There are two ways of looking at Finglas. From the car it's the great grey undistinguished urban sprawl that engulfs you as you leave Dublin and hit the motorway for Derry. From the long, lean clubhouse in Erin's Isle it's a village wrapped around a small shopping area, a vibrant community and a thriving GAA club.

"You know," says Johnny Barr, "The bus runs right from the gate here to Croke Park. They'll be putting on a few extra from Finglas for Paddy's Day."

Johnny has a point. The excitement which pulses through Finglas as Erin's Isle close in on their piece of destiny brings out the village in the place. All the old club championship standbys apply to this strip of suburbia: a community expressing itself through football, the banners and the bunting are waving as the village prepares to empty itself out on Sunday in a fleet of buses and a cavacade of cars.

Anyway, villages which express themselves through football and empty themselves out on big-game Sundays always have brothers in their team and no set of brothers are more celebrated than the Barrs of Finglas, Eddie, Keith and Johnny.

They grew up in this place. Three brothers on the team is a very village thing, three brothers backboning a team is a very useful thing. In Thurles tomorrow, Keith packs 10 years of inter-county experience, Eddie brings one of the most remarkable engines in club football, Johnny brings his explosive power to the sort of hustling midfield which Castehaven will not relish having to face without Niall Cahalane.

The brothers Barr. Eddie Barr came first and left first, drifting away to soccer for a few years after the fashion of the Barrs' father Frank who was winning trophies with Tolka Rovers from the 1950s till the boys were half reared. Eddie came back in the early 1990s, recovered his skills during a brief period at intermediate and has been a senior ever since.

Keith followed Eddie into the club three or four years later when they were kids. Finally Johnny duly arrived. Nothing exceptional in all that, they were carried along on the typical conveyer belt from the De La Salle Brothers in Beneavin to the clubhouse gates.

"I remember Bro Gerard giving me boots and knicks and socks to go away and play in," says Johnny. "Every Saturday morning at half nine we'd be at the school, and it would be locked and we'd get changed outside and think about whether we'd beat Brigids."

"It wasn't unusual," says Keith, "That was the scenario. You went to the school. You joined the club. De la Salle and Beneavin was a huge breeding ground for Erin's Isle. Anybody who went there ended back here. The coaches overlapped. People like Maurice Hurley, the late John Crowley and the late Paddy Connolly. A natural progression. "

"Football for the three of us was everyday," says Eddie. "We were sent to school and half the bag was full with gear and half with copies and pencils."

Typical childhoods. Making hard mucky scabs on the grass in the nearby green. Jumpers as goalposts, playing soccer matches where the first team to 30 goals was the winner. Thirty? Nah, when somebody would get to 30 the bidding would start, "play an ace, next goal the winner, play an ace" and it would start up again, each team granting aces like favoured trade agreements.

"It would start getting dark and we'd play under the light of the lampposts. Then we'd be called in and get the heads bate off us," says Johnny.

"No Mam and Dad were only too glad to have us playing football," says Keith. "No trouble if you were playing football."

When it came to GAA the Barrs had it easy. They grew up in the 1970s with the Glenhill estate, two minutes and a hop scrabble from the back wall and access to the club. Within the gates they all took enthusiastically to Gaelic games, relishing the exuberance and physicality of the sports.

"Our Dad would come and see a lot of our matches when we were kids," says Keith. "I remember I'd run off and I'd be asking if I played well and he'd just nod. He'd never say anything, just nod. That was his way. He didn't care what we played. He'd just tell us to go and be the best at it."

"He'd tell us not to be throwing bouquets," says Johnny.

Through their years growing up in school and club, the Barrs were the best, the stars of their teams and usually the stars of the teams the year ahead of them. There were sufficient others to throw the bouquets as the club grew to its present eminence.

Erin's Isle is 12 1/2 acres worth of serious GAA enterprise shoe-horned right into the heart of Finglas, Its mere presence has been a testimony to the club's endurance and cunning. Neither love, money nor the Lotto would get you a parcel of land in Finglas these days. Erin's Isle acquired this spread when a local priest swapped the old pitch by the church for these fields which provide a focal point for the area. The old place was under compulsory purchase order anyway.

It's a working class club, defiantly blue collar as the tide of the city's GAA fortunes rises and the new affluence threatens the fabric of the game in Dublin. A county hurling title came first in the 1980s before the club's consistently profitable football operation produced a breakthrough in 1993 with the three brothers playing on the side.

The team have stayed at the top in Dublin football while remaining uniquely a Finglas club. St Sylvester's, Parnells, Crokes, Ballyboden, Vincent's even, have all been strengthened by acquisition of county players from outside the Pale. The Isle remain true to themselves.

"There's the front gate and we'll welcome anyone in here," says Keith. "And if you don't like us you can go back out the same way but don't expect to get paid a penny. That's not the scenario here. It wouldn't mean as much to us to do it that way."

Johnny and Keith are among the club's most famous delegates to the blue of the county team, Charlie Redmond and Mick Deegan completing the contingent. The Erin's Isle boys have a history of high-profile heartbreak in front of the Hill, missed penalties and sendings-off and as many bad days as good.

Scarcely surprising that the road to this weekend's All-Ireland semi-final has been bumpy.

This year's Dublin county final was their fifth on the trot, having lost three of the previous four. They nearly didn't make it there at all, trailing old rivals St Vincent's by 10 points in a surreal semi-final replay. "Vincent's needed another point, just somebody to hold the ball up and win a free and calm it down. There was a time there where they were putting a lot of ball in and it was coming back out and every time it came back out we were getting a bit of momentum and then it was nine points and eight points and seven points and it was all traffic going our way."