Ian O'Riordan traces Dublin's on-off affair

It's coming up on 40 years now since Dublin were first introduced to under-21 football. The relationship has been on and off, sometimes cold, and even sneering. There were times when the two tried hard to get along, but still missing is the one thing that would settle them both down - an All-Ireland title.

This afternoon Dublin play Tyrone to decide the destination of this year's title, and only a Dublin win will finally overcome that troubled past - about under-21 football not liking Dublin, and Dublin not liking it, about not having the right players at the right time, and about how Dublin being Dublin meant that under-21 football never mattered to them anyway.

At the beginning they were a good prospect. In 1964 the GAA brought in under-21 football to help stem the drop-off after minor level, and Dublin hopped on it. With their Leinster minor champions from three years earlier they marched out with high hopes, only to be stopped in their tracks by Offaly in the provincial semi-final.

Worse still was that the 1960s were played out without Dublin once getting to a Leinster under-21 final. They were hard times for football in Dublin, and the new grade brought no relief.

Considering the range of the teams that by then had bagged All-Ireland titles - like Kerry, Kildare, Roscommon, and Antrim - Dublin had reason to believe their fortunes would change in the 1970s. And they very nearly did, with defeat in the All-Ireland semi-final of 1974 and the final the year later representing the first true embrace of under-21 football.

At the heart of both those Dublin teams was Brian Mullins. As it happened he was, at aged 19, also at the heart of the Kevin Heffernan revolution with the Dublin seniors in 1974. Yet Mullins was eager to spread his vast talents into under-21 football, and was part of the team that beat Wexford in the Leinster final, and lost (by a point) to Mayo in the All-Ireland semi-final, played at Croke Park.

"I would say that under-21 football in Dublin was taken very seriously at that time," says Mullins. "The management were specifically positioned to prepare the team to win, so it was taken very seriously, as a matter of general policy, and also specific individual approach.

"And it would seem that it helped my career. Any opportunity to play at representative level is good for your development. And a lot of players that were on that panel, like Tony Fayne, the captain, and Bernard Brogan and John McCarthy, had all come through the minor ranks, and knew each other well. So any opportunity like that to gather experience in Croke Park was going to stand to you."

Yet there was one side effect from his double commitment. Just after the senior semi-final victory over Cork, Mullins chipped a bone in his ankle playing with the under-21s and faced a race against time to be fit for the All-Ireland final against Galway - a race he miraculously won. Still, to this day it is widely thought Heffernan suddenly turned against any more under-21 excursions.

"No, that wasn't the case," says Mullins. "I don't think Kevin ever saw under-21 as a distraction. I think he would have preferred a different schedule, which they have overcome now. I did get injured in 1974, but sure I could have been injured walking across the street. That was Kevin's attitude too.

"The main problem was that at that time the under-21 competition was mostly played in tandem with the senior, almost the same way as the minor still is. So I suppose Kevin would have preferred going into the All-Ireland final in 1974, which was the first All-Ireland that Dublin reached in 11 years, and not have a number of players involved at under-21 level. And that was the way it turned out anyway."

The year after, 1975, Dublin went a step farther and reached the All-Ireland under-21 final, defeating Laois for the Leinster title, and gaining revenge on Mayo in the semi-final.

Standing in their way were Kerry. Mullins again played his heart out, yet Kerry still ran away with an eight-point victory.

It meant Dublin and Mullins lost All-Ireland finals to Kerry on successive weekends, Heffernan's team falling in the senior final. What made that defeat all the harder for Mullins was that several Kerry players featured in both finals, such as Páidí Ó Sé, Mike Sheehy and Pat Spillane.

Kerry twice defended that title in the 1970s, while Dublin's under-21s slipped back into anonymity. Part of the problem, it seems, was the minimal crossover between under-21 and senior management, something Mullins admits has only improved very recently.

"The situation you have now," he says, "where senior managers or selectors are groomed for an overall responsibility, evolved very gradually. But I don't know whether managers actually sought that or were given it. It seems to be the general protocol now, with management set-ups that take over senior teams also insisting that they also oversee the preparation of the under-21 team. And that's because a lot of individuals on the two panels are now compatible."

So to the 1980s - which Dublin started so positively. Beating Kildare in the Leinster final with a team that included John O'Leary, Ciarán Duff and Barney Rock, they eased past Mayo in the All-Ireland semi-final, only to lose the final to Cork.

They rose again in Leinster in 1984 before falling off the map altogether, prompting the county board to withdraw from the competition for three years from 1986.

The re-emergence of the senior team in the 1990s should have been the catalyst for the next wave of under-21s, but things went from bad to worse. Dr Pat O'Neill, a later recruit to the Heffernan revolution, was manager of the senior All-Ireland-winning side in 1995, but he never had any desire to extend his reign to the under-21s. "There was never a stage when I was involved with the under-21s," he says. "We did have some liaison with the people that were responsible for them, and tried to co-operate as much as we could. Generally though, it didn't interfere with us, because the under-21s never got an extended run in that time."

So the 1990s came and went. Not a single Leinster title for Dublin, the closest being the two-point loss to Meath - who went on to win the All-Ireland - in 1993. O'Neill does spot a trend there, however, with under-21 and senior teams becoming more mutually dependent.

"It does seem to have worked for counties that get the structures right. Obviously we see that now with Tyrone, but Meath had some success too."

Which carries the story to the Tommy Lyons era. This time two years ago his appointment as senior manager also came with the reins for the under-21s, and along with Paddy Canning and Dave Billings, Lyons's opening season duly delivered Dublin's first Leinster title in the grade in 18 years. Losing to Galway in the All-Ireland final was a huge disappointment, but defending the Leinster title last April, and reaching this afternoon's final with Tyrone, means Lyons has at least ensured that Dublin haven't yet given up on that troubled relationship with under-21 football.