When Michael Cusack and the founding fathers convened in Hayes' Hotel on a frosty November night in 1884, they could not have imagined this. They predicted that organised Gaelic Games would sweep the land but could never have foreseen the extent to which the sports would dominate the popular imagination in the new millennium. Keith Duggan reports

And they would have understood the gleaming enormity of the new Croke Park about as readily as the concept of flying to the moon.

On bank holiday Monday, 80,000 people are expected on Jones's Road, where Dublin are the main attraction. Tomorrow's top draw is the billing between Galway and Kerry, arguably the two most feared and admired exponents of the modern game.

By as much accident as design, the All-Ireland football quarter-finals have been transformed into a weekend festival, a celebration of péile. Tickets are gold dust and the hype has been incessant. If ever there was a doubt in the minds of the quixotic figures who had the boldness to plan a monster stadium for an amateur and indigenous sporting organisation, those worries should be dispelled now.

Television rather than devouring its games, as many had feared, has helped the association to rediscover and consolidate a permanent role in a fluctuating and less patient society.

This weekend's extravaganza is both a pointer to the GAA's tomorrows and a nod to its yesteryears. Monday's attendance will be the biggest in GAA history since 1961, when the All-Ireland football final between Cork and Offaly drew 90,556.

That period marked a close of a period when people took trains, cycled or embarked on three-day walks to be in Croke Park for the September finals. Crowd control was purely notional and comfort was not a concern. They squeezed into the lower tiers of the old stands. They scurried up ladders outside the ground and sat precariously along the high, thin wall at the Railway End. They did whatever was necessary to get in.

That experience was a world apart from the bright and spacious aspect of today's Croke Park, with its glass-fronted corporate sector, a premium level, and massive, imposing stands that touch the clouds. It has become a thoroughly modern coliseum.

That Dublin will grace it in the latter stages of the championship is appropriate. The Dubs bring glamour and edge to the competition by the very fact of being Dubs, always the biggest, always the noisiest. Their leader famously bursts with Dub virtues. Tommy Lyons is funny and brash and tough and confident. Tommy Lyons has a strut. Of course, Tommy Lyons is from the west. The GAA needs Tommy Lyons right now because the money and the pressure of the last few years have been threatening to strangle the whole point of the games. And Tommy has been banging the drum for F-U-N.

He is radical and opinionated and wants the best for his players but he also reminds all that this is only a game. It's what we do to make us feel better about life.

So Tommy, smart and meticulous and maybe a bit lucky, has delivered a Leinster title through a young Dublin team and informed everyone that the players will be able to drink porter on that medal for the rest of their days.

But now the capital is alive with talk of winning the Sam. Donegal will be their opponents, a young team of modest talkers that have caught the eye of many people. Thrilled to be at the big dance, it's 10 years since they last played Dublin at championship level in Croke Park. Donegal won that All-Ireland final and the county was never quite the same after that.

Before that anniversary game, Cork and Mayo will fight it out, two counties with vastly different philosophies. In the past, Cork have defined the art of winning games they scarcely had a right to, while Mayo have acquired an unfortunate habit of refusing titles that were all but theirs. Cork will be led by the wonderful Colin Corkery and his signature white boots, Mayo by the ever-brave David Brady.

Tomorrow offers both tradition and novelty. Armagh versus Sligo is about as gorgeous a quarter-final as anyone could have wished for. Despite a half decade of domination in Ulster, this Armagh team has yet to win in Croke Park. Joe Kernan, who played in Armagh's last All-Ireland final in 1977, believes that can change this year. But in Sligo, back in black, belief has never been so deep. Their dismissal of Tyrone was the surprise of the summer and now it is being whispered that Peter Ford's team have that look about them.

Kerry versus Galway requires no introduction. The aristocracy of the ages against the All-Ireland champions. It is a match that carries a global resonance and a familial immediacy. The Joyces of Killerin. The Ó Sés from the Ventry peninsula. The Donnellans of Dunmore. The theatre will be heavy with legends past and present. Look on and marvel.