By John Harrington

Sportspeople in the latter years of their careers tend to be the most driven of the species.

The realisation that they have a finite number of years left of competing at the highest level has a way of focusing the mind.

So even if they’ve already been high achievers in the past, their competitive edge becomes more honed rather than dulled as they go on.

There are any number of Kilkenny hurlers you could use as evidence to prove this theory, and you get the feeling this generation of Dublin footballers in their late twenties and early thirties will fall into the same bracket.

That’s certainly the impression Philly McMahon gave yesterday when the spoke to the media.

He batted away the suggestion that winning back to back All-Irelands this year or going for three-in-a-row next was a prime source of motivation for him and his team-mates.

Instead, he was adamant that he and his peers in this Dublin panel are an exceptionally driven bunch simply because they know they’re experiencing something special together that will be over all too soon.

"We talk a lot about taking nothing for granted in life,” said McMahon. “We're part of a group of players that we understand how lucky we are. Even today, I was over in Heuston Station with Paul Flynn talking about mental health.

“Paul's friend passed away, my brother would have struggled with drugs and there's a lot of lads there that, we can pull each other and say, let's stay grounded here and realise what we have.

“So we're very lucky. I've played a Dublin team that were poor, they just didn't have the chemistry. Now that we have been successful, it's about trying to get everything out of it while we can in the short career that we have.

"It's funny because you look at the changing room after the final, and we're all celebrating. You're looking around the room and you're saying 'This team isn't going to be here next year – it's going to be a different team next year.'

“People will retire; you'll have players coming in. People with injuries. You look at Jack and Rory – they went off and did their own thing in terms of what they needed to do.

"So, you just don’t know what's going to change, what's going to happen. That's why you stay so grounded and you take every minute as you can.”

McMahon is able to appreciate that grounded and ambitious ethos in the Dublin panel all the more because it wasn’t always part of their fabric. He’s played for Dublin since 2008 and in the early years of his career they weren’t as professional or mature a bunch as they are now.

“Probably, I mean when we won a game in Leinster we were probably celebrating the same for an All-Ireland quarter or semi-final now, that's completely changed," he said.

“Maybe we would have went out for the next day and probably went for golf and a few drinks after that but nowadays because we've been successful it takes a lot more for us to kind of go 'we need to celebrate' so I think it's definitely changed, the success factors have changed.

“You don't really celebrate winning a quarter-final of an All-Ireland whereas when I was there initially the lads were going out for two days winning a Leinster game so it's definitely changed.”

McMahon is a teetotaller so it’s unlikely that excessive celebrating was ever a major issue for him, but he admits he has matured in other ways. As he grew more experienced and less brash, he realised you have a lot to learn before you’re ready to be an integral cog in a successful team.

“I think it's something that I struggled to understand when I first got on the team," he admitted. "I got on the team 2008, I played all the league game and was playing really well and I played a couple of minutes...I was actually the Dublin U-21s captain and when I came back from the 21s I was dropped.

“I was on the bench obviously, but I was like 'why am I not playing here? I should be playing here' but I didn't understand that I'm at a certain age, I have to learn my trade first.”

The fact he had to work so hard to learn that trade and overcome some knock-backs along the way to establish himself as one of the best defenders in the country has done him no harm in the long-run.

It’s another reason why he’s so determined to extract the absolute maximum from himself over the course of the remainder of his career, and why he’s never likely to follow the example of team-mates like Rory O’Carroll and Jack McCaffrey who decided to take a year out in 2016.

“It's each to their own, I suppose. I wouldn't for one-minute think about missing a year of football. I missed a year of football already, from being dropped, so it was out of my hands.

“So I suppose I've experienced not playing a year of football, and it's probably the worst feeling in the world when you get that phone call and they say you're not in the plans this year.

“And you've to talk to your family members and your friends – and you're just 'Oh Jesus, I've to tell this story again.' And then your ego takes over; you're thinking to yourself 'Is this really my fault?' In a nutshell it is, but you need to make your manager want you as a player.

"But in terms of Rory, you have to respect what his decision was because he's that type of person. If he wants to go and do something, he will."

So for how much longer are we likely to see McMahon in the Sky Blue of Dublin? Opposition forwards will surely hope he decides to instead focus instead on his successful gym and food businesses in the near future, but it sounds as though the Ballymun man will be knocking around for a while yet.

"When I'm going to finish? Jesus, I'm only 29. I'm lucky I don't really get much injuries. Any injuries I got have all been contact injuries. So I haven't got much muscular injuries. I look after myself. I don't drink.

“So I'm hoping that will be a massive benefit to prolong my career. I want to play as long as I can. The day I don't enjoy it, so similar to most players, the day they stop enjoying the sport is the day they should give someone else a chance. That's what I believe in anyway."

*** Philly McMahon yesterday launched the Ireland Active Conference and National White Flag Awards. These awards are the national quality standard for leisure and fitness facilities and are taking place on 11th November at the Hodson Bay Hotel in Athlone at which Philly is a keynote speaker.**