In the cool of their Nowlan Park dressing-room 12 days ago, emotions among the Dublin hurlers present depended on the road they had travelled.

A first Leinster final appearance for all stoked different reactions.

Liam Rushe, the infant of the team, turned to Kevin Flynn, the longest servant, and posed a question reflective of his years.

"What's all the fuss about?" queried the 19-year-old. "It's only a semi-final!"

The exuberance of youth, thought Flynn. But he knew where he was coming from.

"There was a lot of emotion around. Some of us had waited longer than others. This was Liam's first year. He was entitled to that reaction. But there were a lot of overjoyed faces around."

For Flynn, the wait has been 14 years, through many twists and turns. There have been peaks, but far too many troughs, in that time.

Dublin hurlers have been the poor relations of Dublin GAA for so long. Flynn appreciates that he could spend a day walking through Dublin without ever being recognised.

tangible

So when they gritted their teeth and came down that final stretch in Nowlan Park two weekends ago, finally scrambling past Wexford, Flynn knew that at last they had achieved something tangible.

"I thought about players who I had played with but weren't with us then, how they deserved the moment of reaching a Leinster final as much as any of the rest of us," he reflected.

Moreover, the victory took attention away from the fact that he had picked up a second yellow card and Dublin had finished with 14 men.

Twelve months earlier, they had coughed up a lead at the same venue to the same opposition and were brought to a replay. In between games, Flynn had that nauseating feeling that they had blown it. The replay defeat and subsequent loss to Cork in the qualifiers left Flynn considering his future.

Even when Anthony Daly was appointed to the position of manager last November, he remained uncommitted. After speaking to Daly he still wasn't sure.

Would the team be better served moving on without him? Would things be different?

Daly had told him to get in touch, that the door remained open. When he did, he was glad to have picked up the phone to make his way back.

Pace has always been Flynn's greatest virtue and he remains one of the quickest forwards in the inter-county game, even at the ripe old age of 33.

Intermittently, a Dublin football manager would come calling, recognising the natural talent he possessed and hoping to steer him in the way of most of the county's eligible dual players.

Tommy Carr was interested at one stage, Paul Caffrey too, but Flynn was never for turning. He's the one that didn't get away.

"All I ever wanted to do was to hurl for Dublin. Playing football with the county just didn't interest me. There were approaches but the drive in me just wasn't there."

At club level, O'Toole's have thrived and Flynn has enjoyed the fruits of playing beside Eamonn Morrissey and James 'Shiner' Brennan after their arrival from Kilkenny clubs.

Daly is his seventh Dublin manager since he made his debut in a league match in late 1995.

Jimmy Grey had given him his initial call-up and his debut against Limerick was sandwiched between two club football semi-finals at Croke Park.

"Dublin were after winning the All-Ireland football title and there was a big crowd there but the hurling was almost a distraction to them. I remember Ciaran Carey colliding with me and I came off worse but Ciaran was one of my biggest heroes growing up. I couldn't say anything."

The following season they ran Wexford, who would go on to win the All-Ireland title that year, to five points in the Leinster championship and in 1997 were on the verge of beating Kilkenny when the match was interrupted by a crowd overflow in the Cusack Stand. When it resumed, DJ Carey grabbed a goal and the rest is history.

From Michael O'Grady to Kevin Fennelly, Marty Morris to Humphrey Kelleher, their intent was the same but methods and personnel chopped and changed too much.

"Our greatest problem has been consistency, the way the team could change from one season to another. You look at Kilkenny or Cork and the changes are minimal, maybe two or three. In Dublin that figure could be seven to eight from season to season.

"You would get so far, think you are on the right track and come back the following season and a new management could have drawn up a completely different set of plans and be looking at new players."

League victories over established teams like Waterford fuelled them from time to time and when they landed the Walsh Cup in 2003 under Flynn's leadership, they felt they were heading in the right direction.

But support never generated behind them.

"I remember coming out of the dressing-room in Parnell Park one year for a league match with Limerick and we got a gentle round of applause on our arrival. One of the lads remarked that at least there were a few around. Then Limerick came out to a thunderous reception. It brought the point home to us how small our base support is."

In 2004, as captain, he dropped a bombshell four days before Dublin were due to play Kilkenny in a qualifier game by flying out to Chicago, thus missing the game

Kelleher had taken over as manager and the team had endured a 15-point defeat to Offaly in the Leinster championship. It was their lowest ebb for some time.

Liam Ryan, then the vice captain, also left, leaving a huge dearth of experience as a frustrated Kilkenny, bitten by their defeat to Wexford in their only provincial defeat of Brian Cody's reign, came calling.

Kilkenny didn't spare them, with Dublin enduring a crushing 26-point defeat.

As it transpired, work as a website designer had prompted Flynn's Chicago sojourn, but he remained there for much of the summer as the flak for himself and Ryan flew at home.

The vibe at county board level was that the captain would not play again for Dublin and that's how it transpired the following spring as the malaise in Dublin continued, when they lost six games by an average of 14 points.

When Laois dumped them from the Leinster championship, Kelleher found his position untenable and Tommy Naughton was signalled as his replacement.

Naughton had accepted a caretaking role in principle, but when he indicated he would like to bring Flynn back, plans to install him came unstuck.

Instead the players were asked to meet and train under an interim management that included the then chairman John Bailey, Mick O'Riordan and Tom Ryan.

The issue of Flynn returning had become a sticking point and one worth downing tools for in the players' eyes.

It was a measure of respect they had for Flynn that they were prepared to take the action they did.

The players trained on their own in St Anne's Park, picketed a subsequent Dublin County Board meeting, ignored threats that none of them would ever play for Dublin again and, when the dust settled, Naughton was in and Flynn was back.

He felt pressure but a first win in 14 games against Laois in a championship relegation semi-final justified the stance they had taken.

"There has been a lot of pain being a Dublin hurler and there may be more to come, who knows? I'd be conscious of the fact that so much effort has been put in at underage level to get Dublin heading in the right direction. I think we're all conscious of that.

"What will Sunday bring? I'd like to think that we can be competitive, that we can win. Most of all I think we will enjoy it."

It's been a while coming.

- Colm Keys