Three Barrs for a pound (Part 2)

"Highlight of the year so far," says Johnny grinning..

The brothers, Johnny and Eddie particularly as Keith would concede, dug it out that day. Here at training on the Thursday before the biggest day in the club's history they are the flavour of the team. Eddie is the oldest, the wispiest and the quietest. Keith, you already know. Johnny is a character, open and generous and prone to mischief. Eddie has the energy, Johnny has the power.

Barr stories are legion and even if they gain much in the telling Johnny's autobiography should still fetch a six-figure sum when publishers start bidding.

People in the club still chuckle over a house improvement enterprise started during one summer of football in Boston. The Erin's Isle Painting Company business card is a collector's item now. Most celebrated in the lore is the afternoon a member of the sprawling collective spilled a can of paint on the roof of a house which was being decorated and the afternoon was spent rubbing brown muck into the huge stain.

Johnny reckons that winning county titles is an expensive business. Celebrating for four or five days in the aftermath drains the pocket. This year, as part of his routine, he hit Paidi O Se's pub in Ventry the night after Kerry won the All-Ireland. The imagination boggles.

It's not just the brothers who give the team a large twist of its personality but the team as a whole have grown up together to the point where there is an easy familiarity in the dressing-room that can become hazardous. Keith advises that it is best to get first in and last out when it comes to the dressing-room.

"You know the way your pores are open after training and a shower," Keith says, squirming with the perfectly remembered agony of a man who once too often has been sitting on the barstool in the clubhouse when he realised with horrible certainty that one of the lads had squeezed the best part of a tube of deep heat into his underpants, again. "Well that can be dangerous around here."

Johnny nods enthusiastically. A few weeks ago there was a ruckus which almost interrupted training while Johnny conducted an investigation into the whereabouts of a missing sock. Several nights' entire sets of studs have disappeared from the soles of boots.

The brothers fondly remember a night in Galway one January three years ago during a club expedition to the west. They were billeted in the Great Southern and snow was thick all over Eyre Square when six of the team, goaded by high-stakes betting, felt the need to strip off and race a lap of the Square. "Four a.m., Milky white bodies and spots on their backs," says Johnny. "They know who they are."

The six headed off at full pelt as it were. The Barrs tipped the porters to lock all the hotel doors and retired inside to the warmth of their pints. Ah!

That's what they bring to the table in Thurles tomorrow, that togetherness. It comes naturally amid the loveliness of Union Hall and Castletownshend but in Finglas it is hard wrought and just as meaningful.

The team captain, Ken Spratt, came up through the ranks with Keith. Ken's father Tommy coached the boys on so many Saturdays that it doesn't bear talking about.

"As long as I'm here this ground is here," says Keith. "I can't remember a time when I didn't play football with these people. I live in Lucan now and when I come in here and feel the enthusiasm of this place I can't believe it.

??????Everytime. Nothing would mean as much as walking around Croke Park on St Patrick's Day with my brothers and my friends. We're a bunch of average chaps but every time you play for Erin's Isle it's a different book. "

They head for the dressing-room, empty already. The team are on the pitch stretching and chatting waiting for the Barrs.

Keith joins the team as they perform a short passing exercise.

"They're doing this in Cork," shouts Keith. "But they're not dropping the ball."

The sounds of studs on concrete. Johnny Barr comes clattering down the concrete pathway, hits the grass running and sprints into the night.

"Three Barrs for a pound," he shouts. "Three Barrs for a pound. Where would you get the like of it."

Eddie comes out last, shrugging his shoulders, shaking his head. "Getting old for this," he says laughing.