Club SF Championship All-Ireland Final: In Ventry, the ocean dominates. Now, on a sunny day in March, the Atlantic is pale glinting green and it is cold despite the brightness. The white strands are so clean and lonesome it is as if the warm and candied manifestations of July could never visit here. But they do. Summer is different.

That has become An Ghaeltacht's season for showing itself. It brings in Europeans and language lovers and couples and families; it draws the outside and the Gaeltacht gets to celebrate itself.

These frigid months of early spring are traditionally days of introspection and preparation. Life moves to rhythms that have altered little through the generations. Local communities have the splendours of the feral coast all to themselves and the salty, dramatic weather that goes with it. March was always just a month to get through. Until now.

"I don't think that the Gaeltacht community actually realises now what will happen on St Patrick's Day," says Fergal Ó Sé.

The 31-year-old school teacher is sitting in his uncle's pub, the famous Páidí Ó Sé's, a landmark meeting point on the hilly seascape that leads you into the heart of the Kerry Gaeltacht.

"I honestly don't think that it has been fully grasped yet that we came down to the last two of some 500 senior clubs in this country. Or what that means to us as Gaeltacht people. It has put us on the map. It is great for us and for those who have emigrated. There are people coming in from Boston and Chicago and Australia just to see the Gaeltacht in Croke Park.

"When people actually see our club on the field, it will begin to sink in. But I think it will only be in the months afterwards, whatever happens in the game, when all the fuss dies down that people will have time to consider it properly. And realise that this might never happen again."

For some reason, this year's All-Ireland club finalists seem to have caught the popular imagination. The hurling final has paired Newtownshandrum, the unlikely adventurers from a tiny Cork village, with Dunloy, the admirable torch bearers for the Northern game.

And the football has come down to Caltra and An Ghaeltacht. This has evoked a perception of a team from a modest Galway village exceeding its own wildest expectations to make it to the national stage to meet Kerry's most modern football dynasty.

Caltra, backboned by the superlative Meehan brothers, made it to just one county final in 1975 prior to winning their first late last winter. Suddenly that win blossomed into an historic and marvellous against-the-odds season.

An Ghaeltacht came through their semi-final against St Bridget's of Dublin, a game that was regarded as the definitive tussle of the club season, the match between the heavyweights.

And it is true that the Kerry team has among its numbers the most feted names to emerge from the latest generation of players in that county: MacGearailt, Ó Cinnéide and Ó Sé are all names that carry weight.

Especially Ó Sé. Fergal is the eldest of Micheál Ó Sé's clan and the only one of four brothers not to play for Kerry at All-Ireland level. Dara and Tómas have brought home All-Ireland medals and Marc the youngest, will probably do so over the next couple of years.

Fergal had the ability to play at that level but not the luck. Seven years ago, he was training hard with the Kerry squad and had started a few games in the league. Páidí Ó Sé was in the early phase of management and at 24, Fergal was desperate to stake a claim.

At the back of his mind were thoughts of a cruciate injury that occurred when he was still in his teens and so at training, he always pushed extra hard, keenly aware of the importance of keeping the ligament strong and flexible.

During a week off, with the evenings warm and the championship smell in the air, he went through extreme punishments in Ventry, seeking the same natural inspirations as his uncle had a decade earlier.

"Crazy stuff. Too much," he says softly now.

He ruined himself a week later, tearing a hamstring muscle from the bone in his leg. The searing pain was the first blow; weeks later was the soft, musical tones of Páidí as he explained to his nephew that he had to release him from the panel.

"It wasn't awkward," smiles Fergal. "I was injured. That was that. And he said that if I could come back and was seen playing for the Gaeltacht that I might get a chance again. Kerry won the All-Ireland that September and it was hard watching on. But it was over a year later when I was beginning to get back and the whole picture had changed by then."

The window closed. Maybe because of that, the Gaeltacht play in Dublin this St Patrick's Day. Or perhaps that is too simplistic. But it was predicament and not choice that led Fergal Ó Sé towards management.

He has trained the team for eight years, bossing a group made up of his brothers and friends and boys he had played against at national school. Last year he was persuaded to take on the role of player-manager. His first act was to bring the team to Dublin to watch the All-Ireland club finals last March. It was a bold declaration given the club had only won its first ever senior county title in 2001 but he wanted to show them where he thought they could belong. Twelve months on and they are coming back. It is neat and carries echoes of predestination but Ó Sé believes it was anything but.

There was a time when a Gaeltacht team was impossible to work. Language was obviously a common bond among the parishes but it was merely the medium for communicating the same friendships and fall-outs and peculiarities that govern all Irish parishes.

The Gaeltacht was not simply a place. Within those 14 square miles existed deep felt and entrenched loyalties and divisions. So when it came to putting representative teams together, it was a matter of cobbling 15 available men into a team of strangers, maybe turned out in odd shorts and certainly at odds with each other.

"I think it boiled down to a lack of underage teams," says Ó Sé.

"They could be there one year and gone the next so there was no consistency. There were times when the club was kept going just because of the efforts of one or two people. The likes of Jack Griffin, a neighbour of ours, and Tommy Dowd, a teacher from around here that has passed away. Mick Murphy, a former Kerry player, put a lot of work in for a while.

"Forget this thing of selectors and all that. Tommy Griffin would have washed jerseys and drove guys home after training. Whatever it took. Paddy Jack Ó Cinnéide, Dara's father, he put in untold work. Those are the people that are behind this."

The genesis of the Gaeltacht team probably began 18 years ago.

Páidí Ó Sé and GP Ó Conochúir began coaching an under-12 team in the area. The boys were unusually gifted and Páidí, with several All-Irelands in his slipstream, was a god then. To Micheál Ó Sé's boys, he was like an ordinary uncle who handed them a few quid on birthdays and then went off on Sundays to live this superhero's sporting life that set him apart. He was the uncle they watched on television.

Football was in the family. Fergal's uncle Tom won an All-Ireland in the 1960s but was never as besotted with the game as Páidí. His father, Micheál, played junior football for the Kingdom but again had a fairly cavalier attitude towards the game.

"I suppose the two of those would as soon have been off courting in their younger days or whatever. They enjoyed a game in fine weather. I am told Tom was tremendously skilful, I don't know. The same stature as Páidí all right. My father had a massive pair of hands and had a reputation for being a good fielder. He was. He used to kick a ball against the gable of the house and we would all try and outjump him for it.

"And I remember we would be as old as 15 and 16, Dara and myself and our father would still outjump us. Even though we were getting taller - the height comes from the Kavanaghs on my mother's side. He would be sweating by the time it was finished. We could keep going for hours, the lot of us."

By the time Micheál passed away suddenly two summers ago, the younger Ó Sé boys had achieved excellence on the greatest stage and Fergal was steadily leading the club towards the highest threshold.

From the early 1980s, the Gaeltacht began landing underage title after underage title and in 1991 won their first senior accolade of note, the West Kerry championship. Slowly and inexorably, they worked their way up through the punishing Kerry grades - novice, intermediate, junior and finally senior.

The Crokes beat them in the senior final of 2000 and a season later they defeated Austin Stacks. Over 20 years, the arc they have drawn has been remorselessly impressive and now the Kerry Gaeltacht is poised.

Banners and bunting await them in Croke Park. Francie Dorgan from Listowel will be the one man from beyond the confines of the Gaeltacht on the sidelines. It was Ó Sé's belief that the team needed a detached perspective in order to keep improving but the idea of inviting someone, an outside voice, was shouted down at the a.g.m.

"It was met with anger. People felt we had to be loyal to the Gaeltacht and to the language. Now I, working in an all-Irish school, understand that but my point was it would be a shame for us to be 10 years down the line with one senior championship and just wishing we invited someone in with extra knowledge that might have made the difference.

"As long as they respected what Irish meant to us, which was always going to be likely. It was shot down but when I agreed to take on the job, I managed to get Francie. The objections soon died down when we won the county final. I contemplated saying something at the time but I suppose cups speak for themselves."

The language is everything. The notion of Irish being spoken on the pitch in Croke Park is as important to the Gaeltacht supporters as the manner in which the game is played.

"We all speak it. I suppose in a way it is a weapon against other teams because not many of them can understand what we are saying. If anything, I think the realisation of how important the Irish language is is growing. We feel it is who we are and what we are about and in the team, definitely, we are proud of it."

This weekend, Ó Sé sits down with his selectors to pick the last Gaeltacht team of the season. It will be a bittersweet moment for him. Although he played all through the campaign, suspension prevented him from lining out in the semi-final win. The team performed so strongly that day he is uncertain if he will get to play in Croke Park. The brightest day might elude him again, though this time through his own choice and discipline.

"I will know I am playing if I hear the lads shouting and cursing at me," he smiles. "Once I am on the field, the managing role is left to the boys on the sideline and I am just another player. I hear plenty and give it."

The player in him yearns to be out there. The manager is loath to tamper with a winning team. He will see. Whatever happens, though, the eldest of the Ó Sé boys is at the heart of this moment even though he would reject that notion.

It took decades to forge the Gaeltacht into one team and their participation is as much to do with those that cannot be there as those that will take the field. Naturally, one man will be in Fergal Ó Sé's thoughts.

"I don't think there is any day that myself or my brothers go out onto a field that we don't think of our father. He was instrumental in what we are today.

"We would think of him before and after games and say a prayer before it. And I know he will be looking down on us from wherever he is."