Shane Ryan's transformation under Tommy Lyons from doughty defender and dual star to footballing forward only has been one of the manager's more bold initiatives. Keith Duggan gets the lowdown on Ryan's conversion

Dispatches from The Goblet . . . The feast has ended early. Abandoned roast dinners in various states of ruination are being ferried from public view to the inner sanctum of The Goblet pub, off the Malahide Road, near St Vincent's GAA club. It is around 9.0 p.m. Assorted hacks are, at regular intervals, bursting through the door and staring in panic and dismay at the disappearing plates. Several of us have got all dolled up for the occasion. We check watches and look around again. Gradually, we all come to bear the anguished look of the man who turns up for the date of a lifetime to be greeted by the fading scent of familiar perfume and a stiff drinks bill.

All summer, The Goblet has been the social hotspot for the Dublin footballers and the chasing media crowds. It has worked well, with banter and japes between the hacks and the most popular sportsmen in Western Europe continuing long into the night.

"Arragh, have you not got another tape on ya," several of the forwards would plead as the barman polished his last tray of glasses.

Bridges were built over high balls and martinis. On one balmy evening, Tommy Lyons put on the best solo show by an Irishman since Oscar Wilde last held court. We grew fond of The Goblet and had begun to think of it as a classic venue, a sort of modern day Toots Shor's for northside Dublin. On most arranged nights, the best football talent in the city, the boys who can pull bigger crowds than Sinatra ever did, were to be found wandering around the upper floor of The Goblet ready for a chat.

This week, though, it didn't really happen. The evening had an autumnal feel to it and with the threat of rain, Lyons whistled an early end to training. The players assembled at the old meeting point as usual, but finished dinner early and began slipping into the dusk.

Cosgrove. Whelan. Brogan. The names and faces that have been replacing the Premiership stars in the daydreams of young city kids. It is understandable really. There is little new to say. Dublin are winning still and still have it all to win. Whelan, Jayo, Cosgrove, they have answered our questions and queries with unfailing politeness until they are blue in the face. At semi-final stage, it gets different. Jittery. They are so close now, but still so far away. It is easier not to talk about it. So they leave The Goblet early.

In one corner, though, the hacks have swooped, converging on one small table, as if an untouched roast dinner has been discovered. We have cornered Shane Ryan.

He could so easily not be here. For most of his adult life, Shane Ryan has been delicately balancing his born love of Dublin hurling with his expanding future in Dublin football. Perhaps he is privately surprised he is still pursuing football, the sport that once seemed like a long shot.

"When I got the call," he said earlier this summer, reminiscing on his invitation to join the Dublin football panel four years ago, " I thought this was amazing. You think it is deadly playing for the hurlers, but the football was always so unreachable, hyped up, the main thing. The thing that seemed so unreachable."

He convinced himself he could blossom in both codes, reciting the names of great dual players across the land as proof. But all through, there have been problems.

Initially championed by Tom Carr, he presented himself as a balanced and versatile defender, winning the most coveted word of praise from the manager on a bad league day in Cork.

"He showed leadership," said Carr, which was notable during a period when Dublin were starved of would-be generals. That summer he lost his place for a championship match against Louth, having played hurling with the under-21 side on the Wednesday evening. Although it was stoutly denied that hurling impeded upon his chances of selection, the word on the grapevine was Ryan was thought to be burning out a little.

But he persevered. Hurling was in Ryan's blood, his father having hurled to an All-Ireland medal with Tipperary, his mother a three-time camogie medal winner with Dublin. There were times when he didn't know if he was a hurler moonlighting as a footballer or a young footballer who owed something to the unheralded preachers who had given countless hours to his development in the underworld of city hurling.

After a while, he felt like he belonged nowhere.

"It was like 'ah he's off playing the big ball or the small ball' and it was grand, you got on with it, but you never felt totally part of either set-up," he says now.

When Lyons, the chieftain from Kilmacud took over, Ryan's mind was made up for him. He had committed to football before, but early this year he felt the gravitational pull of hurling keener than ever. A hurler trapped in a footballer's body.

And vice versa.

Something had to give. After issuing a straightforward veto on playing both sports, Lyons waited. Shane Ryan equivocated and hoped to speak to Lyons in private.

Maybe they did sit down and smoke the peace pipe, but Lyons also said: "If Shane Ryan wants to play hurling, good luck to him and I've no problem with that."

Tommy Lyons is lounging in one of the booths in The Goblet as his convert is counselled for his view. We are grilling Ryan with the type of interview technique normally reserved for wartime. A naked light bulb dangles before the footballer, swinging gently.

He is not perspiring. The chief must be pleased. If Ryan doesn't get fazed by this, then nothing will perturb him.

This has been another remarkable night for the player. After losing out last time round, Ryan has been restored to the Dublin attack at centre forward. Standing between him and the kind of performance that the Hill expects is Kieran McGeeney, the best central defender in the game.

"I have seen him playing on the telly and we played Armagh a few times in the league," Ryan is saying.

"Judging by what the Na Fianna guys would tell you, he is the main guy behind the team, you know, he is a huge player and he seems to lift the whole team. At times he seems invincible and so it's going to be a huge task, something I am going to try and get my head around over the next few days, Mmm ... it's going to be a tough one anyhow."

Now that he is a one-sport man, his conscience is clear and he can admit the drawbacks that he privately wrestled with in the past.

"Yeah, concentrating on one definitely improves your game. It takes the pressure off you a bit. If you are doing both you have to work that bit harder to try to get on the team and to stay on the team as you are not around so much. So it does make a difference.

"You never like to give up a sport you have been playing your whole life, but once I made the decision, that was that. If I didn't play football, I wouldn't have a Leinster medal."

So he made the right choice?

"Yeah. Oh yeah. Couldn't have worked out better."

Maybe the chief saw him hurl a few times, when Ryan regularly banged in goals and points. In one of his last games for the Dublin hurlers, he rattled Antrim for 1-8, leaving the devotees of the game all the sorrier for the inevitable loss.

For some reason, Lyons wasn't content with just making Ryan a footballer. He wanted to make him a creative footballer and early in the league, when the citizens of suburbia were not too sure about the Lyons era at all, he laid his brawny arms on the convert and said, 'Thou Shalt be a Forward. Go forth andmultiply'.

And against Westmeath, before a slightly disbelieving Parnell Park Sunday crowd, Ryan did just that, delivering one goal that was joyously celebrated and then capping it with another. In the first half. The rest of the Dublin defence looked on with misty eyes as Ryan was handed a one-way ticket to the heaven of the city forward lines. He has not looked back.

"Well, there is always room to improve your game. But it is nice to get a run up the field, to not be in at corner back as a spoiler. It's nice to get on the ball more often."

It has been a memorable transition.

"I don't think I have ever been as tired as on the Sunday evening," he remarked in an interview after the Leinster final.

"I was absolutely knackered. It was like a cauldron. It's strange, I watched a video of the game and I don't seem to be doing all that much running, but I was really shattered. It is a lot more demanding at centre forward, but I must say, I prefer it."