Cracking the codes is Dublin's first task

Tom Humphries LockerRoom

Have this idea for an all-action video game. It's a game of chance based on a GAA life. It's called "C'mon a Chairde, Make My Day".

In the opening shot you see a baby being born to a couple of fine, rosy-cheeked parents. It's you! Then we randomly assign conditions. You're a boy. Here's the deal. You're father was a good hurler. As babies go you have fine hurling genes. Da is cranky as a scalded cat, though. Fell out with the club and no son of his will ever darken the door, etc, etc. You go to a junior club with disastrous mini-league structures. Energy levels deplete to critical level and then, Game Over.

Or you survive. Various characters offer you various options along the way. Take a Drink There, Why Don't Ya Son? Could lead to John of Gods, or you might end up securing a useful drinks sponsorship for the club just as it goes senior.

You could end up in a variety of states of GAA ruin. Madman for the Women. Fat as a Fool. Hit a Fella Playing Junior B and Got Two Years. Moved to Australia. Wouldn't Pass to Save His Life. Talented But Slow as a Wet Week. Not as Good as the Brother. The Man Who Is on All the Committees That Nobody Wants to Be On.

I'm having trouble, though, programming in the dilemmas facing Dublin GAA in the next few weeks. Temptations. Moral conundrums. Intractable philosophical knots.

It's time for Dublin to decide the weight of a football All-Ireland. Never mind the micro issue of dual players. Can the city be competitive at football and still give its hurling community something more than a diet of symposiums, blueprints, plans, seminars and the perpetual feeling that the season after the season after next could be real good? What does the GAA in the city exist for? Winning football All-Irelands (which, let's be clear, is a really good feeling), or promoting hurling and football equally, giving both sports the best chance?

Take Conal Keaney. The argument breaks over his head first. Gifted at hurling. Gifted at football. And through the random elements of GAA life and genes, a young man who became known first as a gifted hurler. And lo, it came to pass that he was the hurling messiah.

His path, though, is strewn with temptation. He's a fine footballer and in Dublin the football team are the Great White Way. Football is Broadway. Hurling is off-off Broadway, a lonely garret with nothing but hope to nourish you.

Conal Keaney feels his sleeves being tugged every day. He listens to the hurling manager, and Humphrey Kelleher's argument is a reasonable one. Let the players decide what they play.

And he talks to the football manager and Tommy Lyons's argument is a reasonable one, too. Concentrate on football if you want to play football for Dublin. That's the level of commitment we demand here on the Great White Way.

Conal is not alone of course. Shane Ryan, Liam Óg Ó hEineacháin, Mossy Quinn, Dotsy O'Callaghan and David Henry would all be significant additions to the cause of Dublin hurling, but they're starring exclusively in the big football production.

The loss of Keaney, though, would represent a setback to hurling of, say, half a decade. How do you place that burden on a young man's shoulders? Football is earthly reward; hurling is sacred. It is spiritual work. You can tell a young fella that perhaps it's what he was put here to do. He doesn't have to believe you.

The history of Dublin hurling and the history of Dublin football are two such radically different tales that it is almost impossible to explain to young fellas that the history of Dublin hurling is in itself a reason to love it. The game clings on like a hardy plant in bad soil in this city. It has its own history and community. Little landmarks, like Lar Foley being sent off in 1961 or Snitchy Ferguson being penalised for an illegal pick-up in the same game. Or Lar's successful team of the early 1990s. Lots of days that dawned in great hope ended in keen disappointment. Through it all, Jim Byrne of Eoghan Ruadh, who played with Seán Óg Ó Ceallacháin and Mucky Maher back in the dim distant, remains the only native Dub to have won an All-Ireland medal in the sky blue.

It's not a lot to dangle in front of young men who watched the hysteria that swept the city during the football team's good run of 2002.

But the dilemma stuff isn't as simple as that in Dublin. The air is rustling with whispers about Rory Gallagher.

There are two ways of seeing Gallagher. He's a good club man with St Brigid's, the county and provincial champions. Precisely the sort of player who could make the difference between an All-Ireland and an also-ran position for Dublin football.

Or he's a step too far. Dublin could win an All-Ireland with Gallagher, but using one of the greatest players Fermanagh has ever produced seems like a perversion of all that the GAA and their parish roots and rules have ever stood for. A kick in the teeth for the spirit of the GAA and for every Dublin young fella who dreams of wearing a blue jersey with double digits on the back.

So weigh it all up. Absorb the fact that there's a quiet feeling about hurling in the city. Humphrey Kelleher has moved quickly from being known as Humphrey Who to demonstrating the traits of a smart operator.

So far he has done everything right. The effects of the unfortunate deletion of Marty Morris have been ameliorated by retaining Marty's selectors and shrewdly adding Colm Ó Seallaigh to the mix. Ó Seallaigh had huge success with Dublin Colleges sides and has a good relationship with the younger generation of players.

Kelleher has moved quickly towards implementing Jim Kilty's SAQ training scheme. He got Shane Ryan out hurling again in the Blue Stars' game. That gentle workout gave a glimpse of what Dublin could be like with Ryan winning ball at full forward and David Curtin hustling at centre forward.

And most recently Kelleher has played the PR game well, taking the running to the management of the football team on the issue of dual players. In the modern game it's doubtful if any player can give both games full attention, but Dublin hurling's need is such that the divided attentions of Keaney and Shane Ryan are better than the full attention of some of the players available.

What would you do? Would you bite the bullet and take Rory Gallagher on board if that meant that football's need for Conal Keaney diminished to the point where he decided to concentrate on hurling?

Would the aggregate good there outweigh the aggregate harm? What if Dublin football ended up with Conal Keaney and Rory Gallagher? Too much bad karma? Recipe for success and screw the begrudgers?

Or weigh it all up from a player's point of view. Humphrey Kelleher is in his first year. Maybe that train is leaving the station. Tommy Lyons is in his final year. Can he get back to the glory, glory days of 2002? Are you tempted to just wait and see?

There are no absolutes. No line of applicable precedent. It's people and what they do in their spare time. It's aspirations and pragmatism. It's life, which, as Dublin hurling knows, means that you don't always get what you want and quite often - no matter how you try - you don't always get what you need.

Game over.