Keith Duggan Sideline Cut: The All-Ireland club finals seem to loom larger on the calendar every year, and with every passing year they retreat further into their own mysterious roots.

March 17th is no longer about St Patrick in the traditional sense; the deeds of our patron saint appear to have been banished as thoroughly as the snakes in the general collapse of Catholic influence.

He is represented as the white-bearded old man with the staff in the increasingly Americanised parades that are organised across the country, a carnival figure among the others.

Green beer has, by and large, finally been vetoed as a bad idea and anyhow, as Lent no longer dominates the Irish conscience as it once did, the temptation to use the reprieve of Paddy's Day as a moral obligation to get blinding drunk is not quite so strong. Which is not to say a good portion of our merry nation will not sing and sway in the verdant nostalgia of the day, but this will as likely be a cause of a continuation of a weekend session as a glorious isolated breakaway from a period of temperance.

There was a time when Irish St Patrick's Day parades lasted longer than Lent; endless hours spent on rain-lashed streets for an interminable procession of morose brass bands whose shivering members were hypothermic. Parades are sassier now and more expensive and impressive and less fun. Many of them are also timed so they do not dominate the afternoon.

It is the club finals that have become the central, unchanging feature of St Patrick's Day. In the pubs, they are as regularly and widely anticipated as the Saturday of the English FA Cup final or a good All-Ireland championship Sunday. But, although we watch with interest, it is impossible to become as engaged as might be the case watching a intercounty championship game.

Irish people can form life-long attachments to soccer clubs in English cities they have never visited and develop an intense like or hatred for the football fortunes of counties other than their own.

But the club final scene is different. Although celebrated in the big stadium with the bands playing and the dignitaries in attendance, it is an intensely confined and almost private occasion. At least, that is the sense I have got attending All-Ireland club finals in the past few years. Unless your own town is out there - or at the very least a place you know intimately - fully understanding the various dynamics and characters that have elevated the club from the mediocre swell to the threshold of All-Ireland grandeur is beyond your grasp.

Of course, the obvious reason for any club making it as far St Patrick's Day is that it possesses a player of national renown, such as Brian Whelahan of Birr or Kieran McDonald of Crossmolina. But one swallow does not a summer make.

Gaelic clubs are complex entities. I am endlessly fascinated about the difference between a player from a provincial town that does well at Gaelic games and his city counterpart. In Irish cities, it is possible to have the potential for greatness and somehow slip through the net or walk away with nobody shouting stop.

In small towns, it is possible to show fleeting signs of talent - to have a God-given month - and to be lauded as a genius for the rest of your hours on this planet. In fact, there is an argument that if, at the age of seven, you enjoy a tremendous hour on the field and score 3-8 from play, you ought to retire there and then and sit back and watch your legend inflate over the years.

There is a catacomb of roles and lives beneath the surface - the team - of all Gaelic clubs. It is a safe bet to say that in all Irish small towns there are many players who turned up at their local club for 20 years without ever once having to unlock the gates or sweep the dressing-room or help line the pitch or clean the showers or sell the lotto tickets or wash the jerseys. For there is an active system in place that encourages youngsters to believe the myth that everything around them - the concrete clubhouse, the coaches, the bus trips away - has been created solely as a worthy backdrop to the stupendous talents that the backslappers assure them they possess.

In that regard, small town clubs can be soft and dangerous. Kids can get a spoiled and warped idea of their own potential.

Every town can point to its prodigy who played this one magical game at the age of 15 the details of which are soaked in formaldehyde so that the retold goal or breathtaking pass becomes the defining essence of that person years after he has ceased to be a player.

The writer, Brinsley McNamara, was once asked about the difference between country and city life. He used the example of a Dublin man bellowing his greetings as he walked into his local, drinking three pints, having a sing-song, drinking four and five more and getting into a row, drinking eight and nine and stumbling home and falling happily into bed.

In contrast, the Midlands man will cycle to the local pub, enter quietly, sip a pint, sip six, seven, eight and nine more, leave quietly and cycle home to where he lives alone with his aunt and murder her with an axe.

It is, of course, darkly exaggerated and comical, but with an underlying element of truth. Country life can be rich and rewarding, but also painfully stoical and lonely. GAA clubs have always been a salvation in that regard, as a means of expression. There is a role for anyone who cares to take one on.

In this job, you find yourself driving across the country early and late on championship Sundays and it is striking how few people you see outside as you drive through the various towns.

Pa Joe Whelahan of Birr said that was one of the changes he has noticed in his locality, nobody walking anywhere any more. Less communication. Youngsters would rather drive 20 yards to the shop than walk.

Local clubs are a phenomenon in that they are virtually the only concept - besides the St Patrick's Day parade - that still coaxes people outdoors to meet and be together on as a community. Community is becoming a tougher and tougher notion to sell.

Ask anyone in any small town in Ireland what the neighbouring place is like and you will be given emphatic assurances that it is a shithole. Then go to that place and enquire as to the character of the place you have just left. You will be advised that it is a shithole. Local rivalries are unchanging. Yet, all through Mayo yesterday were signs wishing Crossmolina all the best.

Of the four clubs on show on Monday, the Cork city club Nemo Rangers will bring the smallest crowd. It's understandable and makes Nemo's constant challenge for honours all the more admirable.

The other three teams - Crossmolina, Birr and Dunloy - will empty their towns for the day. Many from neighbouring towns will make the journey. Others will, for one game only, keep their fingers crossed for a team that they would otherwise curse for its very existence.

The rest of us are essentially on the outside. It must be a great feeling to see your club colours in Croke Park. It is a sight that most clubs, most towns, will never even get close to. And that's the abiding impression that the club finals leave.

You can look, but you can't touch.