Keith Duggan finds Mick O'Dwyer, in his final year with Kildare, reminiscing about the old days with Kerry and the changed football landscape

The great maverick is at the saloon bar, talking up the old west.

"There was a year we won an All-Ireland in three games. We got a bye to the Munster final, beat Sligo in the semi-final and then won the All-Ireland. Three games."

He hardly remembers but that year was 1975, when the Mick O'Dwyer legend was only beginning to form.

As he tells it, all the decades since are down to the lap of the gods. It was just a simple fishing trip - and he paints the details of lobster pots and nets and dark waters - which caused the whole thing. A day's fishing and he was sounded out about becoming a manager and next thing he had taken Kerry to an All-Ireland. And it could have been cut short at any time. The turning point is his favourite year.

"The 1978 championship, they tried to get rid of us. There was a lot of politics going on in Kerry football at the time but we survived, beat Dublin that day and we carried on. I got a lot of satisfaction out of that one."

How many times must he have driven through the plains of Kildare in those years with the great Kerry teams without once considering it? Then, it was just the highway to the capital, to Kerry's own Broadway stage on the Jones's Road. How was he to know that Kildare would later consume him almost as totally as his native Kerry?

Because he is so passionate about Lilywhite football and the fixation of the fans it is easy to forget his previous life. This incarnation has been less easy and O'Dwyer spent many Sundays fiercely defending his players from a barrage of different criticisms. As recently as the Leinster semi-final win against Offaly, he lauded them in a manner he rarely used on the godly teams from Kerry. But those were simpler and magical days and there was no need for brave words. That is why he is reminiscing now. Three games to win a title.

"Kildare have already been in three games this year. And we are only at a provincial final."

The maverick never looks back. He is always planning the next kill. This summer, you strain to hear O'Dwyer's utterances because he has vowed, as the gods may strike him down, that this is his last Leinster championship. He has taken Kildare as far as he can. Throughout the team's uneven league, there were whisperings that the great man should have had his encore the previous year, that there was nothing left for him to work with. O'Dwyer just went about coaching in his own serene way and here he is, centre stage for one of the biggest football games of the year.

Although he talks like a bard about past adventures, he gives nothing away about his next planned feat.

"It is going to be hard," he explains. "Dublin looked exceptionally good against Meath and have played a lot of good football in recent years. Two years ago, we were seven points down at half- time, got two quick goals and just about got out with the game. So there is an element of luck in all these things. But this is a good Dublin team, definitely."

Ireland was a different country when O'Dwyer was last an All-Ireland winning football manager. His decade with Kildare involved more modest objectives. A National League final appearance at the beginning of the 1990s provoked a carnival atmosphere across the county but the progress from there was painstaking. He almost left but knew in his bones that he hadn't tapped into the source. But even when at its most flowing, Kildare football never gave guarantees the way the Kerry of old used to. The landscape had changed.

"Ah no, you can't just expect - we could have won the All-Ireland in 1998, certainly. We carried a lot of injuries into the game but we were good enough to win it. Now, you prepare to the best of your ability and the structure means that you do need a bit of luck to win it."

Regardless of how far they go this year O'Dwyer will depart Kildare as revered as he is around Kerry. After 1998, Kildare saw itself differently and there is no going back to the dark days that Larry Tompkins describes.

"I remember in 1983 we played Dublin in Navan," said Tompkins. "We almost had them, it was a close game and we were a few points up but had a man sent off then. And Dublin beat us narrowly with a last-minute score and went on to win the All-Ireland. At that time, I just felt the organisation and effort in the county let us down. And I have no doubt that if Micko was around then, it would have been different.

"Under other circumstances, I would have loved to play under Mick. But I had a business in Cork and it was hard to walk away from that. I remember playing for Kildare at 16 in 1979 and remember every Kildare player right through the years. So what happened in 1998 brought tears to my eyes because we hadn't won since 1956. People had never seem it before."

In a way, it was as significant as anything O'Dwyer achieved with Kerry in that it nailed down stability in one of the GAA's sleeper counties. With population and sponsorship, Kildare will challenge on a permanent basis after this.

"We will always be there or thereabout irrespective of whether I am here or not," said O'Dwyer.

Not that he may be gone too far.

"All I said was I won't be here with Kildare. I never promised I'd be leaving football."