Fans offered excellent insight

Television documentary:The first scenes of The Dubs unfold at speed. From the aerial shots of Croke Park we're taken to wet training grounds, and suddenly we're in there. We're part of the Dublin senior football panel. Or, at least, we're about to find out what it's like to be.

"May, June, July lads," shouts Paul Caffrey from the top of the hill. "This is going to stand to us." Then he looks down towards Shane Ryan. "Drive up the fucking thing."

Croke Park, and any thought of a Leinster title, now seems a world away. This is merely the starting gun, the first page in the story of a season. You can't watch The Dubs and not feel like you're sharing the journey.

So, television can still take us into the unknown. It's not the first time a documentary has opened the door on a GAA team, with players chasing their dreams and managers throwing out expletives for fun. Galway's A Year 'Til Sunday set the standard and Westmeath's Marooned had its moments, but The Dubs takes us closer than we've ever been. It's opened the door and welcomed us into the kitchen for tea and biscuits.

And, so far, there hasn't been a better insight into exactly what's involved in playing for your county, and especially playing for Dublin. The only problem is that it only lasted an hour. Though maybe that's all we deserve.

The consolation is we're allowed such an insight in the first place. When Caffrey agreed to let filmmaker Dave Berry take his cameras to the Dublin training at the start of last season nothing was certain. Almost a year later, after editing 150 hours of footage on a shoestring budget, Berry's film, co-produced by Nathan Nugent, provides the perfect appetiser for another season of Sundays.

One of the conditions Caffrey laid down was that if even one Dublin player complained about the presence of the camera it was game over. As it turned out, Berry got to attend every Dublin training session from March onwards, and come the summer he was floating around the dressingroom like he didn't exist - or more like that fly on the wall we've often wished to be.

Two things drive the documentary. Caffrey lets his guard down for the first time since taking over as manager (and also settles that "Pillar" nickname once and for all). From the nervousness of his initial team meeting to his obvious loyalties to Dublin football he reveals his inner layers, harder layers, all a long way from the normal post-match scenario where he's carefully choosing his words. "I spent a couple of hours preparing for what I was going to say. There probably was a little bit of baggage there."

Then we meet the players, the second thing that drives the documentary. Ciarán Whelan. Jason Sherlock. Tomás Quinn. "We were a bit unsure too," says Quinn.

Within minutes we feel the bond developing, and that's never lost. Throughout the season there's not one falling out, only the openness and honesty you'd expect from a family.

Once the show is on the road the momentum is quick to build. Dublin come into the Leinster championship with a lot of the hard work done - and a lot of character built. We know that because we've sat in ice baths after every training session and we've been told to "suck it up and shut up".

Round one against Longford provide the first action shots, where the RTÉ footage is seamlessly blended with some of Berry's more intimate shots. The old cliché about taking every game as it comes has never been more applicable. Before Dublin face off against Meath we get the first of several reality checks. The tragic school bus crash in Meath in the days beforehand keeps everything in perspective.

At least temporarily. When Sherlock is dropped for the Wexford match in favour of Mark Vaughan we're back in the sporting tragedy sense. Sherlock sits stone-faced as he takes the news, then tries to find some solace by shooting hoops.

"I found it very hard to get my head around," he says. "It was tough. I was trying to get rid of the disappointment right up until the match, but that's not an easy thing to do."

Sherlock's episode ends in the sort of triumph a scriptwriter is normally paid good money to create. As does most of the documentary. Dublin's eventual triumph in the Leinster championship couldn't have been scripted any better, nor could the emotion and heartbreak of their eventual defeat to Tyrone.

At times we even get too close for comfort. When Dublin's young defender Stephen O'Shaughnessy "pops" his shoulder in a challenge with Wexford's Matty Forde we follow him into a cold medical room under the tunnels of Croke Park, where his mother holds back the tears and the roars of Hill 16 are suddenly silenced.

"Next thing I know I'm asking a group of nurses how the match is going," says O'Shaughnessy.

"They tell me Dublin are down by two points. . . And now we're going to put you asleep and put your shoulder back in."

It's 8.30 that evening when O'Shaughnessy wakes up, alone and still unaware of how Dublin got on.

When he starts screaming to find out who won any Dub would want to be there to tell him . . . 'We won. We won'.

(The Dubs: Story of a Season, airs on RTÉ 1 next Monday evening at 9.30)