In the gloom of an autumn evening in Newbridge, a familiar figure moves around the pavilion at St Conleth's Park. Kildare's footballers have just finished training and fielding media enquiries. Charlie McCreevy TD, Minister for Finance, moves expertly around with a word for everyone.

He could be mistaken for a busy county chairman except that Kildare's busy county chairman - as it happens another TD, Labour's Defence spokesperson Jack Wall, who represents the other Kildare constituency - is hearing county board business in an annexe.

McCreevy's interest in Kildare football spans the 42 years it has taken the county to regain the Leinster title. Like many of the locals he sees that achievement as the season's milestone, notwithstanding the defeat of All-Ireland champions Kerry in last month's All-Ireland semi-final.

"I thought I might die before I saw Kildare win a Leinster let alone be in an All-Ireland final. It's 42 years since we won it before. In 1956 - which was the first time I was brought to Croke Park as a child - it was 21 years since Kildare had previously won Leinster.

"And that was regarded as an extraordinary length of time in Kildare because we were always brought up to believe that the golden era of football was Kerry and Kildare in the Twenties and Thirties and that it made football and that Kildare was a major footballing county - which it was.

"To be 21 years until '56 without winning Leinster was considered extraordinary but then to go 42 years . . . a lot of us had started to doubt if we would ever win a Leinster championship. Now to be in an All-Ireland final is terribly, terribly important but to get out of Leinster at the time . . . you've no idea what it meant to Kildare people, people like myself.

"In the last 20 years a lot of new people have come to live in Kildare and they've experienced it as well but for people who've been around like me for a long time - my family's been here for 200 years - to get out of Leinster is extraordinary."

Over the last three decades, the population of the county has grown enormously. Kildare towns like Celbridge, Leixlip and Naas have become dormitory locations for the ever-expanding numbers which constitute the greater Dublin area.

"A lot of people don't associate themselves with the county. Having a successful county team has brought a lot of people to realise they're living in Kildare. The team has given them an awareness of county Kildare.

"Isn't the GAA an amazing organisation when things like . . . I'm not taking sides in the Loughnane affair with Clare but I remember saying, it's a great country and it must be a great organisation that the headlines on the News at One were relating to a sport where nobody gets paid. People would be fighting about it in pubs as if it was a war and it's uniquely Irish. There's definitely something unique about the GAA that it can bring the country to a standstill."

McCreevy's admiration for the GAA and its activities was manifest in the last budget in his allocation of £20 million of National Lottery money to the redevelopment of Croke Park. It remains the one of the most controversial measures undertaken by his Department this year.

"After I gave the 20 million to the GAA earlier in the year, when people were critical I used the example of JJ Barrett's book about Kerry and how the GAA brought people together who had been totally divided by the Civil War - in a county where the Civil War was fought with an intensity that nowhere else had, and suffered terrible atrocities.

"Yet people played on the Kerry team who were totally opposed to one another and I think that's an example of what the GAA was able to achieve.

"Bertie Ahern had said to me before the budget when I told him I was going to do this, he recalled about the £5 million he had given previously (in the 1994 budget): `I was pilloried from one end of the country to the other and there was ferocious media opposition to it'. So I was warned, but I thought some of the opposition was bit hysterical."

Like all Kildare supporters, he can look back on decades of coming up short and can trace the sad disintegration of the county's highest hopes before the current generation came on the scene under the tutelage of Mick O'Dwyer.

"In '65 we won an under-21 All-Ireland in probably one of the best games seen in Croke Park against Cork. We got beaten in the Leinster final in 1966 with about seven of that team and people thought it was just a matter of time before we won the Leinster.

"Some of the best football played over the next 10 years was played by Kildare footballers. We probably had 22 of the best players in Ireland - on different days. They played a brand of football that was outstanding.

"The problem was every time we got to a Leinster final and we got there in '66, '69, '71, '75 and '78, not only did we get beaten, we got murdered in Leinster finals after playing outstanding football up along. That had an enormously depressing effect."

He believes the major contribution of Mick O'Dwyer during his two terms as manager has been the re-establishment of the team as a competitive force.

"There's only one team can win an All-Ireland every year, one team that can win a League. What Kildare people like myself suffered most was that we weren't respected and were laughed at.

"And whatever one says about the seven years since Mick O'Dwyer first came here, he brought us back respect. We didn't win any Leinster championships, we didn't win the League but we were respected.