LockerRoom: Not many of you will have been to Ushuaia on the island of Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of the Americas. Fewer still will have made the journey by road from there to Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, the northernmost tip of the Americas. Many of you will travel from Dublin to Clones next Saturday, however, and for the true Dub it's pretty much the same thing, write Tom Humphries.

It's never easy being a Dub. It's an endless cycle of worries and duties. PAYE (or FarmAid as heroic metropolitans call it) and filling the coffers of the GAA are but two of The Dub's quotidian tasks. For thanks, the Dub is constantly depicted as an irascible fool in radio and TV ads and right now the GAA wants to partition the city.

The Dub has only his county's GAA prowess and laughing at Enda Kenny to lighten his burden. Occasionally The Dub must set out on knightly quests such as this coming one to Clones. It goes hard on The Dub but it must be done, this questing.

People don't understand. The Dub is a hibernator by creature. There may be just 5,000 Dubs visible at a winter league match in Donnycarney but in the summer well over ten times that number need tickets to big matches. This is why being made to play in Clones is so unfair. Deliberately Clones has refused to build a 100,000 seater stadium. It's further proof of the anti-Dublin bias which has always nourished the GAA hobgoblins.

The Dub heading off to Clones does so with trepidation. Many Dubs still wake up crying at night after finding out too late just how far away Thurles was a couple of years back. Arduous and heartbreaking was the questing back then. You still see younger Dubs out joyriding boyishly in T-shirts which say Hard Rock Café, Durrow or My Da Went Thru Urlingford and All I Got was This Lousy T-shirt. The Dub had been promised that the questing would be as happy as that of 1983 when he overcame language and cultural hurdles and expeditioned to Cork. Not to be.

Clones is tricky. It could be in Ireland, it could be in the UK. Must The Dub cross borders? International datelines? Is there a chance of weightlessness? What about the G forces upon re-entry? Will there be arseboxing there? It's not that The Dub isn't better prepared than a paranoid boy scout. Typically, The Dub likes to leave his castle a full hour or so before a game. He does this in order to have a few social tinctures with the brethren along the way. Any questing requiring greater organisational skills than that is difficult, however.

If you've been in Clones on non-match days it's a tidy enough little town, edgy though. Prim with the streak of madness that Pat McCabe has tapped into. The Dub believes he travels with a mandate to brighten up such places, whether they want to be brightened up or not. Much as kids delight to hear the jingle jangle tune an approaching ice cream van makes, so The Dub imagines that whole villages come alive when they hear a massed chorus of We Are Dubs, We are Dubs. We Are, We Are We Are Dubs.

For its part, Clones will see the hordes of questing Dubs as pillaging aliens bent on the extermination of a way of life. It may be dour but it is a way of life. They will heap abuse upon The Dubs and discourage The Dubs from lounging about in their gardens. This process is called having the crack with the locals. The Dub has a medical condition which causes him to become easily waylaid by the need for gargle.

On longer trips this can cause difficulties but the more sensible Dub operates a system of short stoppages when six of the seven occupants of a Cortina drink above the legal limit but the seventh abstains or limits his consumption to below the legal limit. This person is the designated driver and the duty rotates among the occupants of the car so that everybody arrives safely but also in high spirits.

This sensible approach to drinking is a necessary fortification. The Dub knows that the rest of the world is lying in wait in order to sandbag him. For instance the unsatisfactory location of Clones will, by 4.15 on Saturday afternoon, be adequate proof to carlocked Dubs that the oul' Gah is creatively dastardly in the ways it devises to get up the nostril of The Dub.

My own grandfather had an especially developed view of this. He used tell me that there were three circles in the GAA and that no Dublin man would ever get near the innermost circle. It has yet to be proven to me this isn't the case.

From those of us who travel to Clones frequently here are a few tips. If you are reading this and you haven't yet left Dublin you will arrive sooner if you park in Finglas and walk the rest of the way.

Don't leave yourself time to see the museums. Despite Clone's aspirations to become European City of Culture, frankly, the museums aren't great.

Bring your own broccolli. People in Monaghan don't eat vegetables. That's why Paddy Kavanagh left. They won't grow in the stony grey soil apparently. Instead, a big game in Clones is seen as a festival of meat eating. If on the way home you drop into the Four Seasons in Monaghan town and consume their entire mixed grill you will have eaten more meat in one day than an adult lion consumes in a lifetime of dining on wildebeest.

In St Tiernach's Park the side of the ground with the big steep hill on it is nearest the town. When lying down to sleep on the Hill point your feet towards the field and your head towards the summit. Too many fans lying sideways has caused Grand Duke Lyons and his men to emerge from the other side of the ground. The Hill is the best place from which to observe that juicy half-time tunnel action.

Remember in Ulster they play by different rules. In Ulster a tackle is legal up to the point wherein a tackling player may emerge with the gallstones of the man who was originally in possession. A tackle is only late if there is no hot water left in the showers at the time when the tackle takes place. Sutures are considered effete. Heading to casualty in an ambulance is an affectation likely to draw derision.

Finally, people outside Dublin often have difficulty seeing how a Dublin All-Ireland would be "good for the GAA". Let it lie.

By the way, the good folk at reservoirdubs.com are auctioning items of valuable sporting memorabilia in aid of the Aoife McGrane King fund. Robbie Keane has donated a signed jersey of his from the recent Albania match plus the pair of boots he wore in the games against Albania and Georgia, (he scored in both games.) The boots are also signed. Bidding takes place over the next two weeks. All bids must be emailed to bids@reservoirdubs.com.