Dublin’s Paul Flynn sticks to his tried and trusted pre-game routine

Paul Flynn has a pre-game routine. It's not set in stone. He does it for the big games. Like the start of summer football. Or at the end.

Before Dublin's opening defence of their Leinster title against Westmeath this Saturday night in Croke Park he may take a familiar stroll around the corner from his house – that he shares with Cork's Aidan Walsh and Donegal captain Michael Murphy – to where the supposed life and death pressure of championship will instantly melt away.

“I tweak it a little bit. I tweak it for different games. Depending on who I’m playing against or what I need to get out of the game myself, but the template is always the same.

“I have little things I might do the morning of a game or things I might do the evening before. It might be to the annoyance of my other family members but that’s just the way it is.”

Superstitious traits
There's evident of such superstitious traits in inner city Dublin so maybe that's where he got it from. Either way, we're intrigued. Superstitious?

“No, not really. Obviously I would obviously watch what I eat the night before a game. And then, the morning of a game, I always like to go for a bit of a walk and just clear my head and I usually just walk round the corner because there is a graveyard around there with a few people who are close to me who have passed away recently and I just kind of go down and have a chat with them on the morning of a game.

“It just helps you put things in perspective. That this is just a football match and there are more important things to be worried about. It calms you down a little bit and helps you go out and . . . ” Just play.

Flynn got involved with Pieta House, the suicide and self harm centre, and this interview was conducted at the launch of their “Mind Our Men” campaign.

Dublin sponsors Vodafone have agreed to let the Pieta House logo replace theirs on the jersey this weekend. The questions and answers found their natural course to that juncture, he doesn't try to sell it, but clearly Flynn wants to help in any way he can to address the deeply disturbing statistics of suicide among young males in Ireland.

And what of life in a house that holds three All-Ireland winners from the past three seasons, with five All Stars between them? “Everyone’s a bit a cagey, you don’t say nothing!

“Ah, we just have the craic. Lads just have a bit of banter and stuff. When it comes to football, we respect each other to the extent where I’m not going to ask Michael Murphy what he was doing on your training camp last week.

“Likewise, he’s not going to ring me and ask what are you doing at training? There is that kind of mutual respect there.

“That is probably how we get on so well because if we started getting involved in the football side of things too much then it would definitely affect the friendship because you can’t be friends with someone you are going toe to toe with.

"We talk about football but we don't talk about football in terms of training. We talk about things if there is any scandal or anything like that! But we don't talk about tactics or things like that."

Respect
Considering the overwhelming expectations of a clean Dublin victory, Flynn does maintain a high level of respect for Westmeath. "Last year probably wasn't their best. But it was only a matter of time until they came back because when I broke onto the Dublin panel, they were one of the big players in Leinster and every time we played against them, we had difficulties. They beat us in the League final in 2008 and in the championship that year, they put us to the pin of our collar. We were blessed."