Sideline Cut: Watching the regal and vaguely frightening Tony Hanahoe reminisce on the glory days with Dessie Cahill on RTÉ during the week, it seemed Dublin football's gain was Irish politics' loss.

The Clontarf man has matured into an austere and statesmanlike figure and he reflected upon the helter-skelter days of Dublin football in the 1970s with polite detachment and impeccable modesty. Then, drawing on the wonderful cellar of archive footage that RTÉ should let breathe more often, it became apparent that Hanahoe was always that self-possessed.

In the cramped dressingrooms of the old Croke Park, the wooden panels painted beige, Mick Dunne was centre stage to interview the victorious team, as was custom in those days. Dublin had just defeated Armagh in the 1977 All-Ireland final, consolidating their supremacy after a cracking - and ultimately lionised - semi-final win over Kerry. Dunne wore his trademark heavy glasses and a shirt that could only have been inspired by John Cazale's Fredo in the Godfather films.

And it was strange to hear that wonderfully distinctive voice of Dunne's again. He always sounded like he was speaking through a traffic cone and his tone was fuzzily warm and instantly likeable: Micheál O'Hehir's may have been the voice of All-Ireland Sundays but Mick Dunne's was the soothing accompaniment through those rain-bashed winter Saturdays in the 1970s. Mick carried that astonishingly hirsute microphone of his, less a technological gadget than something that would qualify immediate for shelter from the ISPCA if it were produced today.

Hanahoe cradled the Sam Maguire loosely from him, as if Roxy Music were playing a slow dance and he looked, like a youngster, dark and modish. And although clearly delighted - he would acknowledge during the week that he felt that championship represented Dublin at the zenith of their power - he answered Dunne's questions as though he had been coached by David Niven.

And he was clearly pleased when the more gregarious Paddy Cullen bounced into the shot, ready to quip with Dunne about the penalty he had saved earlier, as well as chide himself for the three goals that flew past - two of those from the boot of Joe Kernan.

Hanahoe was more than captain that year. After Kevin Heffernan had stepped down following Dublin's exuberant 1976 triumph, the Clontarf man took on the potentially ruinous job of player-manager. Although the Heffernan football model still thrived, it needed Hanahoe's mental toughness and discipline and his obvious stature among an exceptionally charismatic and strong group of men.

It is easy to understand why the city people of that period who identified and more or less worshipped that team have never quite got over their passing. Presumably men and women who attended those raucous Dublin-Kerry occasions as impressionable teenagers experience an irresistible tinge of yearning whenever the footage is rerun nowadays.

One of the great, almost supernatural strengths of the GAA is it sometimes manages, quite out of the blue, to stage a match that has an epiphanic effect on at least one of the counties involved. Remembering the optimism and spiritual energy and complete suspension of normal life that occurred in Donegal, where I grew up, that time before and after the 1992 crowd won the All-Ireland football championship, it all seems unbelievable now. Massive championship occasions allow imaginations to run riot and, despite the accusations of parochialism often directed at the GAA, they are all-embracing. People go slightly berserk with happiness. That is the common experience in all counties who win a first All-Ireland or return to the pinnacle after decades of thwarted achievement. But in the Dublin of the 1970s, with its spare exhibits of neon and its relative humility - American basketball player Jerome Westbrooks famously remembered that when he ordered his first Coca-Cola in a city restaurant circa 1978, there was no ice - Hanahoe and company must have been something else. The people got to feel that transcendent joy and fulfilment and pride not just once but, as the spooky kid in The Sixth Sense said to Bruce Willis, 'all the time'.

Winning All-Irelands was pleasing enough but that the Dubs of '74-'78 went toe-to-toe with the greatest team to emerge from the Kingdom gave that period a deeper resonance. And the film footage of those days has acquired an instantly recognisable and important quality, comparable to the footage of Pele with Brazil in 1970 or Ali slogging it out against Foreman.

Those who lived through those sporting episodes the first time felt then that nothing could surpass them. The 1983 All-Ireland final against Galway was completely overshadowed by the lingering proof of Heffernan's magic. There was always an underlying sense of desperation about the general euphoria after that win, a wish that the clock might somehow be turned back.

And the 1995 All-Ireland, against Tyrone, always felt to this observer like an oddly flat occasion, as if the many fine players of that period were relieved to have one All-Ireland so their legacy would not appear quite so inadequate when compared to the sumptuous classes of '74-'78.

Perhaps one of the reasons Heffernan was so reticent about discussing the achievements of his team was he knew the dangers of contributing to the praise of a team whose worth needed no embellishment and whose influence would acquire a life force of its own.

The great Dublin football days since have often seemed like an ode to that time. Gaelic football still has the power to energise the capital city in a unique and moving way and the resumption of Dublin's battle with Tyrone this afternoon has greatly enriched the championship.

That the championship still holds the possibility of a Dublin-Kerry All-Ireland final is tantalising for many observers and should that happen, it will inevitably lead to another examination of the importance and excitement of those 1970s games.

It is no disrespect to Cork and Kerry, playing the All-Ireland semi-final tomorrow, and Dublin to suggest that Armagh and Tyrone are involved in an entirely separate championship, locked into an epic series which has seen them clash twice already this summer. Should Dublin lose today, a third, definitive meeting between the counties would give this championship a lasting edge, and intriguing as this afternoon's match is, you cannot help but feel Armagh and Tyrone are destined to go at it again.

And it is important to remember that there is a whole generation of kids, from places like Dungannon or Crossmaglen, Ballygawley or Mullaghbawn for whom this is the dream: this is their Dublin versus Kerry, 1977. This is the summer of their lives. And in 30 years, they are going to wonder why it is not the same anymore.