Locker Room: The flags are hanging from the poles in Marino, the mini-leagues and the juvenile sections are being marshalled and the priests are giving bulletins from the altar. The Dublin county senior football final takes place tonight and, perfectly, it has sent a reviving buzz of excitement around our little patch of the northside. As Hillary C once wrote, it takes a village.

St Vincent's play UCD at eight o'clock in Parnell Park in the last significant act of the annual drama that is the GAA year in Dublin.

Monday night is a strange time to be having a county final, and if the scheduling robs the occasion of some of its lustre there is a feeling of relief that the county has stumbled over the line to actually having a county final at all. For that small mercy many thanks to the legal profession.

Of course a large chunk of those Dublin fans for whom games must be delayed in high summer that they might finish up their drinks and get into Croke Park safely wouldn't dream of attending tonight, and a fair few couldn't get there without asking a policeman for directions anyway.

Which is a pity. The GAA is more about county finals than it is about sunny days and big crowds in Croker. A county final is more than just a game. It's about who you are and where you're from and what particular set of colours stir your heart. It's about watching the sons or grandsons of fellas you played with or went to school with wearing those same colours and measuring the progress of your own life against their vigour. It's about tradition. It's about the walk on the pitch when the final is done.

When the GAA harangue the summer throngs in Croker to keep off the grass after big matches they forget about every county final that has ever been played and the social walkabout on the field that everyone has afterwards, shaking hands with foes, hugging friends, slapping backs. The county final is end of term, a game and a gathering.

I'm not sure where UCD fit into this world but there they are, young and full of running, all springing from little GAA worlds of their own elsewhere on Planet GAA. They are gathered into UCD, where (we run the risk of an admonitory phone call from Davy Billings if we suggest anything else here) they are denied the dreamily decadent lives of the traditional student and instead lead monastic existences trudging from lecture to tutorial to library with no time for nourishment.

It's a common sight indeed to see a wan UCD sub studying in the dugout while a game is on.

UCD's presence is a recurring thorn of controversy in the Dublin championships but whether one regards them as an addition or as mere carpetbaggers it has to be conceded they have a history in the club game in the capital and that the story of the GAA in Dublin is such that it is only relatively recently that the game in the city ceased to be dominated by carpetbagging teams made up of fellas from here there and everywhere, who might be drawn together by vocation (grocers, park rangers, gardaí) or by original county affiliation.

Back when all that began to change again (we won't forget the powerhouse that was Seville Place in the early 1920s) in the late 40s and early 50s the big guns who went out to spike St Vincent's week in and week out were mainly country teams.

Vincent's versus Garda drew a record crowd for a county final in 1952 and four years later, in 1956, when the seven-year unbeaten record of that great St Vincent's team was halted, it was the students of UCD in the league and Érin's Hope in the championship who did the halting.

Much has changed since then, particularly the world in which the students live, but it was that challenge - the local team versus the young stars from the college or wherever - which gripped the imagination and led in a way which can be traced directly to the phenomenon of the modern Hill 16.

St Vincent's and UCD were the ambassadors drawn from the two extremes, and the history between them makes this evening in Parnell Park more than just a county final.

Back in the '40s it was the progress made by Vincent's on the hurling field at a time (1947-1948) when UCD were winning back-to-back titles which led to the policy on county selection being changed in 1947 towards Dublin players for Dublin teams.

The rivalry between UCD and St Vincent's never dwindled and indeed in the early 70s it assumed the qualities of a Balkan blood feud when the draw dictated that they meet in five county finals in succession. The final of 1975 was never played because of a row about scheduling and exams.

Time changes things. At the time the level of success enjoyed by St Vincent's was such that the student teams were seen around Dublin, if not as plucky underdogs, at least as a necessary remedy.

Had UCD turned up with pitchforks and machetes some would have seen it as justified. The first in that series of finals, the game in 1972, which saw (a mere) two players sidelined, drew a comment from a north county delegate - which was never quite forgiven in Marino - to the effect that "Vincent's are running Dublin football and ruining it".

UCD teams of that era were embellished by stars like John O'Keeffe from Kerry and Kevin Kilmurray from Offaly and Pat O'Neill from Dublin right through to Colm O'Rourke, whom Eugene McGee remembers strolling across a pitch towards him as an unsurprisingly cocky 18-year-old whom he had never met before. O'Rourke stretched out a hand towards McGee, who had by then managed UCD to a couple of All-Ireland club titles, and said, "You must be McGee." It was as if the messiah had arrived and was checking in.

If UCD win tonight, the arguments which rage almost every year in GAA will begin again. Oddly, in recent years the hand of the draw has meant it is invariably St Vincent's who are on the other end of the stick when the College triumph in county finals.

UCD will point to their history and the sense of community they feel in Belfield. Both are undeniable, although college community always reminds me of that short story by Julio Cortázar called The Southern Thruway wherein a traffic jam with the same cars in the same locale calcifies and lasts and lasts and lasts. A community develops. People share things, fall in love, argue, establish commerce.

And then finally the traffic jam breaks and everyone speeds away back into a world where "no one knew anything about the others, where everyone looked straight ahead, only ahead."

On the other hand there will be those who point to the absurdity of college players not being asked anymore to declare either for the college or their home club and so on. This morning is not the time to rehearse those old arguments. So much context (and the performance of a young St Vincent's team in the semi-final last week) makes it a county final with unusually deep resonances, a night that will tell us much about the future of Dublin football and a night that will bring back memories too.

That's what county finals are for and the best of them leave nobody feeling neutral.

Eight o'clock in Parnell Park this evening. More than just a game.