Making points for the Blues

GAELIC GAMES/ Championship 2006: Ian O'Riordan talks to Dublin legend Jimmy Keaveney who is still collecting honours.

If we really want to get nostalgic about Dublin closing in on the All-Ireland football final then let's get to it. He's still the unmistakable legend, hero, icon and character all rolled into one and that's because there'll only ever be one Jimmy Keaveney.

No Dublin footballer before or since could rival the career of Keaveney. A minor and under-21 star, he played both senior hurling and football for Dublin, winning his first Leinster title in 1965, before retiring in 1972. Coaxed back by new manager Kevin Heffernan, he starred in Dublin's three All-Ireland football final wins of 1974, 1976, and 1977, when he scored a record 2-6.

Still many people best remember Keaveney for his fondness for Swiss roll and pints of plain. Either way he remains one of football's greatest scoring forwards, whose accuracy would still see him walk on to the Dublin team today. "Well I don't know about that," he says. "I think the fitness might catch me out just a little bit, to be honest."

At 61, among the few honours he'd yet to gain was an induction into the MBNA Kick Fada Hall of Fame, but he has now. It was perfectly timed with his county knocking on the door of their first All-Ireland football final since 1995, and even if Mayo could yet have something to say about that, Keaveney is always worth listening to when it comes to Dublin football. Like what he thinks of this Dublin team?

"Well if you'd asked me that after they'd played Longford earlier on there I'd have said they were rubbish. Because they were blessed to get out with a win there. But since then they've improved an awful lot, and a lot of that has to do with moving Bryan Cullen to centre back. I mean he's the best centre back in the country. I don't know what they were doing playing him at wing forward. He'll get more scores from centre back anyway.

"Not only has he strengthened up the half-back line, it's also given the full-back line tons of confidence, and definitely motivated the two midfielders. I think Shane Ryan and Ciarán Whelan are now playing the best football they've ever played, so that switch alone has been the big help."

But does he think they're good enough to win the All-Ireland?

"I do, yeah. I honestly believe that, if they can keep on playing the way they are at the moment."

What could stand in their way - after Mayo, and Kerry, of course - is all the hype and expectation around the county. Not likely, says Keaveney.

"No, I think it does the complete opposite, and gives the team a great boost. If you were playing on the team, and going around Dublin seeing all the colours, you'd be saying there's no way we'll let ourselves be beaten on Sunday. Not with all these people backing us.

"That's a credit to the Dublin team and management that they've brought that hype on. But I read this week someone in the Leinster Council saying it wasn't all that important for Dublin to be winning All-Irelands. I'd like him to take a drive around Dublin, which opened my eyes this week. I was in places like Seán MacDermott Street and Gardiner Street, all decked out in Dublin colours. And from Tallaght to Ballyfermot, houses all done up in Dublin colours. That never happened in our time.

"So I think it is very important for the GAA that Dublin are there or thereabout every second year or so. Because the promotion of the game that's going on in Dublin at the moment is fantastic. Money couldn't buy it."

Keaveney boasts scoring tallies that would still be the envy of any forward (eight goals and 95 points from 20 games in 1975, or 101 points from 17 games in 1976), and while he does joke about the fitness level he got away with in the 1970s, he wasn't doing it all on talent.

"We trained bloody hard in our day, I can tell out. Kevin Heffernan brought in all these new ideas. I know we were the first to start training on a Saturday morning, the day before matches. I know Mick O'Dwyer copied that. Of course we thought Heffo was gone mad.

"And I used to go up to Dr Kevin O'Flanagan, who unfortunately died there recently. He had his practice up there on Fitzwilliam Square, and I'd see him once a fortnight to get myself weighed or whatever. If I'd had a few pints or whatever I'd have to tell him not to write down my real weight, to knock off a few pounds. But that's how serious Heffo took things, like watching our weight. And teams like Kerry copied us, and Micko will tell you that himself. Then they started training that much harder.

"Having said that, players these days have taken things as far as they can, as amateurs anyway. What they're putting in now is horrendous, training five days a week and going to the gym as well. I don't think I'd be prepared to do that."

While he's still madly fond of football, Keaveney doesn't like everything he sees: "I was watching one of the last matches there in Croke Park, and the amount of hand-passes was an absolute joke. They were actually afraid to kick the ball. That should be curtailed in some way. You should be allowed maybe two hand-passes, and then you have to kick the ball. It's destroying the game, because it's getting more like basketball."

And there is a downside to Dublin's progress to the business end the championship. Keaveney was as fond of his club football with St Vincent's as he was of playing with the county (winning two Leinster club titles, and the All-Ireland of 1976) and he does see the club scene suffering because of Dublin's progress.

"That is the only problem. I mean, the next round of the county championship is fixed for September 24th. Club players are kicking their heels all the time, so maybe they need to run the league and championship off in, say, an eight-month period and then let the counties play off their championship for two or three months.

"But the same thing happened in our time, the lads who weren't on the county team weren't getting matches, and then all of a sudden we'd have to run off the club championship in three or four weeks, more or less to get rid of it.

"So they'll have to devise a better system, because in the end the county team does suffer. I mean, I can't remember the last time Tomás Quinn even played with Vincent's. It must have been the championship last year, and that doesn't help."