Today he starts his 10th season with Dublin. In those 10 years, Dessie Farrell has won nearly everything worth winning. An All-Ireland club medal eluded him last March and the Footballer of the Year accolade might credibly have been his in 1995.

This afternoon Roscommon come to Parnell Park in the Allianz NFL Division One A. He will be there in the number 13 jersey. Free of club commitments and spared - for the moment anyway - the toll of ever more frequent injury. It can't get any easier with the passage of time. Or can it?

"The older you get, the more diligently you train," he says. "It's a matter of habit. No one likes training whether they're 29 or 19 but you know you have to stay in shape if you're going to be around for the summer. Social life isn't, let's say, as demanding."

Injury has been a constant companion in recent years. Relatively unaffected for much of the 1990s, once an early knee problem cleared up, his last couple of seasons have been blighted by injuries in the groin and Achilles tendon. Having to rest and miss out on training took its toll. His lack of full fitness hasn't helped an evolving Dublin side, deprived of his talents on the ball.

Those talents are considerable. He developed from a sniping corner forward with an ability to win and use ball into a formidable playmaker at centre forward. In 1995, the year Dublin won the All-Ireland, he was to the fore. When the team peaked in the Leinster final against Meath, Farrell gave the best display of any Dublin centre forward in generations. Yet he was never again deployed in the position for any sustained period.

"The one position I really like playing is on the 40. I always let it be known that it was my favourite. But the next year (1996) we sort of fell into the situation where Mickey Whelan felt I'd be of more benefit in the corner, that I could win ball inside and take scores. "In subsequent years, injuries meant that I had to play inside."

Lacking the mobility that made him such a successful ball winner in the half forwards, he has had to settle for a more restricted theatre of operations. But his quick-wittedness and vision have ensured that a fit Farrell, still only 29, remains a hugely important part of Tom Carr's Dublin.

The county's decline has been difficult to cope with. Farrell started his career with four straight provincial titles and an All-Ireland. He was in his fifth season before experiencing a first defeat in the Leinster championship. That hegemony which included three wins apiece over Meath and Kildare has since collapsed to the stage where Dublin have beaten neither county in the past five years.

Last August, a six-point halftime lead evaporated in the Leinster final replay when Kildare scored two goals within 90 seconds of the restart. Dublin crumbled.

"I didn't think it was lost immediately after the two goals," he remembers. "But as the match progressed, that sense of impending doom was there. I knew we weren't going to be able to turn it around. "It could be psychologically damaging. That's something players have to address and talk about.

"It's not easy. Teams might always think we have this chink in our armour. In Leinster championships in the early 1990s, if we did go ahead, teams would lie down a little bit. But we're never going to reach those dizzy heights again. We won't be steamrolling Leinster like that."

This gloomy state of affairs has been alleviated by considerable success at club level. Na Fianna have won the past two Dublin championships and last year reached the All-Ireland final only to fall foul of the exceptional Crossmaglen Rangers. Club success is a grinding process and it was a tired team which lot its Leinster title to O'Hanrahans from Carlow before Christmas.

"It takes a certain toll alright but mostly mental. Players are fickle. We used train at odd hours because we used the floodlights in Clontarf rugby club - so we had to go on after they had finished. The first year nobody minded, then last year people began to complain.

"There's no point giving out about the demands of success when you're going to complain about having nothing to do when we're knocked out of the championship early. I've been through a lot of barren years with the club and I was a willing participant in anything we had to do to get success."

Off the field Farrell is chairman of the Gaelic Players Association which after an abrasive start to life is in the process of finding an accommodation with the GAA's Players Committee. "We're not into scoring points. If improvements come through the medium of the Players' Committee, it won't matter to us who implements it."

He doesn't accept that some of the publicity stunts performed by the GPA might have been counter-productive. "I don't. We took some flak in certain quarters but that was the idea, to create awareness amongst players and public that players had got up off their arses and done something rather than just talk about it on barstools until two in the morning."