Can Dubs deliver on the biggest stage?

I participated on a Legends Tour at Croke Park during August as part of the GAA museum’s summer season. It was a hugely enjoyable and interesting experience as the memories come flooding back.

You forget what it felt like all those years ago.

Coming in through the swinging doors of the dressing-rooms. Their smell and look. The jerseys hanging on the wall. Down the tunnel. Turn right and then the steps up to the arena.

That moment when you walk up the steps onto the pitch on All-Ireland final day – breaking into the light. Into the massive wall of sound. Colour and emotion is everywhere.

It can take your breath away. Some players handle it well and some badly. The excitement, build-up and occasion can sap you. Nerves are real. Those emotions are very vivid on match day. Real. Some exhilarating, and some scary. When you are going out to mark the likes of Colm Cooper or Declan O’Sullivan, they are probably even more intense.

They can become, to use a Jack O’Connor phrase, “an energy vampire”.

The jury is still out on the Dublin footballers’ capacity to close out the deal on such an occasion against the best opponents in the county. They did very well against Donegal. They stuck to their task and won solidly with a few late scores and even without the red-carded Diarmuid Connolly.

That will stand to them and they are most definitely making genuine incremental progress. You only have to look at their results over the past few seasons to see that.

However, Sunday is different. A semi-final and a final are unalike.

Pressure is a queer animal and I am really looking forward to seeing how some of the Dublin players handle it. There are some reasonable and legitimate question marks over how Denis Bastick, Diarmuid Connolly, Kevin Nolan and Ger Brennan will perform.

To be fair, I think that in the main the Dublin players and their management team will be fine and will play a good solid game.

They have been around long enough now to have taken on the lessons from the harrowing defeats that the likes of Barry Cahill, Stephen Cluxton and Alan Brogan have suffered over the past seven or eight years. I think back in particular to their defeat to Mayo in 2006.

Gilroy has created a new team with a new dynamic and the individualism that characterised some of those teams that lost in the past is gone. No more shenanigans like standing arm-in-arm facing hill 16.

This bunch of players he has crafted in his image of a Dublin footballer do their damn best every day they go out and get on with things. Hard work is their mantra and they will not leave anything in the tank to sink the green and gold.

Their new approach has brought them respect and credibility. And Kerry will know they face a really serious outfit in 48 hours. The fact Dublin have played all their championship games in Croke Park over the past few seasons is a help to them this weekend. It reduces their chance of freezing.

In fact if they were playing a team that was perhaps in a breakthrough year, it would be a significant advantage, however against this particular Kerry group of players it only helps to level the playing field.

Don’t expect Dublin to freeze. Don’t expect them to stop working or be overawed by their illustrious opponents. I don’t expect them to be. I just don’t think they are good enough to beat Kerry.

It is not about just pressure on Sunday. All-Ireland finals are won by the team with the best players. And I think that team is Kerry.

EXPERT VIEW: Jason Ryan, Wexford

NEITHER team really changes what it is they do and it’ll be the same on Sunday. Okay, you could ask will Cian O’Sullivan start on Colm Cooper or who will be in the Kerry full-back line to watch Diarmuid Connolly or Bernard Brogan, but there won’t be a lot of switches.

I think it will be very tight. There could even be a replay. Dublin don’t give an awful lot away. They have improved so much defensively the last three years and they all understand what their jobs are.

They have also been very lucky with injuries. Okay, they could point to Paul Griffin, but by and large they have the same group of players there all year although it is important that Paul Flynn and Rory O’Carroll are fit.

The lads they have on the line are good but not of the same calibre as them and if O’Carroll isn’t fully fit they don’t have anyone else who can stand up to the aerial barrage that Kerry could land down on Kieran Donaghy.

In experience, Kerry are way ahead but Dublin have to have such a huge hunger to win. Will Kerry be as hungry? The form of some of the Kerry players hasn’t been up to what it could be either.

I wouldn’t worry about Eoin Brosnan and their midfield. Dublin don’t play with a regular centre-forward anyway and both Anthony Maher and Bryan Sheehan have actually done well this year, whatever people may say about them.

If the game is congested it will give Dublin space to counter but I expect Kerry to make sure that their full-back line is secure and not isolated and if Dublin look up and see that what do they do with the ball? If Dublin go a few points down I don’t expect them to panic. They have shown against Kildare and us this year that they can hold on in there and they did again against Donegal when they were under the cosh. That said, I think it will be Kerry, but maybe not the first day.

IN MY DAY: John O’Leary (Dublin, 1983)

I PLAYED in six All-Irelands, winning two and losing four, but 1983 was my first and it was the first for most of the lads on our team apart from Tommy Drumm and Brian Mullins. We hadn’t even got out of Leinster for a fair few years before that so it was all new to us.

That whole year was an unknown journey for us, especially the trip to Cork for the replayed semi-final, and there was probably more hype about that and the style we won in that day than there was about the final itself. It was like a never-ending story that kept getting better.

I used to carry my gear bag down Clonliffe Road those days but we met up in the Phoenix Park for the final and got a bus down to the ground. I remember the buzz building up when we turned on to the North Circular Road.

There was a lot of fuss beforehand about tickets and would there be a do on in the Green Isle after and who was going to it. All that stuff is much better managed these days. The day itself was horrible. Every All-Ireland final day back then seemed to be like that.

The game wasn’t great as a result and there was a lot made of the sendings off that day and for a few weeks after it. But you don’t care about how you play or what happened once you won it.

There was a certain notoriety about playing in that game and being one of the ‘12 Apostles’ although we didn’t really care about the controversy. It’s like people saying ‘they only won it through the back door’ or ‘they didn’t beat so-and-so’. It just doesn’t matter.

People gave out about Donegal in this year’s semi-final but their priority was to win and they nearly did.

I lost the next four finals before I won my last one in 1995. I remember the ‘84 and ‘85 games against Kerry passing by fairly quickly. Even then, all the hype wasn’t so much about that game but the rivalry of the ‘70s. A bit like now.