By John Harrington

The sad news of Brian Mullins’ death last week struck a chord not just with the Dublin GAA community, but the GAA community nationwide.

Mullins was one of those very few players who defined their era thanks to a combination of pure ability and force of personality, and his loss is keenly felt by those who saw him in his pomp.

The midfield colossus was one of the greatest players to ever don the sky-blue jersey and was a totemic figure in the Kevin Heffernan managed Dublin teams of the 1970s and 1980s.

Over the course of his career he won four All-Ireland titles, nine Leinster titles, two National Leagues and two All-Star awards, and became a hero of Hill 16 for his inspirational displays in the middle of the field.

Six years ago, in August 2016, he sat down with GAA.ie Chief Writer, John Harrington, over the course of two days to reminisce not just on his stellar sporting career but his life in general.

On today, the day of his funeral, it seems apt to revisit the text of those conversations where he gave a fascinating insight into the forces that shaped him both on and off the pitch.

He spoke about:

• His family’s illustrious GAA gene.

• The formative experience of summers spent with his cousins in Kerry and Clare.

• His time playing inter-provincial rugby with Leinster.

• Winning the 1974 All-Ireland title in his first year on the Dublin panel.

• Kevin Heffernan’s management style and unique personality.

• Dublin's All-Ireland wins in '76 and '77.

• Their famous rivalry with Kerry in the seventies.

• The car-crash that put him out of football for two years.

• Dublin's '83 All-Ireland win and his sending off in the Final.

• Life after football.

John Harrington: Brian, we have a regular feature on GAA.ie called the GAA gene where we detail the great GAA families who have produced inter-county players across a number of generations. I was interested to find out that you’re actually a nephew of the great Kerry footballer Bill Casey of Lispole who won four All-Irelands with the Kingdom.

Brian Mullins: Yes, and a Granduncle of mine, an uncle of Bill Casey, won two All-Irelands with Dublin in 1906 and 1908. He had come up from Kerry. My mother would have suggested that physique-wise I was like him. I have five brothers and none of them are tall. Physique-wise they were more like my father's side of the family. My father was from County Clare.

When we got into our teens and there was a row between myself and the brothers, they used to tell my mother she brought the wrong baby home because I was so taller than the rest of them.

All my brothers played football and hurling but Seán was the only one that made the grade in terms of county representation. He moved from this club to Portlaoise when he was 28 or 29. He would have been at school with Tony Hanahoe, Jimmy Keaveney and all of those lads in Marino. He's on some of the pictures around here (St Vincent's GAA club).

He got a job as assistant county engineer in Laois when he was 28 or 29 and he moved to Portlaoise and joined Portlaoise and ended up playing corner-back for Portlaoise against us in a Leinster Club Quarter-Final which they beat us in.

I'm wondering how deep you're going to get into this GAA Gene thing, because it's a bit of a minefield. In some respects it's a fascinating idea that the athletic gene or the capacity to play the National Games whether it's hurling or football are somehow influenced by your ancestry.

I'm sure across the spectrum of genealogy there's all kinds of associations you can make with people who are successful in business, people who are successful in the profession or law or medicine or whatever. It's the same context about what's handed down from one generation to another.

Or the famous Irish saying, 'He didn't lick it off the street!'. And the saying as Gaelige, 'Briseann and dúchas trí shúile an chait’.

But, sure, anyway, yeah, the Caseys of Lispole. I often say, and people think I'm bullshitting, but I remember as a young fella with two or three of my brothers being brought by my mother down to the farm in Lispole. At the same time Bill Casey's boys were growing up and were a similar age to me. Roibeard Casey is the oldest of that family and he's the Head of Irish in Mary Immaculate College. He'd be 63 or 64, I'm 62 in September, so he'd be a little bit older than me.

His next brother was Seán and his next brother was Micheál. So there was always three or four of them the same age as us. And when we'd go down there, at the end of every day when all the chores were done and all the cattle were milked, we'd go out to the field and play football and it used to be just 'míle murder'. Dog eat f**king dog. And I have no doubt that my approach and attitude in terms of what it took to win matches at the highest level were influenced by those escapades. Oh yeah, no doubt.

JH: So would you have gone down there most summers as a young lad?

BM: Between the age of five and six and 14 or 15 you'd be down every summer for some period of time. As well as that we'd be in Clare visiting my father's family. He was also from a family of 12 and two of his older sisters married two brothers who were farmers, they're just outside Ennistymon. My father grew up in a Station House on the West Clare Railway in a place called Moinreel near Inagh. We sometimes went from Kerry to Clare and it was the same environment, another farming environment. So rural Ireland in that context would have had a huge bearing on me and my brothers in terms of our experience of life.

JH: Did the stories of Bill Casey's exploits plant the seed in your head that it was something you could aspire to yourself?

BM: I suppose looking back on it or thinking about it, it might have been a sub-conscious thing. I was born into a house on Collins Avenue just below Whitehall Gaels. That's where the family lived, and I was the second youngest of seven. But when I was three years of age we moved down to Stiles Road in Clontarf. Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe it was Clontarf and the fact it was a very sporting environment. Between St. Anne's Park, the sea, Clontarf cricket and rugby, Oulton lawn tennis club, there's loads of sporting opportunities around and I somehow just gravitated into all of those environments.

I spent my childhood in Clontarf cricket and rugby club playing both, and both of them to inter-provincial level. At the same time I was playing with Clontarf GAA, but when I was 15 years of age they couldn't field a team. At the time I was playing hurling with Eoghan Ruadh, because Clontarf didn’t have a hurling team. And playing football with Clontarf until they disbanded because people left.

My brother Seán then arranged a transfer to St. Vincent's for me. All of those things just happened as a matter of daily routine. I was just interested in sport, full-stop. And it so happened that when I came to Vincent's at 16 years of age, the legacy and history and the culture of this club was about winning Dublin Championships and being the best club in Dublin and then feeding onto the Dublin team.

I played my first All-Ireland at 19 years of age in 1974. And whether Billy (Casey) or the history and culture of West Kerry and Gaelic Football was in the picture or not, it probably was, but it probably only added to the rest of the pile.

JH: So between nature and nurture you had every advantage?

BM: I had, yeah.

JH: What were your parents’ names?

BM: My father was in the Civil Service in the department of education and that's where he met my mother. But my mother had to leave the Civil Service once they got married. Lispole and West Kerry is on the edge of the Gaeltacht. The vernacular and spoken language in Lispole is Irish in an awful lot of the families. So my mother's family was as Gaeilge. And my father was the same even though he wasn't from a Gaeltacht area.

He became eventually the translator, if you would, or language corrector for An Gúm and he was a stickler for Irish grammar. With the result that we all went to the Irish model schools opposite the Pro Cathedral in Marlborough street and then onto Coláiste Mhuire. My father was known as Pádraig Ó Maolain. An tUasal Pádraig Ó Maolain. And my mother was Anne Casey, but she was Áine ni Cathasaigh.

JH: So did you all speak Irish in the house growing up?

BM: Oh yeah.

JH: Exclusively Irish?

BM: Exclusively Irish. Even down to the rosary being said as Gaelige.

JH: As you say, you were actively involved in all sports. I was interested to read that the day before you played your first game for Dublin you played for Leinster against Ulster in a U-20 rugby interprovincial. Is that right?

BM: It was U-19.

JH: And you scored a try?

BM: Yeah.

JH: How did that all come about?

BM: To some extent it was coincidence that the two fixtures fell side by side. I had been playing rugby all that winter with Blackrock. A friend of mine, Tony Moran, had persuaded me to go over to Blackrock and I won what's known as a McCorry Cup medal that year with Blackrock, U-19. I was selected then for the Leinster team as a second-row. And captain of that Leinster team was a man called John Robbie, who later became the Gay Byrne of South Africa. He played on a Lions team that toured South Africa and ended up staying on.

John was captain and he knew of the fact that I was playing for Dublin the next day and had been selected. It had been in the papers and what-not. It's just coincidence that the series of matches for the Leinster U-19 rugby team, the last of that series was the Ulster match in Ravenhill. It was just a fluke to some extent that it happened on the Saturday the day before Corn na Cásca in Croke Park that I was picked for my first Dublin match.

I was studying in Limerick at the time and was travelling up and down. And when we got off the train in Dublin, John was a bit surprised that this big brute of a second-row could actually play a bit of football. He thought from his rugby times that the only people who could play football as rugby players were the scrum-half and the out-half. Everyone else was just trying to win the ball and give it to him, kind of thing.

The odd time in the middle of matches and after matches I used to say, "John, you know, you could do better than you are. You gave a sloppy pass there and the reason you gave it was because you didn't hold the ball properly or you didn't move your wrists correctly." He'd be looking at me funny then!

So, this match in Ravenhill, Jesus, it was a ding-dong match. At a certain stage, three-quarters through the second-half, I was struggling to get from ruck and maul to the next ruck and maul. And I arrived late to this continuation of ruck-maul that was just on the Ulster line and John took the ball out of the ruck to fire it back to, I think, Ollie Campbell, and I arrived and just literally grabbed the ball and dived over the line for the try.

He was so shocked. He said, "F**k, I didn't see you coming at all!" After the match when we were getting off the train in Dublin he said, "Look, Brian, it's been a great experience playing with you and well done. Sincerely, best of luck tomorrow, one never knows what pathway you're taking, but give it your best and the best of luck."

That was the last time I nearly spoke to him until two or three years ago when I spoke to him on the phone. He was home in Dublin for some short period and I had asked somebody that if he was ever home to give him my number and ask him to call me and he did. And we just spoke for 15 or 20 minutes. He was heading back to south Africa and it wasn't possible to see him.

JH: When he was wishing you best of luck with whatever path you took, at that point in your life did you know what path you were going to take?

BM: I wasn't thinking too much about it. I was in Limerick, I was up and down every weekend, I had just been playing rugby for the previous winter because I was in Limerick. I was in a bit of a gap between U-21 football and senior football with Dublin. I would have been playing senior football with Vincent's. And playing with what at the time was the National College of Physical Education.

I wasn’t necessarily thinking about anything much except that I had been picked for this Dublin match. Remember, at the time, Dublin were nothing. Dublin were beaten by Louth in the previous year's Championship in the first round. And there was deep depression, and Dublin had not yet got out Division Two in the League. So me being selected for Dublin and Corn na Cásca, it was a Mickey Mouse match, it was an annual fixture. And sure Dublin were going nowhere. And it was against Sligo.

Heffernan and his selectors, they knew what they wanted to do. But sure I was innocent of that. I was just 18 turned 19 and I was just doing whatever I could. I was drinking away on occasions down in Limerick, studying whenever I could, it was a new experience because the college was a new experience.

We had been in Tralee. Actually, I don't know if you've ever heard this story, but our first year in college was spent in Tralee rather than Limerick. Because the facilities in Limerick weren't ready. 30 to 40 young lads from all over Ireland on one floor of the Mount Brandon Hotel. And 30 to 40 girls from all over Ireland on the lower floor.

JH: Sounds like paradise!

BM: Just think about it. Lads and girls who had just done their Leaving Cert and are in Tralee in Kerry and if ever there were bonds and friendships built for a lifetime, they were built there.

No, coming off that train and talking to John Robbie, I wouldn't have been doing too much thinking about anything much except where was the next match.

JH: Thomond College must have been a real football hot-bed when you were down there. Weren't Pat Spillane, Ogie Moran, and Brian Talty all in Thomond around that time too?

BM: Pat was the year behind me. Ogie was with us in my year for about three months and then he transferred to UCD to do a B Comm. Brian Talty would have been another year back, two years back.

JH: Was there much of a Gaelic Football culture there?

BM: Ah, sure it was the only culture. In the first year John Tobin was there. Previously Jimmy Deenihan and Tom Donnellan from Roscommon and a whole load of Irish GAA lads had to go to Strawberry Hill for their first year because the Department of Education were planning the building and the concept of a National College of Physical Education and were only making progress. The custom and practice at that time was that 12 or so applicants for PE teaching would be trained over there. Mickey Ned O'Sullivan and Billy Morgan would have gone there too.

So, anyway, in the group that came back from London to start their second-year in Ireland, Jimmy Deenihan was in it, Tom Donnellan was in it. A fella called Andy Shorthall from Laois. There were a few hurlers. A Dave Barry from Clare. So, they came into the group with myself, John Tobin, a fella called Liam Fardy from Wexford, Joe Mulligan from Offaly. Fran Ryder from Dublin here. And a whole host more.

So the first club and team that really got up and running was a Gaelic Football team. There was a good sprinkling of hurlers too so we had strong football and hurling teams from day one. At the time we competed in the Higher Education Colleges League, but the Sigerson Cup was a closed shop. They would only allow the Universities to play and we weren't considered good enough to be considered to play.

It was a bit of ethnic cleansing! It was two years or so for us to prove to them that we were of the standard. Because we beat UCD in a League Final in 1976. Deenihan manoeuvred that very well. He was dealing with John O'Keeffe and the boys and he was coming back and attending training sessions with us and telling us the lads were laughing at us. 'They're going to f**ing beat you up', and all of this stuff. That rose us, and Deenihan of course laughing behind it all, the cute Kerryman!

Yeah, Richie Bell, God be good to him, was in Pat Spillane's year. He was a Mayo footballer who died very young. A lovely man. The strong GAA presence culminated in that All-Ireland club win in 1978. Spillane would have graduated in that stage but he was entitled to play back. I graduated in '76. My period was '72 to '76. So Brian Talty would have graduated in '77 or '78.

JH: You mentioned that Dublin were at a low ebb when you made your debut in '74. Is it true that in '73 you were selling programmes at the All-Ireland Final?

BM: I did, yeah.

JH: So as a lad selling programmes for the All-Ireland Final, how far away did you think Dublin were to playing in a game like that?

BM: Ah sure, if I thought about it, I don't remember thinking too much about it, but if I did I would have said they'd be miles away from it. I would have attended every All-Ireland as a programme seller for ten or more years beforehand. That's just what you did when you were around here and you were so close to Croke Park. The '73 All-Ireland was Cork and Jimmy Barry Murphy and Ray Cummins and they looked like they were world-beaters. The previous year Offaly...Offaly had to some extent...dominated would be the wrong word…but they had a big presence from '69 through to '75/76. Because for the first time in their history they won a number of Leinster Championships and two or three All-Irelands.

How far Dublin would have been away from it? God, I don't know. I wouldn't have understood the dynamics of it. Team-building, management and that. What you saw out on the pitch in pure visual terms was the culmination of an awful lot of planning, preparation, and buy-in and good-will and energy. It didn't just happen on the day. I probably didn't understand an awful lot of that and didn't get to understand it until I got into the Dublin panel and saw how Kevin and his selectors operated in terms of building momentum and building morale and a culture of wanting to win but understanding that wanting to win was one thing, but the other side of the house was that if you don't prepare, if you don't put in the effort, if you don't work hard, then winning is only a dream, a fantasy.

So, in looking at other teams around at the time, I wouldn't have believed that it was possible to sell programmes in '73 and be out on the pitch in '74. Like that would have been a total crackpot proposal.

JH: So you play your first game against Sligo. When did you start thinking something special might be building? You would have known Kevin Heffernan already of course from St. Vincent's, but when did you think he was on the cusp of something special with this Dublin team?

BM: It's hard to say, really. There were milestones if you will. The day we beat Offaly in the quarter-final when Leslie Deegan scored a goal and a point. Going into that match I personally didn't think we were going out the other side because I had seen Offaly. Not least of all because I had a cousin playing with Offaly, Sean Evans. If I thought about it too much I would have said, "Nah, we're not where they are." But we beat them. Some people would say fortuitously, but, you know, it's the old Gary Player thing, the more you practice the luckier you get and we were at that stage and on some sort of a roll in terms of having a group ethic and the next milestone then was a Leinster Final. Imagine we were in a Leinster Final and imagine we won it.

Then we were into a semi-final against Cork and we had the cheek to think we might beat them. So it was stepping stones, really. I know when we came to the All-Ireland Final against Galway we weren't in awe of them. We did definitely see this as an opportunity because it wasn't Kerry and it wasn't a team with a huge reputation from the years beforehand. Galway were novices in the '74 All-Ireland Final to some extent. They had won an All-Ireland since their three-in-a-row in the sixties. I always remember that that was part of the thinking.

I was one of the younger people in the group. Jimmy Keaveney, Gay O'Driscoll, Tony Hanahoe, had ten years of failed Dublin performances. So you'd probably get a more contemplative response from them on that question than you would from me. For me it was all new and it was about just not letting anyone down here, least of all yourself, you know?

JH: Before that Dublin team came along, it's fair to say the GAA didn't have a huge presence in the city?

BM: People throw terminology around and I suppose I do it myself as well. But in trying to understand the dynamic of what that Dublin team of the '70s under Kevin's leadership established I suppose you could say that they initiated a culture of buy-in to the games and to the sport.

I like to think that the impact that was not just big matches and the supporters that went to them. It was all those people giving back to their own small communities because they witness the effort of the team and the ambition of the team to do as well as they could. I would hope that filtered down to all levels.

I do believe at times that this country would be seriously imperilled if it wasn't for the GAA, their clubs, and the spirit of community that the games have delivered all over the place.

JH: How transformative was it in Dublin at the time? If you were to compared '73 to '77, how much change happened in that period of time?

BM: I'd say there was a seismic shift in terms of being switched on suddenly, an awful lot of people who were at best a remove or two from the organisation. Suddenly they switched into thinking, "Jesus, I can get into this." And I'd say that over the period from '74 to 1980 there was a huge explosion of young kids being brought to GAA clubs as opposed to being brought nowhere or brought to a soccer club. Rugby probably wasn't the way it is now, all the clubs have mini-rugby, whereas back in those days they didn't.

The GAA at that time was the first organisation in the city that got a large section of the population, you'd describe them as middle-class, upper-class or whatever you want, but they suddenly switched on to thinking they could be a part of it. I think that happened, yes. I'd say it was significant in that context.

JH: How did Kevin Heffernan create a winning culture within that group of players in a very short period of time?

BM: That's a good question and it's not an easy question to answer. Others in the group that you might talk to might have a different reply to me. For me, I'd be nothing without the GAA. And I'd be a lot less than I am if I hadn't at a very impressionable period of my life come in contact and had the opportunity to avail of an individual who had been through life and understood what it took to make it in life.

I'm not talking about earning big money or being very successful in business. I'm just talking about the basics of being the best you can be in life. What he did very successfully with us as a group was he brought us all to understand that we were capable of great things if we all bought into the team theme. And that the sum of our parts were better and probably much better than the parts of the sum.

There's no doubt that the training we did to get to a level of fitness won us an awful lot of matches in the early days because our opposition weren't prepared in that way. Our opposition were, at best, turning up for collective training and kicking a few balls and playing a bit of football. Whereas we were better prepared because of the influence of Mickey Whelan on Kevin. Mickey had the sports science to back up the theory that if you want your team to perform over 60 minutes you have to build some kind of a cardiovascular capacity. Other teams weren't doing that.

The best players on other teams were maybe going on a solo-run and getting a score and then they were bollixed for five minutes before they'd come back in again and maybe go for another ball. Whereas what Kevin built with us was the capacity that for 60 minutes from start to finish we could go at the highest pace and we that we didn't need rest or recovery in the game. One of the principles of cardio-vascular fitness is cutting down and cutting out your recovery time within a specific game and time.

That definitely started in '74 and was different. We very quickly knew that Kevin was saying, "Look it lads, you know you're well able to turn, and tackle, and twist continuously. You will find this opposition are not. So if you push them hard enough and quick enough, they'll be gone." And that's what happened.

We could see witness to this. So that built confidence in us. There would have been plenty of people in the room who would be able to better remember facts and figures about that time than I would. I had an uncle, a brother of my father's, Maurice, and he lived until he was 100 and he was a great story-teller. But he could pick out things in matches and say, "What were you doing there?" And I'd hardly remember it at all.

He would say, "Brian, when I was growing up the only thing we had were books, facts, and figures, and we had to learn by rote. So I'd remember everything because if I didn't remember I wasn't going to find it out somewhere else." It was a fascinating insight into how different people learned. Because I rarely remember actual happenings in that way.

But I can remember this incident in the little room in Parnell Park where we used to have meetings in. It was a wooden room and, Jesus, the windows used to steam up. We'd be in there for two or three hours analysing and talking about things.

I remember the night before the Cork semi-final in '74 when we had won the Leinster Championship and we were over the moon. I personally just couldn't believe it. Here we were training for an All-Ireland semi-final against Cork! Sure I had sold programmes for their All-Ireland Final win the previous year!

We were all talking and different players were contributing about what they needed to do and what they had to do. Kevin was making sure that everyone understood their jobs. And he finished up by saying, "Guys, that's it now, enough talking. We'll meet on Sunday and we'll kick the shite out of these f**kers".

I said to myself, "He actually believes. He thinks we're going to win!" I didn't say anything to anybody. I was just thinking to myself, "If he thinks we're going to win what am I going to do?" I spent some period of time getting my head around it and I eventually decided was, "Brian, what you do here is you shut up and you just do your best so you don't let him down."

But I can remember that sensation. He had the fag in his mouth and he was banging the table saying, "Right, that's it now, we're going to kick the shite out of these f**kers." I had been listening to all the talk of all the guys saying they were going to do this and that. But it didn't hit home to me really about the ambition to beat the reigning All-Ireland Champions until Heffernan said what he said.

JH: What was it about Kevin Heffernan that gave him that sort of innate self-belief and confidence and the ability to make others believe too?

BM: He could articulate it in layman's terms. He had a way of recognising or detecting what made sense to different people. And he had a way of articulating that both in a group situation and an individual one-to-one. He had a huge capacity to communicate the basics of any aspect of the game of Gaelic Football. And a lot of his mantra around those various things are applicable to all sports. Through my own career in PE teaching and being involved now as Director of Sport in UCD, I would still figure that he could have coached any Olympic champion.

I was looking at Richie McCaw, the All-Black, when he came to Dublin. Just think of his performances. Kevin would have been up there with any coach that the All-Blacks have or any sport has in terms of understanding the requirements of performance.

JH: You talk about being in that room for hours at a time with the windows steaming up...He obviously encouraged a group dynamic and wanted every player to feel a part of it and to drive it on?

BM: Yeah, hugely. Hugely. He gave everybody free licence to contribute to the effort.

JH: Did he maybe think that if you all verbalised your ambition, you'd start to believe it? Or what was his theory there?

BM: It was that and much more. Imagine, we would have a panel of 30, sometimes 31, 32. And on occasions every single one of them from one to 32 had their opportunity to say what they felt was important. And, like, looking back on it now, I'm amazed that he orchestrated it that way. But I can fully understand why he did it.

JH: How honest were you all with one another? Any punches pulled?

BM: Oh Jesus, no. He insisted on that. There had to be honesty and it had to be eyeball to eyeball. And there were some harsh words said by individuals who wouldn't necessarily frame their commentary in any kind of a sensitive way. Like, one of the most enjoyable individuals to make contributions in that context was David Hickey. He was phenomenal! David had a way of framing it in a way of dismissing the opposition..."Lads if we do half of what we're capable of doing, these fkers won't live with us."

He would dismantle any opposition be it Kerry or anyone else. He was just ultra-confident. But, then, everyone contributed. Paddy Cullen, Jimmy Keaveney, Jim Brogan, even the subs who were always on the fringes on the team. But their effort in training and their effort in the whole scheme of things was as important as anybody's.

JH: Robbie Kelleher said once that it wasn't a team of great footballers. He said there was just five great footballers - yourself, Cullen, Hickey, Keaveney, and Kevin Moran - and that it was a team of characters rather than footballers.

BM: That was Robbie's way of putting it. David Hickey wouldn't agree with him. Hickey would say, "Sure, Jesus, Robbie you were as good as anybody." Robbie would admit and he'd say it at meetings that he had to work hard on his game and he had little or no time to be worrying about anyone else. That if he did his job to the best of his ability that would be him happy. The word characters is probably relevant in that context alright. There was a lot of different characters but Kevin's capacity was to get them all working in the one direction.

JH: It's interesting that so many of that team have been very successful in their private lives as well as sporting lives which would suggest there was something fairly special about that group as people.

BM: Yes, innately, but on the other hand it was the experience of being together as a team that we all leveraged off and that we all benefited from. You can probably never prove this, but I suspect that a lot of us wouldn't be half of what we are if it wasn't for having that opportunity. We were going for six years, six All-Ireland Finals, four National League Finals in a row, '74 to '79. Then the break-up came for various reasons, age being one of them.

I believed it was a double-edged sword in terms of us all benefiting and being better people because of our good fortune to be brought together in that way and for having someone like Kevin merge all our talents into one direction.

JH: Jimmy Keaveney once said that Kevin was so ruthless that if there was a fella in Mountjoy for stabbing his wife and Kevin thought he could help win Dublin an All-Ireland, he'd break him out.

BM: In a way that's a bit of an exaggeration. What Jimmy's trying to get across is that Kevin would literally do anything for the benefit of the team.

JH: What sort of relationship did you have with Kevin? Was he the same with everyone on the team?

BM: No, no. Unfortunately, and I can see how this happens, some of the lads would have fallen out with him. They wouldn't necessarily resent him, but they'd regret different things that happened to themselves or that they would say he did to them. Dropping them or whatever. I think that's unfortunate.

Kevin was a great friend to me and I like to think that I was very close to him in spirit. It was a coincidence that we were both in the same club and of the same culture. Again, that was my good fortune. He was private person and it took a bit of work to warm him up and get him to open up. I got the opportunity on quite a number of occasions to have that with him. He was very honest with me and I learned an awful lot from him.

When you asked me the question about '74 and what I was expecting going in, he was determined one way or another that we would be successful, and that's probably what Jimmy is referring to. I wasn't there, I heard this second-half, and he told me he said it, but he stood up in the Dublin dressing-room after they were beaten by Louth in the first round of the 1973 Leinster Championship.

In the doom and gloom after the match when lads were togging out, Kevin stood up and said, "Lads, that feeling you have now, just keep it with you, remember it. Because by hook or by crook, I'm going to get 15 lads together that are going to make sure you never experience that feeling again." Or words to that effect.

JH: So he saw it from a long way off?

BM: He saw what he wanted and because of the '50s and his own success in captaining the Dublin team in 1958, in his view he knew it was possible, it was just about how you go about getting that. I don't know whether he would ever admit or realise that at any stage between '74 and '76 that he had a bunch of people who could deliver on what his vision was.

JH: Here are three things Heffernan said about you - "He was grumpy as a young fella", "Huge intelligence", "A heart of gold". Are those three character traits accurate?

BM: Grumpy? (laughs) We used to slag each other about that. When we'd greet each other I'd say, "How are you Grumpy?" I'd get the grumpy bit in before he would. And 'Narky'. I'd call him 'Narky' at times, you know. Ah, he was a unique individual alright.

John Harrington: You beat Cork in the ’74 Semi-Final and Galway in the Final so at the age of 19 in your very first year of senior inter-county football you win an All-Ireland medal. The year previously you were selling programmes before the Final. That's some turnaround, isn't it?

Brian Mullins: It was a significant turnaround, but that's the way life goes. I was lucky that I had some involvement in that turn-around. But I was lucky that there were others who caused the turnaround to happen as well. I didn't dwell on it. It was a very interesting and exciting time. I was at College in Limerick so there was a lot of similar individuals in the College who were trying to do the best they could for their individual counties. One of the coincidences was that John Tobin who was in my class in Limerick was on the Galway team. There were all kinds of consequences and involvements.

JH: So what was it like after the high of '74 when that young Kerry team emerged from the blue to beat Dublin in the '75 All-Ireland Final?

BM: I suppose it was mirror-image to some extent of what happened to Cork with us in '74. Kerry did something to us in '75 like we had done to Cork the previous year. There was huge learning in that. That was a seminal occasion in the sense of bringing us very much back down to earth. That you could be at the height of success and then in the blink of an eye...a year isn't the blink of an eye, but the day is, and you're brought back down to ground.

We went into the Final in '75 exactly the opposite to what we went into in the ’74 Semi-Final against Cork. We were favourites and we got turned over. It's simple and straightforward, really. It's nothing complicated or unprecedented. It happens all the time in sport. You still see it happening. If you could get all athletes to understand that it's what you deliver on the day that matters, not what you delivered the last day.

JH: What was Kevin Heffernan like in the aftermath of that defeat in terms of rebuilding for '76? I'd imagine he was more driven than ever?

BM: He was, yeah. I suppose it's a testament to his determination that after winning an All-Ireland in '74 and losing one in '75, one could be forgiven for believing he could have said, "Ah, I've enough of this." But he didn't. He wasn't much different after '75 other than made it very clear very quickly that he wasn't going anywhere and that he felt there was still more in the group. He put it back to us to prove him right or wrong.

We realised that we had let our guard down. We had become cosy, if you would, nonchalant might be another word you could use around the hard work that we had done in '74 to get to a Final and then win the Final. We subconsciously or otherwise as both individuals and a collective had taken our foot off the pedal in terms of how we approached things, particularly the Final in '75. It was all learning. They say that an individual athlete or a group always needs every so often to be beaten to realise they're not doing enough. It was straightforward enough in that context.

JH: It must have been satisfying so to turn the tables on Kerry in '76.

BM: Satisfying to try. And to work towards that. Again, in one of these circumstances, a lot of coaches and managers will say that winning is a habit and if you really want to achieve at the final stage of Championship football, you need to be trying to win every match and taking every match one at a time. It was that kind of thinking and that kind of talk that we embarked upon in '76. We won the League and eventually won the Championship.

JH: Kevin Heffernan stepped down as manager after '76 and Tony Hanahoe became player-manager in '77 before Heffernan returned in '78. Was that a shock when it happened?

BM: Looking back on it, it was a surprise, yeah, but we had to accept it. He made up his mind and normally Kevin was the sort of person who when he made his mind up about something it was very hard to get him to change it. I personally didn't try to get him to change his mind and I'm not too sure did anybody. He stepped back from the situation and Tony Hanahoe, Donal Colfer, and Lorcan Redmond must have had some dialogue with the County Board and the County Board were happy that they would continue. That's what happened.

JH: A lot of credit must surely go to Tony Hanahoe? It can't have been easy being a player-manager as he successfully as he was in '77?

BM: Yeah, yeah. There was obviously a lot of pressure on him and a lot expected in terms of just carrying on. But we were a tight-knit group and he could be forgiven for believing that a lot if not all of the individuals were prepared to support him and make sure we didn't slip back from any of the targets or training intensity that we knew were necessary if we were going to aim to win the All-Ireland in '77 again.

JH : Was that partly down to the culture Heffernan had created whereby the players were empowered to talk things through in that shed in Parnell Park so the team became player driven as much as anything else?

BM: Yeah, yeah. It did. After the defeat to Kerry in '75 it had already become a player-driven entity and we continued in that vein into '77 after Kevin left. Very little if anything changed from that point of view.

JH: Presumably that '77 All-Ireland Semi-Final against Kerry was built up as being the rubber-match because they'd beaten you in '75 and you'd beaten them in '76. Did you view it that way yourselves? Did you think if you lost that match what you had achieved before as a team would be slightly undermined?

BM: I wouldn't think so, no. My memory would be that it was another year, another effort to keep going to win again. We wouldn't have been thinking that if we lost it would be a blot on our achievements. Maybe other people do, but I wouldn't have been thinking that way. I don't think you strive for success in an All-Ireland setting, hurling or football, with a motivation that if you lose this match it's going to reflect negatively on your previous performances. We would have gone into '77 knowing that they were chastened by being beaten in '76 and that they would have every intention of reversing the result in '77.

JH: It's gone down as an all-time classic. Were you aware it was something special when you were in the heat of battle?

BM: There's no surprise in it really. They had caught us in '75 and they could equally say we caught them in '76. We knew enough at the time and we had studied them greatly to understand what they would be trying to do and we certainly knew that they had trained hard and were going to match us, if that's the right word, in the fitness stakes. We knew we had to be at our best to match them.

So I suppose the fact that it's perceived as being an excellent game is as much to do with the fact that both teams at that stage had a number of years behind them in terms of preparation. The capacity of both teams to set a high level of intensity and pace and to maintain it for most if not all of the 70 minutes wasn't a surprise.

JH: What sort of rivalry existed between both sets of players by that point?

BM: There was a very keen rivalry. Very keen. There had to be, and that was no surprise. They had a tradition, a huge tradition, and they had obviously huge quality in their team. And they had the capacity to push the pace and the intensity so we had to be prepared to match that and I'm sure in their preparation they spoke about the need for them to be at the top of their game and what they had to do.

Without getting too romantic or historical about it, it was a clash of gladiators style occasion and it was a lovely, sunny day and it was in the cauldron of what Croke Park can be with 60 or 70 thousand people there. So it had all the ingredients of a titanic clash.

JH: So to come out on the right side of it must have been a sweet one?

BM: Oh yeah, very sweet. But you're always mindful, or at least I was, of how narrow the margins are between being on the right side or wrong side of the score. If you look back at the video you can see plenty of times that they would say, "If only we had got that", and we could say the same. As I say, it had all the ingredients of being a match to remember. Because the lead swapped hands, the pace never or rarely dropped, and the crowd got value for money. There was no delaying, each team was trying to get a jump on the other team each time.

Yeah, I can understand that people consider it to be something special. But, again, it was just another match and we had won nothing except a match against Kerry which is no mean achievement. I wouldn't like to dismiss it or diminish it any way, but it was a means to an end for us to get back to an All-Ireland Final which we did.

JH: And which you won. The following year, '78, there was another showdown with Kerry, this time in the All-Ireland Final. When you talk about the fine margins between victory and defeat, you started that game really well, but then everything changed after that Mikey Sheehy goal when he famously lobbed Paddy Cullen with a free. Might it have been a different game if that hadn't been allowed to happen?

BM: Oh, yeah. That's the great thing about sport. You saw yesterday Tipperary were six points to three up against Mayo and their corner-back soloed down the pitch and between himself and his colleagues they got somewhat confused and Mayo were very quick to jump on the opportunity and like that had the ball in the back of the net. Even watching Kilkenny and Waterford, Kilkenny got one chance in the drawn game and Walter Walsh just did what a Kilkenny player does.

There's always that, and that's the great thing about sport. And in '78 at seven points to two up, John Egan got half a chance and took full advantage of a bit of laxity in our back-line and before we knew it a goal went in. And then, as you say, the Mikey Sheehy incident changed the whole pattern of the game. Really, in some ways, we shouldn't have allowed it.

We still went in at half-time very close on the score-board, I think it was 2-2 to 0-7 at stage or something. It was a huge fillip for them and a burden for us, that 10-15 minute spell before half-time when they scored the two goals and changed the whole dynamic of the game. And they have to be applauded for that. That was as typical a Kerry performance as you would ever see or witness and we knew they were capable of that.

But, yet again, we struggled to prevent it. For us, I suppose, it was even more...tragic isn't the right word...but we were going for a three-in-a-row and would dearly have wanted a three-in-a-row. For whatever silly reason you get into those notions of a hat-trick. They're talking about Usain Bolt and the triple-triple and everything like that.

If you win two All-Irelands in a row it's a huge feat. If you win three it's another great feat, but there's something special about three-in-a-row. And looking back on it we probably shouldn't have made such a big deal about it because it may have subconsciously impacted on us on that day. That's what happened, and it reminded everyone of the frailties of sport.

We went into that as All-Ireland Champions, as favourites, looking for the three-in-a-row, and we came out of it with our tails between our legs. And Kerry regained the Sam and they went on to win four-in-a-row.

JH: It was the moment the balance of power shifted. A few key Dublin players were getting on in age and Kevin Moran had gone playing soccer for Manchester United, so the team was starting to break up a little after that, was it?

BM: Yeah, it was. Some of that at least was due to the age-profile. There was a group in their early-thirties that had put in a huge effort for five or six years before that. Gay O'Driscoll, Jimmy Keaveney, Tony Hanahoe, Sean Doherty, they were a strong and forceful part of the whole campaign over the years. Although we got back to the All-Ireland Final again in '79, I think we were tired in '79.

We didn't get at all to the level that we needed to take on a Kerry team that was just getting stronger and stronger. The victory for Kerry in '79 was, I won't say easier, but it was well within their reach. We were a shadow of the force that we had been, even though we got back to an All-Ireland.

The pundits and the commentators would kind of make some analogy between our sixth All-Ireland campaign in a row from '74 through to '79 and Mayo’s this year. That year we beat Down in the semi-final and there was a lot of talk that, 'God, Dublin don't look too impressive'. And they were probably right. I was reminded of it somewhat yesterday listening to a lot of the chat about Mayo. A lot of people coming out of Croke Park were saying things like, 'Aww, they were brutal and they're not going to win an All-Ireland with that kind of team.' It's anybody's guess!

JH: In 1980 you had a serious car-accident. What are your recollections of it?

BM: Ha! How long have you got?! Ah, it happened and it shouldn't have happened. When you're in the middle of a busy life, a busy schedule, you don't think that kind of thing would happen you. You think it would happen to loads of other people but yourself. I had a badly fractured leg out of it. Lucky to be alive and survive it.

So it just meant that I was out of commission for a good while. I had already arranged to go do post-graduate studies in New York even before the crash. I had everything set up to leave in September of 1980. And obviously when I crashed on the 29th of June I had to have a major review of where things were going. But thankfully I succeeded in taking up the studies in January '81. Living in New York and studying there was a major change of life and lifestyle. I was on crutches for the initial stages and football or playing any sport was way off the agenda for me completely. So it was just concentrating on studying and working to survive and pay living costs and what not.

JH: Is it true that you had five bouts of surgery?

BM: I don't know. At this stage I wouldn't remember. I had a number because I had facial injuries as well and at various stages they had to do adjustments to the bone setting in the leg, so it could have been five, I don't know at this stage. Again, I was lucky to have a great surgeon and great care and great healing genes from my parents. I more or less made a full recovery but it took two years.

JH: Were you told you would never play football again?

BM: We didn't really go down that avenue. The main thing at the start was to just be happy that I got out of it. And to try to stand up, get walking again, and heal, it was just one day and one week at a time. You couldn't allow your head to be going places it didn't need to or shouldn't, you know? It would have been a case of, "Well, we'll cross that bridge when it comes to it." The main thing at the start was just to get better. The prospect of from June to December of recovering sufficiently to enable me to go to New York was a short-term target so that's what I concentrated on. I just went off into a different world.

JH: I understand Eamon Coghlan helped you with your rehab in New York?

BM: Eamon was living and working there at the time, yeah. We had known each other for a number of years and, yeah, we used to meet and Eamon did help me greatly with my recovery. Not alone when I was in America, but then when I returned to Dublin in '82. I'd be forever grateful to him for the help and support he gave me.

JH: Did you also did some hill-running in Deer Park in Howth as part of your rehab?

BM: At different times, yeah. Deer Park grasslands were quite conducive to certain types of running. There were a lot of people who were doing routines there. Starting your run at the tee-box and along the fairway and around the green and doing repetitions of those and things like that. Running is a core requirement of football, hurling, most team sports. Your running needs to be at least competent if not excellent. Not only in how you run, but how long you can run for continuously and how quickly you can recover to perform again. So I used to spend some time up in Deer Park, yeah.

JH: How hard did you push yourself to make it back?

BM: I pushed myself as hard as I could! That's not an easy question to answer in terms of after a period of time in America and some consultation with the surgeon, Martin Walsh. After about 15 to 18 months he said that he was of the view that if I wanted to start pushing it I could. That the leg had recovered sufficiently and he was happy as a surgeon to suggest the bone in the leg wasn't a problem anymore and wasn't a barrier.

After that it was up to me whether I was motivated sufficiently, knowing what I did about physical fitness and the effort that it would take, whether I wanted to go that road or not. I was 27/28 and I had to decide whether I wanted to bother my ass going back to what I knew about the hard inter-county training that would be involved. Some part of the madness must have convinced me that it was worth a try, so I did, and the rest is history as they say.

JH: Would you have any regrets that the car accident robbed you of a good chunk of your prime footballing years?

BM: After these things you don't be thinking regrets, I didn't think regrets, no. It happened, you have to accept it and get on with it. Having regrets doesn't solve anything, doesn't make it not happen. And I was lucky. I had played in six All-Irelands, I had won three of them. This was just another challenge.

Who was I to have regrets in terms of what you see around or what you witness in terms of other people having daily challenges in life that they have to go through? I had good fortune that I had good healing. You inherit your capacity for healing from your parents and I was fortunate in that regard as well. So I wasn't thinking regrets and I had never really thought regrets. It was unfortunate but it happened, so just get on with it.

JH: Can you remember the first time you got back out on the football field? I presume it was with St. Vincent's? Can you remember the setting?

BM: I can. It would be difficult for me to remember the first match I played, but the first time I went out on a football field was actually in New York. It was the first time in probably 18 months that I actually went to run a distance. I tried to run a lap of a football pitch. Just one lap. And I collapsed half-way around it. So it was a rude awakening to how much of what I took for granted I had lost. I had never had just a challenge to just be able to run. Put one leg in front of the other. My first match though, it might have been in New York in March or April of '82, but I'm not entirely sure now.

JH: When you joined up with Dublin again, you had only been away for a couple of years, but a lot had changed. Kevin Heffernan was still there as manager, but there was a lot of change in terms of the playing personnel. What was it like going back in?

BM: It was interesting in that really the only same people from my previous experience who were around were Tommy Drumm, Anton O'Toole, and Mick Holden. So it was just the four of us really in what was essentially a new group that Kevin had put together that included John O'Leary, Barney Rock, Kieran Duff, Charlie Redmond and all of that age-group. Pat Canavan and Tommy Conroy and everyone. They were really individuals that I wouldn't have had much or any knowledge or experience of beforehand.

It was really back to a scene of inexperience, if you would. I'm not sure how long they had been training and working together. Probably when I got back really it was June or July of '82. And I'd say that group may have been working from the previous year and into that year so they had some sense of the group dynamic.

But for a while I had to kind of tread warily because I wasn't fully sure of where my own individual contribution was going. I was still only putting my toes in the water of getting to understand had I a competency and a fitness level that would make any impression on a senior inter-county situation.

It was an interesting period and we lost the Leinster Final that year to Offaly by 12 points so it was quickly over, it wasn't a long spell. It would have been a short-period memory for me of being back with the family in Dublin again and going back to work in Greendale teaching after being away from that for a few years. There was a lot of different things going on.

JH: By '83 were you back into the swing of things a bit more? Could you sense there was something special building with that group by then.

BM: I suppose by the time we came around to that time of the year we had a winter of opportunity, particularly me, to work on and try to add value to my own situation. So just put the head down and worked hard over the winter. So by the time the autumn of '83 came around, I suppose there was a bit of momentum. Yeah, it was a time of preparation and trying to build a dynamic again. Tommy Drumm was captain and he and Anton and Mick Holden would have been leaders in that group as well.

We all tried to just pick it up and drive it on. I can't even remember who we played in the early stages of the Championship in '83. I know we played Offaly in the Leinster Final and reversed the defeat of the previous year. So I suppose by that time we must have been going somewhere.

JH: Would you have mixed feelings about the All-Ireland Final itself? To be part of an All-Ireland winning team again must have been great, but to be sent off in the Final must have been tough to deal with personally?

BM: I suppose in ways it was. It would be a disappointment. You don't ever intend or anticipate that you're going to be sent off in an All-Ireland Final or any match for that matter. But particularly since I was trying to recover and trying to get back to operate at that level it would have been the last thing on my mind. I would not have considered it at all.

Again, you've probably heard, that on occasion across a spectrum of events be they sporting or otherwise, those events can take over people. Or take over a situation. And '83 would have to go down as a total bolt out of the blue for everybody. If you had have said that four players were going to be sent off, people would have said you were mad, but that's what happened.

I'd say I'd feel a lot worse if Dublin hadn't have won it. So if you ask me how I feel about it, I have mixed feelings about it. I don't necessarily dwell on it, but any time I'm reminded of it I'd have mixed feelings. On the one hand Dublin won, so no harm done, but on the other hand it was fairly traumatic. Let alone being sent off and having that disappointment of not being involved in the game, but also then the aftermath and the media hype and all the nonsense that went on around it.

I often say that one of the redeeming features of it was an article that Eanna Brophy had in what was the Sunday Press at the time the week after. With tongue in cheek, he wrote that judging by the media outcry you'd swear that I had brought a Kalashnikov rifle into Croke Park and shot and murdered and pillaged around the place. When I read that piece by Eanna I thought, "Jesus, the first person all week that's put a bit of sense to the thing."

Because the media and the commentary around it was just way off the wall. There were a good number of people there who I would never give any credence or credit to for their views after that.

JH: The fact that you were sent-off for a clash with Brian Talty who you were in college with and were friends with, did that make the whole situation even stranger or more difficult?

BM: That was part of the disappointment, yeah. I had all that to weigh up as well. It was a fairly tough and rough time, but sure when you see some of the things going on around the world it's little to be worrying about.

JH: You played up to '85 with Dublin, is that right?

BM: Yeah, '85. We won in '83 thankfully and in '84 we were back again against Kerry. A Kerry team that had a lot of change in personnel although they still had a few stalwarts. They beat us in '84 and again in '85. So '85 was my last All-Ireland.

JH: Was it an easy decision to make to walk away at that stage? You would have been still relatively young?

BM: I was 31. Other things came into play, a combination of different aspects of my life. Although we didn't win in '84 and '85, I had gotten back. I had worked the oracle so to speak. And I was able to say, "Well, you know, that was no main feat, getting back."

It's a little bit like the thing with the Olympics at the moment. Unfortunately, we in Ireland here measure Olympic success by this concentration on who's going to win medals and what not. Again, you witness it, commentators are very quick to ask, “have we a chance of a medal here or here?”

There was a lovely interview on the radio last week by that lady from Cork who finished the marathon. She was so effusive about it..."I'm an Olympian, I have finished the marathon in the Olympics, I represented my country. My name will now go on the club roll of honour for Leevale." And she espoused all that was good about the achievement of being at an Olympics and being good enough to qualify and to perform.

And then we have Thomas Barr and the two Pentathletes, Arthur Lanigan O'Keeffe and Natalya Coyle, who are in the first ten in the World. And it doesn't get the public acknowledgement that it should in my view. I suppose in a little way, and thinking in that direction about myself, at 31 years of age having played in nine All-Irelands and been lucky enough to win four of them, part of my thinking is that I had done that, wore the jersey, and didn't need to prove anything to anybody, least of all myself.

The second part of it was that Gerry McCaul was appointed manager at some stage. And he asked me to continue and to work with the team and that he wanted me to be in the squad and he wasn't giving me any guarantees. Part of me would have been happy to do that, but another part of me was thinking that I was heading into a period where I probably would be a sub most of the time. Probably would be on occasions expected to keep myself at the top of my fitness but only to be brought in for games depending on the needs of the day.

I weighed that up and decided that, no, not at this stage. If I had been five years younger, I would have. If I had a realistic chance of making an impression that would mean I'd be pushing for a starting 15 place. But if I wasn't going to be in the starting 15 I wasn't prepared to put in that effort.

JH: How do you reflect on it all? You won a lot of honours, but you also played with a great group of men as well. Is that what you'd derive most satisfaction from? Being with those men in that place at that time?

BM: Oh yeah. Certainly. Again, I use the word lucky. I'm forever reminded of this when I read. I read a lot of history. And I read a lot about the famine years and the struggle for freedom. My era and our era, the current era, we don't know our luck. Some people might say, "Well, we've a growing operating economy and we have expectations of a standard of living." Yes, and that's fine, but compared to what our ancestors had to put up with and had to go through, to give us what we have now, I'm forever reminded of that. And I'm so grateful for all I've got.

I have five brothers, one sister, and we were all very aware of how much our parents did for us to make sure that they got us on a road to being independent and making a living for ourselves. And fortunately for me, my mother was from West Kerry and my father from West Clare, and I spent a lot of time as a growing youngster in rural Ireland. And I learned from that experience from my country cousins and being in the country about the value of life and the value of health. My own family, my wife Helen, four children, and six grand-children, would then have reinforced the importance of those values.

Sport for me and Gaelic Games in particular were always part of what it is to be healthy and to be Irish. Man, did I get my tuppence worth out of the organisation. I'm still involved in it, but to play in Croke Park so many times and to represent the county jersey and the club is just a tremendous wave of all that's good about life and appreciation of what we have.

JH: Is there still a good bond between you and all your former Dublin team-mates who went through a lot together?

BM: Oh yeah. We meet fairly regularly. They're meeting this Friday, now. They play golf regularly. I won't be there this time, but that doesn't mean my thoughts won't be with them. You can consider a group like that part of your extended family I suppose.

JH: Was your last game of competitive football 1991 when you helped St. Vincent's win the Dublin intermediate title?

BM: No, no! I went on after that and played in Donegal.

JH: When you moved to Carndonagh?

BM: Yeah, I won an intermediate championship medal. I have the unique collection of a few Dublin senior championship medals, a Dublin intermediate championship medal, and a Donegal intermediate Championship medal. And I played with my two sons in Donegal. That was 1996 I think.

JH: How did the move to Carndonagh come about? It's a fair change of scenery to go from here to there...

BM: It just came up. I was keen to try to professionally develop. I was a senior post-holder in the school in Kilbarrack in Greendale and I started looking further afield because there were opportunities coming up to be vice-principal or principal in schools and I had done a few interviews as part of that effort, if you would, to move up the ladder of responsibility.

If you just cut your cloth and say I'm only going to apply for jobs in Dublin, it was a far more competitive and smaller field, so I went looking for jobs outside of Dublin. I interviewed in Wexford and Cork and then eventually this one in Carndonagh. All over the country I was. Then this one in a very large school in Inishowen in north Donegal came up and I got it.

JH: What was the move like? Any bit of a culture shock?

BM: Ah no, it was lovely. Sure I've four Grandchildren there now. My oldest son lives there so I'm up and down and have a lot of connections there. It's a lovely part of the country. I'd never been there before I went to work there and I think that was a bit of a bonus. I enjoyed that part of it. I went with no pre-conceived ideas about the whole thing. Lovely people. Typically Irish.

JH: I'd say that '96 Intermediate Championship up there was a bit of an odyssey. There's probably another interview in that!

BM: There's a few lads up there, Kevin McLoughlin and others, who'd have a good laugh about that!

JH: Around that time you would have become the Derry county senior team manager and had a bit of success with them. What sort of experience was that?

BM: Again, it was another great experience, lovely people in Derry. I did it for three years, '96, '97, '98. Enjoyed it immensely and worked with some great people. Again, very rural, very GAA. Stepped back from it after '98 when we were beaten by Galway in the All-Ireland semi-final and I haven't dabbed my toe in that water really since.

Two years later the opportunity to come back to Dublin came up in the guise of the job in UCD (Director of Sport) and since I came back to Dublin whatever time I have I give to the club here in St. Vincent's. There were occasions when I was asked to consider the Dublin manager's job, but on the few occasions I was asked I felt that I couldn't give it the time that I believed it needed. So I wasn't going to take it on if I couldn't give it everything. So I stayed away from it.

Happily, there were other individuals who took it on and did a great job with it. No less than Jim Gavin and Pat Gilroy. So the Dublin flag and the Dublin jersey and the Dublin effort is still being carried on with honour and distinction. That's great. It's win, win for me.

JH: So, to sum up, as you say, the GAA has given you a lot?

BM: Yeah, I was saying to someone last night that I started playing hurling and football in Clontarf at eight or nine years of age in street leagues and there probably hasn't been a spell of any more than a few months since then that I haven't been involved in some way with the GAA in the intervening 53 or 54 years.

JH: Very good, thanks a million for your time, Brian.

BM: No problem.