. I certainly would not have if it were not for the fact that Tommy Drumm was still there. It goes without saying but the seventies team was a special group. Even the guys of '74 who did not make it in '76 and '77. Fellows like Paddy Reilly and Georgie Wilson. Reilly was so witty, Wilson so incredibly funny. Guys like them and Paddy Cullen. Nobody was made for stardom like them." Donal Colfer, a selector from 1973 to '86, would have been the first to see the footballer in O'Toole. Colfer and O'Toole were both Synge Street men and it was with the successful Synge Street team of 1970 and '71 that O'Toole showed he could be some- thing. He had been small and slightly built as a teenager, unable to win his place on the U-17 team at Synge Street college. At 18 he was ready to grow.

O'Toole was in the Dublin panel in 1972 and on the team a year later. Heck, it was not such a big deal. There was a match against Cork in the spring of '73, at a time when Cork were very good and Dublin did not know what they were about. It suggested to O'Toole he should quit, there and then:

"If I touched the ball twice in the game that was it. I stood there, a Dublin wing forward, saying to myself what are you doing here?' That evening I was walking up Camden Street on my way home and I had decided I would give it up." Later that year O'Toole went to watch Galway and Offaly in and All Ire- land semi-final and left with the impression he was as good as the players he had seen that day.

When O'Toole saw Keaveney back at training for the second round of the championship in 1974 he despaired: "I saw him coming into Parnell Park and he was not in good shape. It was usual for Dublin to bring back a former great if they won a match. David Hickey was also brought back and I was annoyed. They were two forwards and two fellows who played in the league were going to lose out. If there was a feeling growing in the early rounds of the '74 championship that we were on to something I certainly was not aware of it. When I saw the two lads coming back the feeling I had was 'Here we go, again'," But O'Toole's scepticism was easily dissipated. Keaveney's first test came against Louth in the championship and when he kicked a sideline over the bar, O'Toole could see the point in having him there. Hickey, too, earned respect:

"His performance in the All Ireland semi-final of 1974 was the greatest display of wing forward play I have ever seen. He was marked by Kevin Jer O'Sullivan who was very highly regarded but Hickey won that game for us. Beating Cork in that game convinced me we would win the All Ireland and in some ways it was the most important victory of all.

Afterwards there was the sudden realization that you could achieve something. Beforehand it had been a dream, then it was your destiny." O'Toole grew to love the Dublin scene. On the Hill, they loved him too. The Blue Panther. Anton would have liked that. Training was hard but it never bothered him. He had boundless stamina and, anyway, the Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday routine in Parnell Park was as much social as sporting event: “I was very aware at the time that of the relationship that existed. Sure success helped the spirit but there were guys who might not have hit it off outside the football team who enjoyed a very special relationship inside it.

O'Toole's way within the group was modest, maybe even unassertive. He was never going to become a captain of industry, He began working with Cement Limited after school and stayed with them when the link up with Roadstone took place in 1973. Having started as a clerk in the office O'Toole worked his way forward and into computer operations.

Fame with Dublin tempted O'Toole to go on the road in 1979. Cullen, O'Driscoll, Doyle and Keaveney had all done well on the road but Anton was to be the exception: "I just did not like it. You ended up chasing people for money and it seemed to me that there had to be more to life than this. I gladly went back to the computers."
Three years ago he joined Guinness as a computer systems developer and has been there since: "I look after certain systems in the company and if a new system were needed 1 would be involved in developing it. There used to be a certain mystique about computers, not any more." Steady, well paid employment, O'Toole was always likely to make out. He remains the only unmarried member of the great team. Some of his team mates have been known to express envy?: "I suppose how they feel would depend upon their experiences."

O'Toole looks back and reckons he would have been good at rugby. All the running, dummying and jinking would have suited him. He played hockey and really enjoyed it, some badminton. But his yearning to be competitive was fully satisfied by the Dublin football team. He now spends Saturday mornings coaching football to nine and ten year olds at Synge Street and has no wish to climb the coaching ladder.
About Anton O'Toole there is a sense of a man who, because of circumstances, had to forfeit his sporting innocence. When he first went to watch Kevin Moran play soccer for Ireland he was disappointed: "I had expected to see him take the ball inside his own half and go sallying up the field, like he used to do for Dublin

Club BK

But the exuberance was not there. I suppose it could not be."

11. Tony Hanahoe.

Heffernan says that Hanahoe was the most influential member of the team. Captain, centre forward, strategist, utterly selfless. That was the thing about Hanahoe. It was never for himself, always the team, Dublin's wondrous goals in the final six minutes of the 1977 semi final against Kerry hinged upon Hanahoe's total devotion to team play.

When John O'Keefe’s outstretched hand deflected O'Toole's pass into Hanahoe's path, the centre forward needed to transfer to Hickey instantly. "Hanahoe," says Hickey, "was the one guy in the team who was sure to do the right thing in that situation," A few minutes later Hanahoe took a pass from Hickey, waited half a second and then floated the ball into the space in front of the surging Brogan.

Two passes, two goals and victory in a classic confrontation. I f ever a sportsman was entitled to feel satisfaction, it was Hanahoe on that Sunday afternoon. Ten months earlier he had been left in the cockpit after Heffernan baled out, Then you would have said the man hadn't a prayer.

Replacing Heffernan while still playing in the team, still captaining it and still trying to maintain a demanding legal practice: Hanahoe had asked for trouble. But, there he was on the after- noon of August 2 I, 1977, having managed and captained Dublin to arguably its greatest victory. And when the match needed to b.: won, Hanahoe twice did the correct thing.

He was not given to outbursts of emotion but that evening he knew something of consequence had been achieved. Dublin's dressing room teemed with those who came to share in the team's success. Hanahoe was the focus of constant attention. It made him feel uncomfortable: "1 needed to get away from all of that .and so I left Croke Park quickly and drove twenty miles out to Garristown in north County Dublin to have a quiet pint.

"Out there I was able to savor the victory which we had achieved. 1 was able to see it from a perspective that you could not get in a crowded dressing room or pub. After an hour out there I was ready to go back into town and face the rest of the evening. The handshaking, backslapping stuff, I could not take that. The only thing I miss about the entire involvement is the playing."

One of Tony Hanahoe's first football memories is of another Dublin/Kerry confrontation, the 1955 All Ireland final. He was ten years old at the time and traveling in the family car from Laragh in County Wicklow to home in Clontarf. He thinks his father must have stopped for a jar in Dundrum because he was in the car on his own.

A man walked by, Hanahoe asked him did he know who won the match. When he was told Kerry had beaten Dublin, he cried in the backseat. At the time Hanahoe was a pupil at Scoil Mhuire in Marino, an institution which prepared its pupils for further education and further football. Keaveney and O'Driscoll were contemporaries of Hanahoe's at Scoil Mhuire, Bobby Doyle was a few years later:

"It was a school, says Doyle, "where you really learned your football. It was like learning to use a knife and fork." Pupils of Scoil Mhuire went on to St. Josephs secondary school in Fair- view and if they showed promise at football they joined the St. Vincents club.

There were four boys in the Hanahoe household and sport figured largely: "I came from a fairly sporting background", says Tony. "My father played soccer at UCD and played some golf. There were a pair of boxing gloves in the kitchen," At Joeys and Vincents Hanahoe was recognized as an above average footballer.

He recalls how the peripheral sports were bundled aside at Joeys and when it came to deciding between UCD and Trinity, Hanahoe went for the latter: "I suspect that I wanted to get away from the clergy." He played Sigerson with Trinity but the team never had more than five or six footballers who played to the required standard.

At Vincents, Hanahoe first came into contact with Heffernan: "I played club football with Heffernan, he was finishing just as we were starting. You learned quickly he would be an unfortunate enemy to have. We respected him but we were not in awe of him."

Hanahoe was on the fringes of the Dublin team in 1964 and '65 but drifted away from intercounty football in 1966. He was not much interested. He returned to the team in 1970 and played that year, '71 and '72. But he was gone again in '73. But once a serious show went on the road in '74, Hanahoe was in.

As well as both being from Vincents, Heffernan and Hanahoe had other things in common. They both liked to think deeply about football and to push their commitment to the boundary: "He was very mature in his thinking," says Heffernan, "in his analyses of the matches and in his general view of the game. He was very much a footballer's footballer.

"In '74 he was the key to our attacking strategy. He made it possible for the others to get scores. He did this in a way that was so unrecognized he got no credit. But he accepted that situation. He was the only Dublin player of 1974 not to get nominated for an All Star award but he never resented that. He was a natural for the big match situation."

That Heffernan and Hanahoe were tuned into the same wavelength was apparent when the manager nominated his centre forward to take over the captaincy in 1976. As player Hanahoe's game hinged on his selflessness. His role was to draw the opposing centre half back away from the zone which the centre back normally patrolled.

This frequently meant Hanahoe taking himself out of the game to create space for the wing forwards and mid fielders to attack. The bottom line was that Heffernan was asking Hanahoe to sacrifice himself. Such was Hanahoe's commitment that he would hardly have considered it a sacrifice.

Such was the closeness of the relationship between Heffernan and Hanahoe that when the manager quit after the '76 final, it was considered natural that the centre forward should take over. He would certainly have been the choice of the vast majority of the players. Most of them believe that Hanahoe did an outstanding job although Kelleher reckons that the bandwagon was traveling with such momentum, the new man could not fail:

"Without wanting to take anything from what Tony achieved, I think my mother could have run the team at the time. We were all pretty mature and all understood what needed to be done."

Hanahoe laid down the law as Heffernan had done and came up with a few new ones. He set the standard himself. Three weeks before the All Ireland semi final of 1977 he got married but did not tell any of the players about the wedding. He actually turned up for training in the normal way on the morning of the wedding.

A number of the players found Hanahoe more human than Heffernan. And to win without Heffernan in 1977 was the players ultimate statement about their own ability. Nobody understood why Heffernan had chucked it in. Some thought he was simply satisfied that he could be done without.

Others suspected that Heffernan did not see any great future for the team. Cullen, O'Driscoll, Doherty, Hanahoe and Keaveney were all in their thirties whereas all in the Kerry team were young and progressing. Heffernan himself says he opted out for a very simple reason: "I had done what I set out to do and felt no further reason to stay on."

Hanahoe's team lost the League final to Kerry in 1977 but later that summer won an epic All Ireland semi-final. In the following Spring the teams clashed again in the League final and Dublin won. Hanahoe's team was All Ireland and League champions as the Championship of '78 loomed.

Nobody recalls precisely when Heffernan returned. Nothing was said. Just one evening he appeared. The senior players presumed that Hanahoe had invited him back to help out ''as a matter of courtesy". Other players just did not think about it. Heffernan or Hanahoe? It was not the kind of question that ordinary mortals in the team were interested in addressing.

Whether in inviting Heffernan back Hanahoe had it mind that the former manager should reclaim complete control is a delicate question. But take over is what Heffernan did and Hanahoe, the general, changed uniforms and became a first lieutenant. Heffernan had been away for a year and a half but such was the strength of his personality it was as if he had never been absent.

Hanahoe suffered in the process. Not getting the credit for leading Dublin through their greatest Championship campaign. He feels enormous personal satisfaction about the '77 victory over Kerry: "That was the moment. The rubber match. They had won one, we had won one and this was the decider. It transcended everything.

"I distinctly recall a line from the Ali/George Foreman fight in Zaire. There had been a huge amount of hype beforehand and when they got into the ring Ali looked at Foreman and said 'it is only you and me now George'. Our confrontation with Kerry had that type of feeling about it."

Seventy eight was a sad business for Hanahoe. He was incensed by the refereeing of Aldridge and the scars of the wound still exist. Seventy nine was the final throw of the dice. And Hanahoe, too, read it in the newspaper that he had been dropped by the Dublin team. But he continued to work with Heffernan, becoming a selector.

He was a selector through the eighties until he resigned in 1986. Or did he resign? That constitutes another delicacy. While Hanahoe was in New York Heffernan, Donal Colfer and Lorcan Redmond resigned as Dublin selectors. The Dublin County Board were informed that the entire selection committee had resigned.

Subsequent indications were that Hanahoe had not wanted to resign. He was the logical successor to Heffernan but his resignation at that time removed him from the succession stakes.

Through the years of football Hanahoe had to work late and long at his family's law practice. He says that his brothers were sympathetic to the demands of football. Hanahoe is highly regarded within the legal profession: "He is the kind of articulate and intelligent guy you expect to have come through the rugby system. He works almost totally on civil cases and is very good."

Hanahoe has always sought the maximum from his life: "The census forms come round and there is a question which asks: 'when did education cease?' I answer 'death'. All the factors which you face in sport recur throughout life. I would look askance at those who see futility in the pursuit of a leather bag of wind."

12. David Hickey.

They all have a picture of the scene on the night that Heffernan 'chucked it in. That was 1976. Soon after Dublin's victory over Kerry in the final of that year. The players were told to go to the Gresham Hotel for an important meeting. A few of them sensed it was to be more than a standard team gathering but nobody knew for sure.

They reported to the designated room and were standing about when the manager said he was quitting. Hanahoe glanced around to note the reaction of the others: "Two things struck me. Paddy Cullen, whose jaw fell a few inches, and David Hickey. He stood there in the middle of the room, one hand in his pocket, just like F. Scott Fitzgerald, and said 'Is that it?"

It is not a surprise that Hickey's off centre reaction should have stayed with Hanahoe. Tony himself might have thought it but would not have said it. There was about Hickey a wonderful assurance. Bobby Doyle and he were walking down O'Connell Street during the seventies and every second person recognized Doyle.

"Howya Doyler", "Good Man Bobby", "Fair Dues To You Doyler". Nobody recognized Hickey. Doyle felt, well, a little chuffed. That was, of course, until Hickey turned to him and said: "It appears Bobby that a lot of these gurriers know you."

Hickey had a certain style. The French would say panache and when Hickey spent two years working and playing rugby in France he loved it. Monsieur David. But that came later, after he had achieved fame of sorts and notoriety of other sorts with his native Dubs. Until people cease to speak "the seventies", his match winning goal in the 1977 semi final will be recalled.

The goal was quintessential Hickey. On training nights at Parnell Park he irritated Paddy Cullen by running to within ten or 15 yards of the goal and striking with as much power as possible. Shooting practice was supposed to give the goalkeeper a chance. Hickey simply wanted to see the ball explode into the roof of the net.

Other players said he'd be better shooting from further out, even trying for a point now and again. Cullen got his own back by telling Hickey that the only safe place to be when he was shooting was between the sticks. But, on one point, every one agreed. Hickey would never get the ball that close to goal with sufficient room to kick. It did not happen.

Hickey had an undistinguished game in the 1977 semi final, being totally outplayed by Ogie Moran.

"When the ball came to me I was 14 or 15 yards from goal.. I glanced up and all I could see was net. It was as if there was this huge net filling up that end of Croke Park. I have read sportsmen saying that when the big moment came in their careers everything was so simple. I know what they mean. When I got that ball, the easiest thing in the world was to put it in the back of the net."

Hickey grew up in Portmamock and went to school at St. Fintan's in Sutton. He learned his football there, was a Dublin minor in 1968 and '69 and played for the senior team as an 18 year old in '69. Seventy was his first championship and he played for the following three years. His championship career up to then involved battles with Laois, Westmeath, Longford and Louth but all four were losing experiences.
By 1973 his allegiance had changed to rugby. As a medical student at UCD he had taken up rugby and enjoyed it greatly. Hickey played in the Leinster Championship replay against Louth at Navan in '73 and it was the only game of football he played for that entire year. The call to arms in '74 came from Heffernan:

"I was on the UCD firsts at the time and we were surprisingly knocked out of the Cup by Bective. That evening I had a phone call from Heffernan, asking me to rejoin the panel. Playing for Dublin had always been my dream and I knew Heffernan was serious in his approach and that he liked the way I played foot- ball."

Heffernan liked Hickey and his fellow players were aware that he could get away with things which the others would not even attempt. Alongside O'Toole and McCarthy, Hickey found a most pleasant social ambiance. They were you and footloose: "I was a student" says Hickey, "and I did not have a lot to be serious about."

The friendship between the three has survived and they still meet. McCarthy and Hickey were the wildest socialites in the panel. Hickey had a way of getting through to McCarthy which the others admired. One player recalls an incident coming back by bus from a tournament game in Galway in 1978:

"There was a bit of high jinks on the bus between McCarthy and Mullins. John was practicing his scissors kicks on Brian down the aisle. All the time carefully avoiding contact. But one kick connected and things were suddenly going to get out of hand. Hickey immediately jumped to hold McCarthy in his place, the other 14 of us held Mullins down." Because he had experienced different attitudes in rugby, some aspects of Gaelic games troubled Hickey. That he could engage in the most serious battles with Paidí O’Sé and never get the opportunity to meet him after matches was a constant disappointment:

"My wife Trish is from Kerry and we go down a .lot. It would be nice to call down to Ventry and see Paud but we never really got to know each other. I really liked the way he played football, hard and aggressive but never. ever, anything off the ball. I had played in six All Ireland finals before I even heard there was a VIP lounge in Croke Park. That is scandalous. If we had known, we would have been there."

Hickey and McCarthy for sure, the others maybe. Hickey decided for himself.

Heffernan was a great coach, but: "In the mid seventies we had entered the era of the manager. A phenomenon which came from English soccer. Dublin was Kevin Heffernan's team. That was totally unfair to the players."

It also troubled Hickey that his younger brother Mick was not well treated by Heffernan: "Mick got a bad deal. He won the 1979 semi final for us against Roscommon when scoring nine points. In the final against Kerry he missed two fifties and was taken off after about five minutes. It is hard to believe that vindictiveness was not involved. Generally Heffernan showed very little sensitivity to people who were being dropped or taken off."

After doing his final medical examinations at UCD in 1976 Hickey worked around the Dublin hospitals for five years. In 1980 he went to work in La Rochelle and spent the following year in Bordeaux. For two years he combined surgery with first division rugby in France. On his return Hickey went to Waterford for a year, then two years in Dublin, one year in Memphis, Tennessee, another two in Dublin and now Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

He is doing kidney transplants in Pittsburg: "I am at the Presbyterian University Hospital which is the world's centre for transplantation. Each year they do 500 liver transplants, which is half of the world's total, 200 kidneys, 50 hearts and 20 pancreas.

"They have also done 10 multi visceral transplants which is an incredible operation. They transplant the stomach, pancreas, liver, duodenum and entire small bowel. Eventually I would like to get a job in Ireland but I don't know where I will be going next. Trish is doing plastic surgery and it might depend upon where she goes." Before David Hickey there is the challenge of his medical career. Behind him, there is the satisfaction of his football life. He loved the way of life which the football created and regrets that he can not still do it. His mind of stacked with pictures from the football days.

Seventy four, the year Georgie Wilson and Stephen Rooney used to hitch in from Balbriggan to train for the Dublin team. There was 70,000 paying customers when Georgie and Stephen played in the final. Heffernan's anxiety about Kerry cost the team an All Ireland in '75, distracted by Kerry prowess the manager had the team train six times in the final week. In '76 he dominated Paud 0 Se, a year later Ogie destroyed him and then there was '78. After that the Dublin Board changed biscuits at Parnell Park from marietta to milkchoc goldgrain. But even with milkchoc, lost again in '79. Going, going and gone in '81.

But the funny story. The dressing room after the 1975 final, Dubs desolated following surprise, no shock, loss to Kerry juveniles. It had been a wet and generally miserable day. But, there were no showers, A Croke Park man, with hose in hand, walked and said: "sorry lads about the showers, a water problem, but I'll hose down those of you want it." The thrills of the sporting life.

13. Bobby Doyle.

The burns are gone, long hair has been cropped down to a neat executive cut and where once you saw a blue No.13 jersey hanging untidily outside shorts there is now a matching shirt and tie. Country people especially will look and wonder what happened to the Dublin gurrier.

Bobby Doyle does not blame anybody for the image that went with the wearer of Dublin's No.13 jersey: "I had long hair, a dark complexion, , wore my football socks down around my ankles, had long locks. Basically everything that you associated with a Dublin gurrier at the time, I had it."

There was a catalogue of incidents on the pitch. Not very long but spectacular: "It did not look good when players like Dermot Earley and Johnny Hughes were sent off after clashes with me. I did seem to attract guys to hit me and if they did. I would not have stood back. But as you got older you got more respect for yourself."

Within the Dublin team, Doyle was never considered amongst the team's hard men. A runner, yes. A hitter, not at all. Heffernan used him to forage far away from goal, always seeking the ball and the opportunity to run at the opposition defense. The tactic depended upon Doyle's ability to keep running.

And could Bobby run? At the Parnell Park training Brogan, McCarthy and himself competed to lead the group when they did laps around the pitch. Brogan and McCarthy were talented athletes, Doyle less so but he was prepared to compensate extra effort: "I gave everything at training, 1 worked harder than most of the fellows."

A number of the other players believe that Bobby was soured by the manner in which his intercounty career ended. He was at the time but the years have healed his hurt. Although it was seven years ago, there is no difficulty recalling the details.

Doyle had played in the first round of the championship against Longford but suffered a stress fracture in that game. He was back in training pretty soon but did not win his place back. Before the Leinster final against Offaly there was a practice match between the team and the rest of the panel.

He thought he did well for the rest, scoring 1-4 and maybe he was a contender for the team. On the Friday morning before the match Doyle saw the morning newspaper and the Dublin team which had been selected the night before. He was not in the team. Eleven substitutes were listed. He was not in the substitutes.

Life goes on. He has worked with Kevin Heffernan at St. Vincents where both are involved in coaching at different levels. Doyle is sure that Heffernan has genius: "The man is a genius in relation to football. His technical understanding of the game is unbelievable. Down in Vincents he produces notes for the coaches which are extremely helpful."

Doyle is the only one of the Dublin team of '76 and '77 whose parents came from the city. The family lived in Coolock and Bobby was the third of eight: "We were very much country folk then, where we lived there were farms all around." So much for the out and out Dub.

Having gone to school in Scoil Mhuire, Marino Doyle progressed in the normal way to Vincents. As Hanahoe, Keaveney and O'Driscoll had before him. At the age of 15 he was dropped for a final by somebody at Vincents and so he gave up football for four years. Soccer became his game.

He was 20 when he returned to Vincents but he soon made the senior team and the Dublin panel. At the age of 23 he captained the county but that was in an undistinguished 1973 championship. In '74 the wagon began to roll but who was to know? Not Doyle: "We played a League match in Kilkenny in early '74 and the man on the scoreboard just walked away from his post at halftime."

Having won with Dublin in '74, Doyle was left out of the team for the 1975 final, Heffernan choosing Pat Gogarty in his place. The other players felt an enormous mistake was being made and a number of them tried to get Heffernan to change his mind. Doherty, Hickey, Hanahoe, O'Driscoll spoke to the manager who told them it was their job to play, his to select the team.

Doyle vowed that he would never be dropped again but might have missed out again in '76. This time Heffernan was the savior: 'I was carrying a hamstring injury into the game and when' aggravated it in the pre-match kick around I thought I was gone. I went over to Heffernan and explained. He looked at me and said do you want to play or not' throwing his jaw to one side as only he can.

'I know if I had said I did not want to play, I would never have played for Dublin again."

So Doyle did play in '76 and played well. He matured with the team. Wherever he looked in the dressing room he saw guys who were making out in life. Football had given him an identity and he sought to use it. At 15 he had begun his apprenticeship to be an electrician, at 20 he was out of his time and he had worked for the ESB for 12 years.

He wanted something better. Heffernan, as he was for many of the players, was the counselor: "He came to me saying that he wanted to change jobs. He was talking about going into a sales job. I told him I thought he should stick at what he was doing and maybe set up as an electrical contractor. But he disagreed and left the ESB for a job with Murphy's Brewery." That was in 1977.

Doyle found things tough at Murphys but he survived on his determination. Within three years he was an Area Manager. He moved to his current position as Sales Manager of Denis Mahony Leasing in 1982 and he is satisfied that the decision he took in '77 has been fully justified.

Bobby Doyle says he lives a very settled life now. He and Catriona and two children, Ronan (3) and Ross (six months) Loves his home, loves his job, coaches the minor team at Vincents and enjoys an occasional pint of Guiness down at the club: "I know this will sound cor

Club BK

ny to some of the lads of the old team but for me it is now wife number one and family number two. That's the way I am now."

14. Jimmy Keaveney.

People remember Dublin’s first round victory over Wexford in 1974 for different reasons. The match was played before the replay of the National League final between Roscommon and Kerry. David Hickey recalls the Dublin victory with satisfaction. It was his fifth championship campaign with Dublin and his first victory. Tony Hanahoe might have seen merit in winning but the occasion left him cold:

"It seemed to me that we were the comedy sketch going on before the main act. Put on to amuse the crowd before the Roscommon/Kerry match." After the final whistle Wexford player John Quigley shook hands with Bobby Doyle, said well done and suggested to his opponent that Dublin "would not be going far in the Championship".

Somewhere up on Hill 16 a former Dublin player Jimmy Keaveney watched his county beat Wexford. He had retired from intercounty football two years previously and Dublin's performance against Wexford re-assured him. The team was going nowhere.

Dublin's manager Kevin Heffernan was less than optimistic after victory over Wexford. He had then watched Roscommon and Kerry and noted the difference: "It was men and boys. They were the men, we were the boys. I felt very down as I got into my car to go home that evening."

What happened on the journey from Croke Park to Heffernan's home in Clontarf was to change the nature of the Dublin team and contribute enormously to the transformation which enabled the team to contest six consecutive All Ireland finals.

Accompanying Heffernan in the car were his wife Mary, her friend Lily Jennings and Lily's seven year old son Terry. When asked by his wife about the Dublin performance Heffernan dismissed it uncomplimentary terms:

"I was not in good spirits and began complaining about the team performance, lamenting that we did not even have a free taker. Young Terry in the back asked me why I did play Jimmy Keaveney. He was a fanatical Jimmy Keaveney fan. In my mind Jimmy was out of the squad, overweight and not a contender. But Terry said he went to all Vincents games with his Dad and Jimmy Keaveney never missed a free.

"When I got home I thought about it and came to the conclusion that even if Keaveney only stood and kicked the frees it might be worth having him in the team. That evening I rang him. I said we had a good team, were in with a chance but needed a free taker. His answer was that if I thought he could be of some use, he would come back.

"Would the penny have dropped without the prompting from the seven year old Terry Jennings? I don't know but I do know that it had not dropped with me in the six months I had been in charge of the team. There was no reason why it was going to drop that evening. What do they say, out of the mouths of babes."

Once he spoke with Heffernan on the telephone Keaveney understood that he had to come back: "One way or another he was going to inveigle me back. Some would say he was ruthless, he would say he was subtle."

Keaveney would incline towards the latter view of the manager. He says he and Heffernan have been friends for 26 years and he considers him to be an extremely loyal person: "I would know him 80% but then you think that is Kevin. Maybe what comes across as 80% is the complete guy. He is a wee bit shy. If he met you he would walk up to you and hit you on the shoulder rather than say hello. But I would always feel at ease in his company."

The return to the fold was, of course, on Heffernan's terms. Keaveney was overweight and unfit. That had to change. Heffernan knew the work which Keaveney did on the training ground would not be enough. He spoke to him about his diet, asked him to attend Dr. Kevin O'Flanagan for advice on what he could eat and ordered the full forward to have regular weight checks.

Before his return to the panel Keaveney went to St. Vincents club each Saturday night. He played some cards and had a few pints. After rejoining the Dublin team he continued to go to Vincents on Saturday nights but found that Heffernan began turning up:

'He would come along and say 'Keaveney, you have had Enough'. Whether you liked the man or not you had to say he was prepared to sacrifice everything. Then you saw his real motivation in the team talks before big games. On the Saturday before we played Cork in the 1974 semi final he gave us a talk which was unbelievable. If we had been able to play Cork five minutes after that talk we would have beaten the shit out of them."

Heffernan believes that the transformation of the side co-incided with Keaveney's return: "He was a rogue and a procrastinator, street wise to an unbelievable extent and his personality added enormously to the group. There was a general transformation after his return but I don't know how much he contributed to that."

Statistics suggest Keaveney's was a major influence. He played 25 championship games for Dublin from 1974 to '79 and scored 12 goals and 142 points in that period. Seven points per match. Heffernan's approach to forward play hinged on getting Hickey, O'Toole, Mullins and Brogan running straight at the opposition defense.

Both Hanahoe and Keaveney spent much of their time taking their markers wide to create an open corridor. Frees resulted from the direct running and Keaveney's accuracy was a critical factor in the effectiveness of the approach: "Before Keaveney came back, you'd run at the defense, almost get your head taken off and then Dublin would miss the free," says McCarthy.

But Keaveney could do more than kick frees. Dublin's first point in the 1976 final against Kerry demonstrated extraordinary touch. Receiving from Hickey 40 yards out but with his back to the goal, he feinted right, turned left and drop kicked a pass to Hanahoe who was running cross field, close to Kerry goal. Hanahoe took the pass without checking and the point was straightforward. Physically, Keaveney was a contradiction. His portly frame indicated a lack of sharpness but Keaveney was, over ten yards, one of the quickest in the panel. The body also suggested Keaveney would not be too good on his feet when he had, in fact, the neatest feet on the team.

Footballers wear a boot with a moulded soul in summer and screw-in studs in wet or heavy conditions. Keaveney wore his summer boots all the time. He never slipped. That was on the pitch. Off the pitch he never, ever slipped.

Unimpressed with formal education he left the Christian Brothers in Fairview after the Inter Cert and began working with Buckley's Motor Accessories, went to McCairns Motors and in 1966 found his way into T&D Nortons, the office equipment company. At first he worked in the company's shop at Middle Abbey street but he wanted to go out selling.

Salesmen may not be born but Keaveney was born a salesman. Dublin players say he sold on the training ground, in the dressing room and, goodness knows, maybe even during matches. All the time the unwitting customer was led to believe Keaveney was conferring a favor. When he joined Nortons, the company employed six people, now it employs 40.

Keaveney helped the company to grow and his own career progressed dramatically. He did not just sell to his football friends. The young man who started out merely wanting to sell is now Sales Director at Nortons and the company is one of the three biggest office suppliers in Ireland.

He is 22 years in Nortons and is sure that he has found a workplace for life: "I was Sales Manager for five years and have been Sales Director for the last ten. It is a very successful company and I am now a significant shareholder." According to the lads on the team the three most important people' in Nortons are Tommy and Danny Norton and Keaveney.

To those who wanted such advice, Keaveney said 'marry a culchie'. His own wife Angela is from Cootehill, Co. Cavan: "I have been up there alright, you could spit from one end of the main street to the other." The Keaveneys have four children and live in Portmarnock. And, even at home, Keaveney did not slip: "He could, in the middle of a session, go home for his tea," says a team mate. Looking back on the years of football involvement Keaveney says it is the friends that come before his mind: "Winning in '74 was the highlight but the biggest thing of all was the friends I made on the way. From outside Dublin people like Billy Morgan, Peter Rooney, John O'Keeffe and Paud 0 Se. "And then the Dublin lads. We never grew away from each other. I think of the friends now, Hanahoe, Paddy Cullen, Doherty, Pat O'Neill unfortunately." Keaveney's zest for the life and the lads has taken him to the Olympics, to Wembley, Old Trafford, Murrayfield, Lansdowne Road. A Friday night pint in Paddy Cullens and any stadium you care to mention on the Saturday or Sunday.

It was ever so with Keaveney. Tony Hanahoe talks about his first journeys to Croke Park: "I used to go on my own. I'd say I was nine or ten at the time. I tried to get to the place at around 12.30, before the gates opened and in this way would be able to get the best position on Hill 16.

"There was another fellow with the same idea, he was about the same age as myself. He wore a gabardine coat, it was navy and he had sleeked black hair. We used to see other but we never spoke. A few years later I saw the same boy, wearing the same gabardine in Joeys, Fairview. He was, of course, Jimmy Keaveney."

15. John McCarthy.

To the lads, he was macker Courageous, outrageous, likeable but never clever. In the team of engineers and doctors, entrepreneurs and executives, solicitor and publican, schoolteacher and economist, Macker was a guard. More than that, he wanted to be nothing else. As the team grew, ambitions grew. On and off the field. The thing about Macker was that his ambition was like his football jersey: only in evidence on match days.

One of his team mates says Macker disproved the belief that "the rising tide will lift every boat". Macker was the only member of the team not to receive an All Star award and when it was reported that a Dublin All Ireland medal was being auctioned, people thought it must be Macker. A reporter from the Irish Independent turned up at his home: "Was it you Macker?" Many of the other players enquired of Macker: "did you speak with Macker yet?"

The interview with John McCarthy was the most honest. most entertaining of all. Macker reckoned he could tell all in about fifteen minutes. Sure it felt like fifteen minutes but the interview lasted nine hours. In the deluge that carried pieces of his life, the insights cut close to the heart of the team and right through the heart of Macker himself: At the beginning he idolized Heffernan. Would have done anything for the man. A few things happened, Macker lost his innocence and his awe of Heffernan. By the time Macker finished with Dublin in 1984, the wheel had gone full circle: "If Heffernan was walking down the street I think I'd cross to the other side. You have to respect what he did with the Dublin team but he lacked the ability to be human."

Macker got nervous in the build-up to big games. He would not sleep well the night before and he was, in his own words, "an unbearable bastard", on the morning of the match.

By the time Macker got to the dressing room, he was a wreck. Before one match Heffernan asked his players which one of them was going to be "the Judas in this game".

The notion of betraying the team fed the demons which raged inside Macker:
"Heffernan was a great motivator but he motivated through fear. His pre-match stuff went over the top. It almost cracked me. God, we were amateur sportsmen. And, then, when Heffernan considered you were of no further use you were kicked out, forgotten. Remember Andy Roche. It was, I think, a League quarter final against Mayo in 1979. He was supposed to be successor to Kevin Moran. "During that game the ball bounced in front of the Mayo goal, Andy could not miss but somehow he contrived to put it wide. We ended up losing by a point or two. If Andy had scored we would have won. That evening Tommy Drumm and I were having a drink with Andy and Heffernan walked into the bar. He looked at Tommy, 'howya Tommy', at me "howya Macker". He stared at Andy but never said a word. "On the Tuesday evening he rang Andy and told him not to come to training. He was not part of the squad anymore. Normally Heffernan did not tell the person himself but I reckoned he felt so annoyed with Andy that he wanted to actually inform him himself.

"You could say to Heffernan that I said he was not a humanitarian and he could say humanitarians do not win All Irelands. He could be right but we also won under Hanahoe and I felt more comfortable with him than I did with Heffernan. I would have been happier if Hanahoe had stayed in charge."

Macker's earliest memories are of walking down Cappagh Road in Finglas West with his kit. The lads on the street would ask "was he still playin' that gah?" Macker used to avoid giving a straight answer "ah no, I'm just off to an auld game". In the Dublin of the early seven- ties, teenagers did not want to be seen playing Gaelic. The boys on Cappagh Road could not understand why Macker still played "that gah".

First match for Dublin was in the 1973 Championship, the second round replay against Louth. Macker met Phil Markey, the then team manager, in the Sunnybank Hotel sometime after the drawn match. Markey asked McCarthy would he be interested in playing the replay. Down at Parnell Park on the following Tuesday evening there were seven or eight guys training. Three of them actually played against Louth in the replay. That was how things were in 1973.

When the wagon rolled in 1974, Macker was aboard. Converted by Heffernan from wing back to corner forward. In later years he would look around and notice the group: the professional men and the entrepreneurs, the big cars and the improving addresses. It unnerved him a little. Macker was never sure of himself and chose to hide behind a macho mask.

To some of the guys, it appeared that Macker wanted to answer every question through physical combat: "I lacked self belief in some ways, not in others. I knew I was as courageous as anybody on the team. No matter what happened I would go in and put my neck on the line." Yet to those who grew close to him, Macker was great. David Hickey was his special friend. Macker's second son is called David, after Hickey.

Between them, they raised hell: "I swear", says Macker, "the only harm we did was to ourselves". "I don't think everybody would go along with that", says Bobby Doyle but, from the lips of Macker, you want to believe.

Hanahoe's memory is of Hickey loading the gun and Macker joyously pulling the trigger. A decade on, Macker's affection for Hickey remain deep: "Dave had outrageous belief in himself. He could get away with things that nobody else could. Heffernan thought the world of Dave. "People were shocked to see that Dave and I got on so well. Some fellows used to think Hickey a snob, he was anything but. Once the games ended, we knew how to celebrate. Hickey could draw the worst out in me but we had some times. Before he went off to Pennsylvania last summer, himself, myself and Anton got together for a booze-up. Great night." On the field Macker survived on the strength of his athleticism. He was strong, fast and always fit. With the hand pass, he was a finisher.

"As he digs me he says 'I'm Mickey Joe Forbes the hardest wee mon in Ulster, hit me, hit."

Never, ever did Macker mind going there was danger. His right jaw was twice broken and once he had four teeth smashed. Each time Macker was heading for goal. Each time he thought he would hold a grudge against the opponent. When he had his teeth smashed, he vowed to hold a grudge. But grudges are beyond Macker. He remembers what Liam Fardy (Wexford), Danny Culligan (Louth) and Denis Dalton (Kildare) did to him but there is now no malice in his recollections. His memories contain more laughs than laments. The Mickey Joe Forbes episode is his favorite. It was a League semi-final against Tyrone at Croke Park, 1978. Macker was marked by a small corner back who punched him during the playing of the national anthem:

"As he digs me he says 'I'm Mickey Joe Forbes, the hardest wee mon in Ulster, hit me, hit me'. I look at him, he is much smaller than me and I know that if I touch him I'm going to get sent off. The game starts, he keeps hitting, all the time repeating 'I'm Mickey Joe Forbes, the hardest wee mon in Ulster, hit me, hit me.'

"It is beginning to get to me because this guy never stops hitting. So I go towards the Dublin dug out and ask what should I do. I am told to keep running, not to get involved. We had a general policy in the team that if my man was messing me, another Dublin player would sort him out. Mullins could see things on the pitch that others never noticed.

"He got the ball and started soloing. Mickey Joe Forbes, the hardest wee mon in Ulster, was in his path. Mullins kept going. I don't know what happened but Mickey Joe went down. There wasn't a stir. As he was being taken off I wanted to run over and say 'now Mickey Joe Forbes, the hardest wee mon in Ulster, you have just met the hardest wee mon in Leinster.'" Garda John McCarthy works out of Mountjoy.

Phibsboro is his beat. He knows the people up there, they know him. Decent working class people, he says. He is married to Marianne, a County Offaly woman, and they have three boys; Cal (14), David (13) and Barry (3). The lads on the team believed that Marianne saved John McCarthy from Macker:

"There is a lot in that," says Macker. "But Keaveney always told us, marry a culchie. They are far more understanding than city girls. Marianne is easy going and tolerant. She has a beauty salon up on Vernon Avenue in Clontarf. She likes the Clontarf people."

Macker's family were on his mind as he was rushed by police car to the Richmond Hospital in February, 1984. He wore a maroon jumper. Down the front of the jumper on the left side, the jumper was a darker color as blood flowed from a wound centimeters below the heart: "As a guard I'd seen a guy die within five minutes from this kind of cut. I did not want to die, life is precious. I didn't want to leave a wife and kids."

Earlier that evening Macker had been playing darts at Bohemians football club in Phibsboro. On his way home he walked to the Chinese Takeaway to get a curry for Marianne. Inside there was a group of four or five who noticed Macker's presence. One was a blonde-haired woman.

Somebody said "that's a pig out of the Bridewell". Macker pretended not to notice. The fat woman approached Macker and said "I know you, you're a pig from the Bridewell". She then spat at Macker. He refused to react. She spat again and still he did nothing: "Then a small fellow came over and hit me. I floored him and the others joined in. The woman took off her high heel, I remember a voice in the background telling me to watch the knife but I never saw it. It was probably a flick knife.

"In a few seconds it was allover. As they ran out I saw blood stains on the wall and felt a bit hot but did not realize that I had been stabbed. I ran out after them and got the number of their car. By this I knew I had a cut and I asked the Chinese guy to call the guards.

"The people who attacked me were caught within an hour and three of them were sent to prison. I have seen them since and have spoken to all except the fellow who stabbed me. I saw him once, he was riding a bike. When he saw me he slowed as if he was afraid to come in my direction. I just laughed to myself. If I met him I'd be calm, what's the point in being anything else. One day I was on duty at the Special Criminal Court when a woman came over and gave me a bag of chips, 'I got you some chips,' she said. It was the same woman who was in the Takeaway that night. "The knife went downwards into my skin, if it had gone upwards I would have died. In the hospital that night one doctor whispered to another that I had been lucky and I knew I was. The next morning I was attended by my favorite doctor, Dr. Hickey." Macker says he was not the one to sell the All Ireland medal: "I suppose it was logical that people would think it was me. "I mean if you went through the team you would, by a process of elimination, arrive at me. The others are pretty well heeled blokes. I have no regard for medals, they are something which might be of use when you are at the rocking chair stage but I did not sell one."

You could meet Garda John McCarthy on duty in Croke Park on a Sunday afternoon. He looks at the matches but feels no hankering for big time football again. He still turns out for Ballymun Kickhams senior team and that involvement is as much as he seeks. Thirty five years of age, just three pounds heavier than when he played for the Dubs, Macker says he could not be happier:

"I never had the ambition that the other lads had. No push. In foot ball it was different. I wanted to win there. But I am as happy as anybody. All I wanted was a wife and a few kids and enough money to buy food and a jar. I don't want to live in Howth or own a big car."

On his days off you might find Macker at Fairyhouse races. If it is Saturday he will back a few and watch them race on television. He hopes that Piggott will become a great trainer and go on to train Derby winners: "When he was in jail a lot of people disowned Lester, if he wins big as a trainer they will come back and try to be his friends again. I would love to see Lester tell them where to get off."

Club BK

Very nice piece. Most enjoyable. I have a scrapbook in my mother's which contains all the newspaper coverage leading up to the '76 and '77 finals.One day it'll be worth a fortune!!!! Great memories though.It's sad to think that since '77 we have contested 8 all Irelands and only won 2.There was a drought of 11 years between '63 and '74 and it's been 11 years since '95...... You never know. Hope springs eternal.