EVEN IN the long and sometimes distinguished history of Dublin football it would be hard to isolate a so-called defining moment as that when trailing by a point, against some brutally stubborn opposition, with about 10 minutes to go, and reduced to 14 men, Dublin rolled up their sleeves and boldly declared to themselves that they were definitely going to win.

In the recent past that was more likely to be the moment Dublin declared to themselves they were definitely going to lose.

But Paul Flynn recalls the moment with a sense of absolute honesty: trailing 0-5 to 0-6 in their All-Ireland semi-final, into some suffocating Donegal defence, with 58 minutes played, and Diarmuid Connolly suddenly red-carded, Flynn took one look into his mind’s eye and declared his intentions. “All I can remember saying, the minute it happened, was like ‘we’re going to win this game . . . no question’. Because it did drive us on.

“It was funny, because I went up to Diarmuid and just said to him ‘Let’s get the next ball to him’ because I didn’t think there was that much in it. But I just knew then, when we were down to 14 men, everyone would up their game. Them having the extra man didn’t make too much of a difference, anyway, because they had so many men back, but I think for us, it just meant everybody said, look, we’re going to have to take the initiative now, instead.

“It was like ‘let’s get this game won’. We wanted to be in this All-Ireland final, so much. We’ve worked hard enough for it, and we just thought this is our game. We’ve got to go and win it.”

While they come dressed with contrasting credentials, Dublin and Kerry are at least agreed on one thing: what happened in the past won’t have any great bearing on Sunday’s All-Ireland final showdown in Croke Park. And by that they include their last championship meeting, two years ago, when Kerry beat Dublin by 17 points, and as a contest it looked all over after just 38 seconds.

Flynn, like just eight of the Dublin team likely to start on Sunday, played that day two years ago, when Kerry won 1-24 to 1-7. Back then he was a young and essentially raw wing forward, aged 23 and with only one season of championship football behind. When people say Dublin are a wiser and stronger team from 2009 then it is players like Flynn they have in mind.

“It was a tough game,” he recalls now, two years on, two years older, and happily recovered from the hamstring injury that forced him off in the closing minutes of the Donegal game.

“It was a lonely place out there. But then we learned a lot from it, as a group. We had to. I suppose we were left a bit exposed at the back, and we still do a lot of work now, obviously, on our defensive system. We’re confident now something like that wouldn’t happen again. Nothing like that has ever happened to us ever since that game, and even this year we’ve beaten big teams, so I think we’ve learned a lot from losses like that.”

More important, says Flynn, is what Dublin have learned from their last two games, Donegal (winning “ugly”) and Tyrone (winning “in style”). Whatever about beating an ageing Tyrone, it’s hard to imagine the Dublin team of two years ago having the patience, or indeed character, to keep banging at the door that was the Donegal defence.

“Well you never know. Maybe we wouldn’t have shown the character we showed against Donegal. To win ugly like that is great for the team. Although it mightn’t be easy on the eye and it mightn’t be easy to play in, afterwards you get a great sense of achievement, that you can dig deep together and get that result.

“In many ways you can take more out of that Donegal game because of the character you’ve shown amongst the group. We took the lead in the Tyrone game, held on to it. But Donegal was a completely different game. Asked different things of us, and we answered all them.”

Pat Gilroy has been asking different things of his team since 2009, not just defensively: Flynn knows his role at wing forward is primarily to win possession and lay it off to the scoring experts, but that doesn’t mean he can’t chip in too. He’s hit 1-4 this summer, including that ultimately crucial goal against Kildare.

“The hard work comes first, getting the supply into the full-forward line, and linking the play. Then after that, if I get on the end of a few scores . . . it’s a bonus. Pat developed our defensive system so it’s not hindering our attack. We’ve got a nice balance there at the moment, so hopefully we can keep it going.”

Paul Flynn

Position: Left-wing forward.

Age: 25.

Club: Fingallians.

Occupation: Student at DCU.

SFC debut: 2008, v Westmeath.

Honours: Three Leinster Senior Championships; Two O’Byrne Cups.