Brian Lohan comes on the line. Playing full back over the phone. "How long will this thing take?" he says, making it clear that shorter interviews are better interviews. Very short interviews are best.

"Well, two hours or so," we say, holding the line, "depends how good ye are."

"No. Put it another way," says Brian Lohan, laughing like the grim reaper, "it depends on how good you are."

Cue subliminal vision of man in Clare jersey and red helmet clearing ball as crowd roars. Dumb full forward flailing after him.

Home with the Lohans. Two thirds of the best full back line in the country live in a big modern house at the top of a hill, in a little estate not far from Shannon airport. Tullyglass.

Shannon is a strange and unlikely hurling stronghold, a place with no discernible heart to it. The Milton Keynes of Munster. Everything here, from the architecture to the town planning, smells so distinctly of the hopeful sixties and fashion-free seventies that you expect to see groovy guys and hip chicks hanging loose in their flares.

But Shannon has been claimed as a hurling town, home of the Munster club champions, the place where Brian and Frank Lohan have mapped out the course of their distinguished hurling careers. The line runs through their ancestry to that patch of green at the bottom of the estate, where they first scuffed their knees, to the ball alley, where they practise their strokes, to Tullyglass Hill, out the back of their house, where the Clare team do their hardest winter work, to Croke Park tomorrow.

Shannon. A Clare team stood on a flat roof out at the airport one September evening in 1995 and waved the Liam McCarthy Cup at people. Because nobody else would do it, Brian Lohan made a speech that night, an awkward heart-felt speech, during which he looked down at the faces below him and noted that it was good to see so many Clare faces in a place usually filled with "yanks and foreigners".

Standing in Shannon, you know just what he meant. In the midst of so much transience Shannon is still defining its personality. Looking back now, Brian Lohan says he would have preferred if the team had headed to the Wolfe Tones club that night instead of gathering on a roof-top at the airport. The club is the closest thing Shannon has to having a heart.

It is a Saturday afternoon and one third of the best full back line in the country is finishing his dinner, while his brother, the best full back ever (a charge he passionately denies), is watching some interprovincial rugby. Their father, who played hurling until they had to shoot him, is pottering about the house.

The walls are decorated with photographic commemorations of academic achievement. Various carrot-topped Lohans graduating with scrolls and gowns. Only a brass `Player of the Month' award, casually anchoring some newspapers to a stool, suggests that this house might be a citadel of hurling.

Amidst the tranquility there is no hint of the excited frenzy which one supposes might vibrate around a house which sends two representatives to Dublin on the plane tomorrow morning to play in an All-Ireland final. There is a quiet intensity about the Lohans which is uncomplicated by any sort of fuss.

Gus Lohan enters the room last, parking himself in a corner from where he can keep an eye on his two hurling sons as they talk about growing up on top of a hill in Tullyglass.

The boys are tracksuited and lean. Gus has lost a little of the thatch up top and gained some circumference at the waist, but the years have made him look more formidable than ever. His face has rounded out a little, but pare away the curves and rub out the years and you have Brian Lohan's face. Determination chiselled on the mouth, seriousness knitted into the brow. Frank has a more luminous flame of red hair and an easier way with life.

"What's the difference in their temperaments Gus," you ask, like a man choosing a greyhound.

"Well," says Gus, playing defence, "maybe Frank is the better athlete, but neither of them wash dishes."

Much laughter between the Lohan men. Jesus, Dad would you shut up.

It's old news by now that Gus came to Clare in 1965 as a garda and never moved on. He played hurling for a Clare team that delivered two league titles and a lifetime's worth of regrets and he won 11 county titles playing for Newmarket-on-Fergus.

The bad news for forwards is that longevity is in the Lohan blood. Having come here in 1965, as an established hurler with Galway, big Gus was still playing junior for Newmarket in the late eighties.

"I remember when I was playing for Clare a fella wrote to tell me he was writing `for the good of Clare hurling'. He said would I please resign from the Clare hurling team, get off it some way, any way."

You look at Gus Lohan in alarm. In a serious hurling household like this the receipt of such an impertinent letter could have grave implications for the sender. Gus Lohan's two sons know what's coming next. Gus lights up his face with a big smile and the chuckles start spreading out from his chest.

"For the good of the team," he laughs. "He was a well-known fella, always very critical of the team in bad days. Father Harry (Bohan) fixed him, though. Father Harry got a letter from him once and went to the trouble of finding his phone number and calling him at four in the morning to discuss it."

When GUS came here in the middle of the sixties, Newmarket were the supreme beings of Clare hurling. Gus won his 11 championships from 1967 to 1981, starting off with a four-in-a-row which concluded with Newmarket sticking 9-13 past Clarecastle in a county final replay in 1969.

Gus has a hatful of videos of old hurling games and not too long ago he sat his sons down to watch one of Clare's league final wins of the seventies. Their responses seem to capture their characters.

"It was good to see them," says Frank, "Loughnane was there with the head of hair. God. Fit as can be."

"Terrible hurling, though," says Brian, shaking his head like a coroner, "don't think I've seen worse hurling."

That difference in intensity runs like a grain through the conversation and through their play. Frank and Brian speak about the quiet mood in the Clare dressing-room before a big game and the quiet purposefulness of it. Brian is suddenly struck by the difference between that and the Shannon Wolfe Tones dressingroom.

"We went off to the Munster club final this year," he says, still bothered by the memory.

Frank sits grinning.

"This is funny," he says.

"And it was like going away on a stag party," continues Brian.

"We had a sing-song," says Frank.

"Going to the match!" says Brian outraged. "I couldn't handle that at all."

"He couldn't handle it," laughs Frank.

Wolfe Tones. The club at the heart of the burgeoning Shannon Industrial Estate weren't born until 1969 and the club itself grew to maturity in parallel with Gus Lohan's boys. Brian and Frank were born in 1971 and 1974 respectively. Bound to be hurlers.

"I had a plastic hurley when I was very small," says Frank. "It was yellow."

"Your granny has a photo of you with it," says Gus. "You're in your nappy."

"Don't put that in," says Frank.

"No," says Brian.

History. Lots of it. The bones of these boys.

"We always played hurling and football with Wolfe Tones," says Brian. "I remember going training with Dad in Newmarket when I was little. They'd train on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. He'd take me off in the old Morris Minor and I'd puck around. All our playing was in Wolfe Tones, though. It coincided with a a time when we were the first team to win everything. We won the first under-16 title, the first minor, the first under-21 and so on. When we won the first county title 11 of us on the team had all come up together."

"We hadn't a senior team until 1985," says Frank, "even still, say with the senior football, we go up and down every year. We haven't the resources to put everything into it."

"If we try we win the intermediate football," says Brian, "but we don't ever try two years in a row."

Wolfe Tones are thriving. Now Gus takes a team every year in the club. Keeps away from his boys.

"Under-10s are best," he says, eyeing his sons mischeviously, "anything older than 10 is hard to communicate with."

Even if Wolfe Tones had never existed, one suspects that the Lohan hurling lineage would have passed down as conspicuously as the red hair. Childhoods duplicated each other. Gus remembers growing up in Aughrim in Galway. Sunday was a day of hurling.

"We'd start after 10 o'clock mass, adjourn for the dinner, be on again till tea time and out after from then on till the older fellas would be going to the dances and they'd go and wash themselves in the old barrels out the back."

Gus's boys grew up in the concrete margins of Shannon, but a patch of green at the bottom of the hill served the same purpose. Endless harumscarum games of soccer, rugby and hurling. Having a hurling father and a certain type of schooling meant that the last game grew to be greatest in their affections.

Would the three Lohans ever puck around together, letting the ash and leather do their talking? The vision of father and earnest sons striking away on a dusty field as the sun sets has a certain appeal to the journalist.

"I'd need a new hip first," says Gus.

"We used to," says Brian. "But it wouldn't last long. We'd often go for a few pucks out in the road. Dad would be putting the ball in between myself and Frank to fight for it and I'd be beating Frank to it all the time."

"Sure," says Frank, rolling his eyes.

"And somebody else would just have to come along then . . ."

Gus laughs. A big man, slowing with age, he gets an easy enjoyment out of his sons, playing them off each other, teasing them gently.

The boys themselves have little or no memory of Big Gus wearing a Clare jersey. Few enough mental pictures of him hurling actually.

Brian can remember the county final of 1980 when Eire Og beat Newmarket. There is a sepia memory in the attic of Frank's mind of being brought to the county final of 1981, the last of Newmarket's titles, and running around the dug-out with another player's son.

"He cried all the time." The little fella that is. Not Gus.

They went up to Croke Park a few times to see the Da playing on the garda team, but going to big matches was the original memory.

"I remember a couple of Munster finals," says Frank. "Alan Cunningham, who coached me in the club, might have been playing. We'd have gone to see him."

They grew to be moderate hurlers themselves in their youth, stragglers in the bunch, but determined stragglers.

"The first time I played in a Clare jersey," says Brian, "I played up in Crusheen. I played my first game on that pitch and I was marking Cathal Moran of Galway. They used to call him Cathaleen, it was a challenge game and I was 14. I got a couple of games and never really made Clare under-age teams after that."

"Ah," says Gus, "No. You came close to the minor team in 1989."

Pause.

Gus grinning.

"He was a selector on the minor team in 1989," says Brian, "and it was my last year under-age and himself and the selectors decided I wasn't good enough. That's another story, though."

THIS IS old territory. The three of them are still chuckling at the thought of it as Frank outlines his own under-age career, which involved a fair few more under-age appearances than his brother put together.

"I'd get on a lot of teams, but I was never in a central position, always in my own age group, never with the fellas a year ahead or anything. I never took frees or did any of the responsible things that the stars did. I didn't get any breakthrough till under-21 or so."

As men the Lohans went flying past the wonderful hurlers who had queued ahead of them as boys. Brian can remember as an under-14 playing a game against Antrim and every time Antrim scored a goal (about six times) Joe Gorman from Cratloe would swan up the field and score a goal for Clare.

The three Lohans can rhyme off at least a team's worth of the names attached to glorious under-age stars who have only made the fringes of senior inter-county hurling. So-andso lost interest. That fella never grew. Your man emigrated. He's a good club hurler. This one could still be good.

What makes the Lohans different? There is a silence. Frank shrugs in his easy-going way. Gus stares at the two boys. Just curious to see what they will say. Brian answers at last.

"We work harder."

They work harder. No hiding it. Frank lives in Edenderry right now and pucks around in the spare evenings with his Clare housemate. Every other night he travels to Clare to be with the team.

At home in Tullyglass the pressure on him is a little greater. The boys have the keys to the grounds of the local school and often spend evenings banging a sliotar against the wall of the handball alley there. Brian supplements that with a little gym work.

"I'd go down to the handball alley for an hour or an hour-and-a-half and I'd work on whatever needs working on," he says, reluctant to be divulging stuff like this. "Running backwards and stroking off either side, coming forward and stroking. Pulling high, pulling low. Whatever. I'd go back over the last game I played and think of everything which could have been better."

The need to work harder and harder seems to come from the genes. The Lohans have perfect memories for the bad days. Ask the three Lohans about their best days wearing the hooped saffron and there are long silences. Questioned about the bad days they become fluent and chatty.

"1973," says Gus. "In 1973 there was very little right preparation went into Clare, but at the end of the game Noel Casey had a chance of a goal and it went into the side-netting. Limerick beat us by two points and they won the All-Ireland that year. They beat us badly in the Munster final the next year, too . . . or 1967 was bad when Tipp beat us well. Losing the two Munster finals later in the seventies was a blow."

"1994 was the worst," says Brian, "the team talk about 1993 and Tipp, but I wasn't long enough on to feel it really. The next year we had a lot of work done and I thought we were going to do something. That was bad. We'd had a few good league games."

"Last year was worse," says Frank, "losing to Limerick was bad. Or losing the under-21 final a few years ago. I hated that."

So the afternoon passes. They are good company, but keep their family life hidden under a blanket of hurling stories.

"Any rows?"

"Not really."

"They steal each others socks."

"Any jealousies."

"Of him!"

"Distinct memories of playing together for the first time?"

"No."

"Talk hurling much in the house?"

"Nah."

Journalist held scoreless in Tullyglass!

Big time. They know the comforting familiarity of routine. Tomorrow they suspect will be much like September 1995. When it is still early and the grass remains dewy they'll head down the hill to join their team-mates for the flight to Dublin. Even by then most of the neighbours will be on the road to the capital. The house which sends out two of the most celebrated hurlers in the country will scarcely be distinguishable from the rest of the estate.

They won't talk much about the game or the build-up this weekend. Neither of them feel that having another member of the full back line as a brother involves any more hurling conversation than is necessary.

"I wouldn't get on to Frank about a bad game," says Brian.

"He doesn't have bad games," says Frank.

"You must have forgotten them," says Gus.

"We'd get on to Hally (Mike O'Halloran) about it, though" says Brian.

When they look back on the fun of two years ago, they note everything that happened in August and September seemed to come to them by way of a bonus. The winning of the Munster title was the outer-most point of their dreams back then.

This year is different, though. They have perfect memories for the bad days. They see themselves with ground to make up. They look back on 1996 and see their team as having been slightly distracted. Hard working, but forcing it. Not quite there mentally.

"We deserved to lose," says Brian.

"Myself and Seanie Mac were doing finals," says Frank, "and maybe a few of us weren't fully focused.

Brian had a dream the weekend of the Limerick match and looking back now he recognises the dream as a symptom of what was wrong.

"I dreamt on Saturday night that we had played Limerick that day and beaten them by a point. I knew we weren't right, so when I dreamt it I woke up on Sunday morning and thought it was Monday morning and that we had beaten them. I was lying there with this huge sense of relief that we had got out of there alive and I heard the movements about the house and realised it was only Sunday. My heart went through the floor."

Ground to make up. Tomorrow it's Tipp. The motivation is in the history, the geography, the colours, the words, the air.

Tomorrow Brian expects to awake with his heart beating normally, a clear vision of the afternoon ahead on screen in his mind.

The dressing-room will be quiet and little will be said. Dalyier does most of the talking. After that Jamesie. Seanie Mac is good. Hally always has a soundbite. Fergie Tuohy speaks and it's time to go. The Lohans grant one another the rare compliment that the other usually says just what needs to be said.

When it comes to the team the air is rare. No room for irony or levity or humour.

Any examples of what you'd say in the dressing-rooms or meetings, lads?

"No."

On the field they look out for one another in quiet ways. There is a memory of the unfortunate Waterford hurler who had some fun one afternoon when Frank lost his boot in a League match. Fun over, he had to return to marking Brian. From the top of the stand, the stern mouth moving rapidly near the Waterford ear was proof enough that the Lohans aren't to be trifled with.

Do you give forwards much verbals?

"Ah, I'd chat with the fellas I'm friendly with," says Frank, "but I suppose that's not what you're talking about."

"No. I'm just a stupid full back," says Brian.

They'll each notice how the other one is going, but sooner than that they'll notice how the man in front of them in the half back line is going.

Who'll take most of the responsibility for the defence?

"Aw," says Brian, "we'd better say Davy Fitz."

"If it gets tough," says Frank, "we all help each other, but mainly you just go out and try to do your specific job. That's what we'll do on Sunday."

Gus will be there of course. Gus says he doesn't notice any of it. Not the hype. Not the hoopla. Not the turned-up volume when Brian emerges with the ball in his hand, ready to drive it 70 yards. Not the faintest increase in his pulse rate when the boys are on the brink of glory. He doesn't note any extraordinary sensations if either of his boys are in trouble. If they win he'll lose sight of them quickly as the sea of fans closes in on them and he'll just take in the breadth of the occasion.

They'll be fine. Bred well.

"You know what I notice," he says by way of a neat non-sequitur. "Those horns. They all have them now. Blaring. Very noisy."

They are perfectly downbeat. The family secrets locked tight into Tullyglass Hill. No rows. No fuss. Nothing special.

Does it make any difference at all, being brothers, playing in the same line?

"Just what we've always known," says Frank.

"Tell you what," says Brian, "why don't you go and ask the Bonnars."

An afternoon with three defenders. Depends on how good you are the man said.

"Hope you didn't think we were guarded or anything," says Brian in a voice which says: You should see us when we are being guarded.

Perfect defending boys. If it was a hurling game the journalist would have been taken off before half-time. Weeping.