Blue and white flags fly again as double beckons

Tonight in Parnell Park the Dublin hurling title will be sorted out between St Vincent's and Ballyboden St Enda's, the clubs that have lost the last two county finals. But there's more to it than that.

In three days' time, St Vincent's will be back on the same stage - this time chasing the football championship and, they hope, a county double; in fact a treble, as the camogie team have already brought their senior title back to Marino.

On one level, St Vincent's are another suburban club, fighting the good fight, as they trawl the north-east of the city for kids to introduce to Gaelic games on their well-appointed club premises and hope to rediscover their heritage of success.

That's not the full story, though. History also records that 60 years ago or so - not long after its foundation in 1931 - Vincent's acted as the energy cell that generated a GAA tradition in Dublin, turning the county from ship of convenience for footballers and hurlers from elsewhere in Ireland into a entity that represented the city.

It's well known the club produced Kevin Heffernan and that he was central to producing All-Ireland titles for Dublin. But first he helped Vincent's. From 1949, when the first senior title was won, the club ruled the county - garnering 22 football championships in the following 29 years.

That sort of strike rate had to slacken, but there was still plenty to come - six titles in the 1970s plus five players on the Dublin team that gave the county its best decade in 50 years - and an All-Ireland title.

If it all seemed too good to last, that's because it was. Vincent's haven't won the football title since 1984 and the only relief offered by the hurling came nine years later.

For a club whose image is so dominated by 1970s football icons, like Heffernan, Tony Hanahoe and Jimmy Keaveney, hurling provided what some in the club still regard as a highpoint.

Back in 1953 when St Vincent's won their first senior hurling title the club defeated Christy Ring's Glen Rovers in a tournament match in Croke Park before 38,000.

Club member Dave Billings is well known as a former Dublin player and current selector as well as UCD's development officer - an association that hasn't always been free of friction back in Marino given the college defeated the club in last year's football and 2005's hurling final.

He says the Vincent's tradition always gave equal status to hurling.

"It was always accepted that we were a dual club, in the 1940s and '50s. We won the first hurling in 1953. Even in the 1970s that was still accepted: Tony (Hanahoe) and Jimmy (Keaveney) and those lads hurled: Gay O'Driscoll was a well-known hurler, Tony was outstanding and Jimmy was a goal scorer. There'd be no saying,  'I've pulled a hamstring and I can't play a particular game'. You played both. That was the tradition."

He says the club's domination of Dublin from the 1950s to the 1970s owed something to the evolving GAA scene in the capital, which gave Vincent's the run of a quite a large catchment.

"There was no senior club in those areas, like Clontarf or Raheny. Even the number of schools wasn't huge. You had Joey's, O'Connell's and the techs.

At that stage the Artane industrial school was still on the Malahide Road. Dublin demographically has changed so much."

St Joseph's CBS in Fairview became a feeder school for the club, regardless of where the pupils lived.

Dublin's 1974 All-Ireland winning team featured five St Vincent's players, Hanahoe, Keaveney, O'Driscoll, Brian Mullins (now club chair) and Bobby Doyle. All except Mullins, who went to Coláiste Mhuire, attended Joey's.

The club functions in changed demographic circumstances now but through all the changes they now stand on the threshold of a first double since 1981 and, not surprisingly given the tumbling silverware of decades gone by, an 11th in all.

In the light of that dual history it's curious that of the teams that line up this weekend, only Diarmuid Connolly and Stephen Loughlin regularly start for both the footballers and hurlers. Willie Lowry would have made it three had he not broken a leg earlier in the championship.

According to Billings, sustaining a commitment to both teams became increasingly difficult around the time of the great triumphs in the 1970s, as counties became more organised and determined in their preparations.

"It unravelled a bit. Demands from the county teams grew and it got more difficult to keep playing both.

"There was well less matches back then because the county team could be beaten by the first week in June but the success of the footballers made it more complicated for dual players."

So this weekend is a tale of one club and two teams.

Not since the 1930s have Vincent's gone a decade without a senior football or hurling title. Imagine if this decade's both arrived in the space of three days.