SIDELINE CUT/Keith Duggan: The follower was in Croke Park when Donegal beat Meath a few weeks ago. It is a considerable feat to live in Donegal and not know who the Follower is. For years, he has been writing these iconic missives in the sports pages of the Donegal Democrat. Just his prayers, hopes and ruminations on the state of the county football team, generally spiced up with a touch of Latin or Gaelic.

Often, and with no warning, his notes will career into a series of well wishes for Michael/Paddy/Jamesie from Fintra/Gweedore/the Rosses who missed the McKenna Cup game because of heart attack but who swore to be in Tralee for the first league match a fortnight later.

In good seasons, the Follower was jubilant, on the many poor or disappointing, he was despondent. If he thought something special might materialise, such as an appearance in Dublin, then he urged prudence through an early booking for the August Bed agus Bricfasta in the Dergvale. His observations are often funny and sometimes antagonistic and never other than heartfelt.

But you think you have seen a match or two and then you talk to the Follower. He saw his first Ulster final in 1939. Men who forgot they ever kicked a football are still fetching a ball in the clear air through the Follower's mind's eye. A few years ago, he was forced to concede that the hill in Clones, sloping from the Creighton Hotel and up past the Presbyterian church to St Tiernach's Park, had become too much. He contented himself with RTÉ. Wiser counsel probably urged him not to travel to the capital this summer either. But wild horses would not have prevented that. Not with Donegal in Croke Park. And doubtless it will be the same this Monday.

The 10-year anniversary provides a poignant border to the championship history between Dublin and Donegal, and it is appropriate that the counties should meet now. Both places have changed enormously in that time. Dublin has, of course, undergone a spectacular metamorphosis in its own haphazard and ramshackle way and has managed to become multi-cultural and fashion conscious without ever being anything other than, as Tommy Lyons observed this week, a simple village.

Dublin's transformation has had repercussions for the GAA and the hierarchy is no longer covert in its admission that the city game needs urgent attention. Although the assimilation has been awkward and frequently painful, it is only a matter of time before Dublin GAA reflects the multi-racial presence in the city. In decades or less, an entire half-back line might have its origins in three continents when once a southsider in the ranks would have appeared as nothing short of exotic.

Dublin GAA is both in your face and completely invisible. A cursory glance through any Dublin league fixtures can leave you astonished at the sheer volume of teams out there in the suburbs. But equally, you could sit in certain city bars on All-Ireland final day without ever realising the city team are playing just up the road.

It only takes a small shift in mindset to see Dublin GAA as nothing more than an underground cult. Dublin players are about the only group in the county that can walk their own patch as total unknowns.

IT is the opposite down the country, where scores of young players are ruined from being back-patted at too early an age, assured of their pre-ordained greatness before they have so much as kicked a ball in anger. The movement from believing their own legend to explaining to people who don't want to know where it went wrong is swift and irretrievable.

All the rural counties are littered with could-have-been players, including Donegal. But more complex problems exist there now.

Since 1992, the changes in Donegal have been as subtle as those in Dublin have been dramatic. Certainly, there is evidence of much development but great stretches of the county remain isolated and unmoved by the perceived advances of the 1990s.

Donegal is a strange county. It is a stretch of untameable landscape inhabited by very diverse towns. Bundoran, a seaside resort of clubs and surfers where Brian McEniff, the 1992 manager comes from, has nothing at all in common with Ardara, the picturesque arts-and-crafts community and the home of Anthony Molloy, the only Donegal man to lift the Sam Maguire. And Inishowen is a world away from the robust and prosperous fishing town of Killybegs. To Bloody Foreland people, Donegal town might well be in Connacht. Some would tell you it is.

Although it retains the kindnesses of most small town counties, it can also be a troubling and unforgiving place to live. Male suicide figures are particularly high in sectors of the county. Vast tracts of Donegal are lonesome and disappearing and some of the smaller communities that were the soul of the 1992 All-Ireland win cannot field teams the way they used to. It is no coincidence that it was Donegal players who were prominent in the recent controversy over heading to the US to play football. Seasonal migration never ceased to be the norm in Donegal.

Shaped by the Atlantic and the borders of Northern Ireland, Donegal has had a curiously separate experience of developing within the Free State. As the last outpost, it grew comfortable with its own little quirks and complaints and oddities. People called for change and improvements and grew accustomed to receiving no answer.

It is often wondered why Donegal doesn't win more, given that Gaelic football and soccer are the dominant sports. And it is a troubling question. Maybe the answer is that survival and community glory was for a long time winning enough. Before 1992, it was hard for the imagination to stretch beyond Ulster.

But the county felt less remote and more full of people after that September. Some internal shift occurred and it left people with a good feeling, an afterglow.

So the return to Croke Park a decade later is timely. All of the Donegal 1992 team speak with great admiration of the Dublin players that lost that final 10 years ago because the city boys took it on the chin and have since celebrated the achievement with them. They kept coming back for reunions and several still do. Now, it is just tradition but in the beginning, it was a big gesture.

On Monday, people like the Follower will converge on Jones's Road hoping to recapture that special feeling. Donegal, the county with so much unlived land and villages in retreat and Dublin, teeming with people and crying out for space.

It should be a good day out.