Tom Humphries discovers from Dublin's dual player Conal Keaney just how big a commitment it is to pursue both codes, and why football is more physically draining.

Last of the breed. Conal Keaney is just in from college. It's a Thursday night well past tea-time and the press of exams is on his temples. Thursday is a mercy. No training. He'll eat. He'll study. He'll go out to the back garden to the high wall and bang the sliotar off it for 10, 15, 20 minutes before cracking a book again.

"You have to. It's not that football is an inferior game but if you play it for a while it slows up your hurling a bit. The reactions are different. The movement and the bounce and everything. It takes a while to get the sharpness back.

"I've found I have to go out and get the stick in my hand every day just to keep hurling. Luckily we have a wall out the back so I don't have to go far and there's nobody watching."

In our minds he is still a hurler. Hurling is his art, the greater of his talents and the one for which he is best known and most celebrated. On his day he could play for any county in the country and be an adornment.

It's just that Dublin hurling provides too few such days and, well, he's easily footballer enough to make the county team and high season in Croke Park is a seductive thing for a city boy.

So, he faces into a summer the duration of which he can only guess at. The footballers could go well. The hurlers have as nice a draw as they could hope for. As the last of the high-profile dual players in the country he is setting off on the road less travelled.

Probably it was always going to come to this. While his pre-eminence on the hurling field was noticeable three or four years ago, back when he was a schoolboy his football always progressed nicely and his presence on the Dublin under-21 All-Ireland winning side last year struck an ominous note with hurling lovers around the city.

It wasn't long before football manager Tommy Lyons came a-courting.

Briefly before the leagues started this year there was a feeling amongst the traditionally fatalistic hurling community in Dublin that Keaney was about to be abducted and lost to the game altogether, joining Shane Ryan, David Henry and others in the ranks of glitterati.

His talent was such and his will to hurl such that accommodations were made. He has played both games and if the quality of his hurling dipped from his own extraordinary standards early in the league he was back on form for the final few games, running matches as only he can do.

"If anything this season has been a small bit easier on me because I'm not playing under-21 anymore. I sit down every two weeks and work out a plan with Tommy and Humphrey Kelleher (hurling manager). We work it according to whichever team has a match coming up next. I'm sitting down with them again next week. For the summer the way it's looking I'd say I'll be doing one week with the footballers and then one week with the hurlers."

The lifting of the obligations of under-21 play has been a significant boon to him. Last year the county under-21 hurlers carried the weight of expectation all the way to a Leinster final, against Kilkenny, when they promptly froze.

The football season extended all the way to a final win over Tyrone. And on one of the worst days of last winter, a couple of Saturdays in mid December, Keaney was to be found leaning into the wind and rain in O'Toole Park, Crumlin, playing with the Ballyboden under-21 hurlers.

"This year I've had the colleges which hasn't been too bad. I got sent off for the footballers so I missed the weekend at the end of it. The difficult bit is starting now - the hurling championship in Dublin has a league format at the start so we play seven games at the start.

"With county teams getting ready for championship and with the club football championship getting going it's hard. You worry about injuries."

He worries about injuries and he worries about burn-out. The return to intercounty hurling action this spring of Brian Corcoran provided a salutary warning for those who would burn the candle at both ends.

"I've thought about that alright. Brian got an awful lot very early. I don't know the detail but I think it's trying to keep the club going which makes it hard. Sometimes it seems like it never ends. You have game after game. I know at the moment I'm lucky. I'm in college. I get time during the day.

"I can leave early if I need to and I can work my study around things but it keeps going. I know that if I had to go to a nine-to-five job every day it would be different. You need to be very flexible."

With so much committed to both games it's not the fitness work which takes its toll, it's the sheer physicality of football. He's noticed that the game, especially at county level, drains him faster and more completely than hurling does. Part of the tactical trend perhaps.

"Football takes an awful lot out of me. There's an awful lot of hitting. All the time. Not just when you have the ball but when you are looking for it or after you get rid of it. You're taking hits all the time. Hurling isn't physically demanding like that.

"You're looking to avoid hits most of the time, trying to get into space. You don't feel a hurling game the next day like you do a football game."

He looks backward and forward. In the past few years there has been no chance to get a holiday by himself. The games have always taken his time and squeezed it to their own ends. This summer college ends. He has half a hope to do the student thing and take off to America, play a little, earn a little and see a lot. Just half a hope. The hurlers play Westmeath on Sunday week in the championship. Get over that and they have the winners of Laois/Meath and Offaly between themselves and a Leinster final. That would mean at worst an All-Ireland quarter-final. Which would mean hurling for practically the whole summer. Which would be a dream.

And the footballers. Who knows? Keaney is the scoring wing forward they have lacked. The sort of player who should thrive in the acreage of Croke Park. They could internally combust. They could go all the way.

And Ballyboden. Put St Vincent's out of the football championship last weekend. Have the hurling close to their heart. He believes if they could get out of Dublin once they have the game to go well in the club championships. That would gobble a whole winter.

And the dreaded nine-to-five routine looms. The vanishing of one part of his flexibility. He's probably sick of people asking but you ask anyway. Forced to choose, what would it be? There's enough hurler in him still to avoid taking the hit.

"I know the pressure will come someday. Through a job or through a different manager taking over the hurlers or the footballers. I'll wait till then to decide. If you'd forced me to decide at the start of the league I'd have said hurling but I've enjoyed being with the footballers. It'll be time to worry about it when I'm forced to decide."

Between then and now he shines on, last ember of an old argument, last remnant of a different time when guys like him were still possible.