They are commonly referred to as "the games which made the GAA". The All-Ireland home final of 1903 between Kerry and Kildare went to two replays and, along the way, established football as a mass-spectator sport.

This process was greatly assisted by the single-mindedness and tactical innovation of the teams who trained and prepared with a thoroughness unusual at the time and, as a result, raised football onto a higher plane. Both sides contained notable personalities and their rivalry set the footballing agenda for the years ahead.

One hundred years ago, the world of the GAA had what would be a familiar ring for contemporary ears. An attempt by a reforming general secretary to scale down the influence of nationalist politics on the association had failed, and there was widespread concern at the standard of football.

Richard Blake, a former county chairman in Meath and a well-known referee, became secretary of the GAA in 1895. He concerned himself primarily with three areas: improving administration, refining the rules of football and distancing the association from political controversy.

He was largely successful. Organisation of the games improved significantly, and Blake's radical views on the evolution of football informed a number of radical changes. Among these were the standardisation of the size of football, the introduction of linesmen to assist referees and the fixing of a goal's value at three points instead of five.

Having prohibited political discussion within the GAA, Blake was also instrumental in removing the ban on the police joining the association - the fore-runner of the current Rule 21 - and the ban on foreign games. He was a self-confessed enthusiast of the same games and believed football could learn from other codes. Both of these bans were to be re-imposed within five years.

Blake's tenure of office lasted only three years and he was dismissed on trumped-up charges of financial incompetence. The real reason was that his prioritising of the games was regarded as anti-national and this earned him influential enemies among the IRB faction within the GAA.

Consequently, in the early years of this century the infiltration of the GAA by Sinn Fein proceeded apace and the association became a major participant in the separatist movement for the first time since the Parnellite split. It busied itself with formulating exclusivist definitions of nationalism.

In this atmosphere, Blake's emphasis on the games was forgotten. Football was in crisis. Unsure of its optimum expression, the game had degenerated. In Eoghan Corry's history of football, Catch and Kick, the author describes the game at the turn of the century as "only slightly more attractive than the mud-wrestling bouts of 15 years earlier".

With the game in such trouble, it clearly had little future as a spectator sport. That this situation was rescued is primarily to the credit of the Kerry and Kildare footballers. Each county had reached pioneering accommodations between their leading clubs: Tralee and Killarney in Kerry's case; Clane and Newbridge in Kildare's.

Training more intensively and adapting the game to suit their evolving styles, the teams produced a fascinating and epochal series of matches between July and October 1905. The two-year lag reflected the disorganisation of the period and it wasn't until 1909 that the championship caught up with itself.

Joe Rafferty and Tim Gorman were the captains and trainers of Kildare and Kerry respectively. Their preparations foreshadowed collective training, which lasted until banned in the 1950s as too redolent of professionalism.

It is further claimed that Kildare's Michael Kennedy pioneered the solo, dropping the ball onto his toe and gathering it again at the end of his stride. PD Mehigan's Gaelic Football states that after these games, "a new standard was set" and "a new Gaelic football era began".

"Picking up the ball with the toe and swift hand-passing were used by Kildare for the first time," Mehigan continues. But in his 1958 book The Art and Science of Gaelic Football,legendary Kerry football coach Dr Eamonn O'Sullivan couldn't resist a riposte.

"Kerry's first-time catch-and-kick method initiated the long and uninterrupted run in the supremacy of this technique over other systems that have since been tried unsuccessfully."

Making his first appearance on the national stage was the 16-year-old Dick Fitzgerald. A profound football thinker, he published How to Play Gaelic Football in 1914, at which stage he was Kerry captain and at his peak as a footballer. The book strongly argues the scientific basis of the game and recalls the 1903 final.

"Later on, when the game was confined to 17 players a side, it became more and more a trial of skill, as in the famous Kerry v Kildare matches and, finally, when the number was reduced to 15 a side, science became the order of the day."

In the first match Kerry led by 1-4 to 1-3 at full-time. Frank "Joyce" Conlon got the goal for Kildare, but Dick Fitzgerald's goal for Kerry was disputed and a replay ordered. The second match was saved in the closing minutes by a Jack Connolly goal for Kildare and the decisive third meeting was fixed for Cork.

Kerry had better absorbed the lessons of the first two matches and won comfortably in the end by 0-8 to 0-2. The actual final against London was regarded as no more than a postscript and again Kerry won well.

Marcus de Burca's history of the GAA estimates the aggregate attendance at the three matches at 60,000 - phenomenal figures at a time when 10,000 represented the high-point for All-Ireland crowds. He writes that: "It was agreed even by experts in the rival codes who attended that the standard of play exceeded anything previously seen in a Gaelic football match."

A suddenly flush GAA recognised Kildare's contribution by striking a set of gold medals for the players - a gesture repeated all of 86 years later when Meath were similarly honoured after losing the All-Ireland to Down after a 10-match campaign which included the four-match series against Dublin.

For the counties involved, the future was bright in the immediate term and both were powers in the game for the following 25 years. Thereafter Kerry developed into football's leading county and Kildare's star faded.

Dick Fitzgerald went on to win four more All-Irelands, and somewhat more surprisingly two Kildare players, Joyce Conlon and Larry Cribben, were still around 14 years later when the county beat Galway in the 1919 All-Ireland, bringing their medal tally to three.

Off the field, more dramatic events were to intervene. Kerry's Austin Stack became a prominent republican who fought in the War of Independence and the Civil War and was a member of the provisional government established by the First Dail. He is commemorated by the Tralee club named in his honour and the town's main GAA pitch.

Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney is named after Dick Fitzgerald. He also fought in the War of Independence and organised football matches amongst prisoners in Frongoch internment camp. He went on to be a highly-regarded administrator before dying suddenly and tragically in 1930.

His funeral was the occasion of such mourning in the county that Kerry nearly withdrew from the following Sunday's All-Ireland final against Monaghan.

Fitzgerald and Stack might have inspired physical monuments, but for them and the other players who fought out those three matches 94 years ago, the memorial is even more impressive: the survival of the GAA and the flourishing organisation it has since become.

Kerry: T O'Gorman, J O'Gorman, D Curran, M McCarthy, J Buckley, C Healy, A Stack, R Fitzgerald, P Dillon, W Lynch, D McCarthy, J Myers, D Kissane, E O'Neill, R Kirwan, D Breen, JT Fitzgerald.

Kildare: J Rafferty, W Merriman, L Cribben, W Losty, J Wright, J Dunne, W Bracken, J Murray, M Murray, M Kennedy, J Scott, M Donnelly, F Conlon, J Gorman, M Fitzgerald, J Fitzgerald, E Kennedy.