By John Harrington

The name Brian Mullins will always be synonymous with a defining era for Gaelic Football in Dublin.

The midfield colossus was one of the greatest players to ever don the sky-blue jersey and was a totemic figure in the Kevin Heffernan managed Dublin teams of the 1970s and 1980s.

Over the course of his career he won four All-Ireland titles, nine Leinster titles, two National Leagues and two All-Star awards, and became a hero of Hill 16 for his inspirational displays in the middle of the field.

In part one of a two-part interview with GAA.ie he talks about...

• His family’s illustrious GAA gene.

• The formative experience of summers spent with his cousins in Kerry and Clare.

• His time playing inter-provincial rugby with Leinster.

• Winning the 1974 All-Ireland title in his first year on the Dublin panel.

• Kevin Heffernan’s management style and unique personality.

John Harrington: Brian, we have a regular feature on GAA.ie called the GAA gene where we detail the great GAA families who have produced inter-county players across a number of generations. I was interested to find out that you’re actually a nephew of the great Kerry footballer Bill Casey of Lispole who won four All-Irelands with the Kingdom.

Brian Mullins: Yes, and a Granduncle of mine, an uncle of Bill Casey, won two All-Irelands with Dublin in 1906 and 1908. He had come up from Kerry. My mother would have suggested that physique-wise I was like him. I have five brothers and none of them are tall. Physique-wise they were more like my father's side of the family. My father was from County Clare.

When we got into our teens and there was a row between myself and the brothers, they used to tell my mother she brought the wrong baby home because I was so taller than the rest of them.

All my brothers played football and hurling but Seán was the only one that made the grade in terms of county representation. He moved from this club to Portlaoise when he was 28 or 29. He would have been at school with Tony Hanahoe, Jimmy Keaveney and all of those lads in Marino. He's on some of the pictures around here (St Vincent's GAA club).

He got a job as assistant county engineer in Laois when he was 28 or 29 and he moved to Portlaoise and joined Portlaoise and ended up playing corner-back for Portlaoise against us in a Leinster Club Quarter-Final which they beat us in.

I'm wondering how deep you're going to get into this GAA Gene thing, because it's a bit of a minefield. In some respects it's a fascinating idea that the athletic gene or the capacity to play the National Games whether it's hurling or football are somehow influenced by your ancestry.

I'm sure across the spectrum of genealogy there's all kinds of associations you can make with people who are successful in business, people who are successful in the profession or law or medicine or whatever. It's the same context about what's handed down from one generation to another.

Or the famous Irish saying, 'He didn't lick it off the street!'. And the saying as Gaelige, 'Briseann and dúchas trí shúile an chait’.

But, sure, anyway, yeah, the Caseys of Lispole. I often say, and people think I'm bullshitting, but I remember as a young fella with two or three of my brothers being brought by my mother down to the farm in Lispole. At the same time Bill Casey's boys were growing up and were a similar age to me. Roibeard Casey is the oldest of that family and he's the Head of Irish in Mary Immaculate College. He'd be 63 or 64, I'm 62 in September, so he'd be a little bit older than me.

His next brother was Seán and his next brother was Micheál. So there was always three or four of them the same age as us. And when we'd go down there, at the end of every day when all the chores were done and all the cattle were milked, we'd go out to the field and play football and it used to be just 'míle murder'. Dog eat f**king dog. And I have no doubt that my approach and attitude in terms of what it took to win matches at the highest level were influenced by those escapades. Oh yeah, no doubt.

JH: So would you have gone down there most summers as a young lad?

BM: Between the age of five and six and 14 or 15 you'd be down every summer for some period of time. As well as that we'd be in Clare visiting my father's family. He was also from a family of 12 and two of his older sisters married two brothers who were farmers, they're just outside Ennistymon. My father grew up in a Station House on the West Clare Railway in a place called Moinreel near Inagh. We sometimes went from Kerry to Clare and it was the same environment, another farming environment. So rural Ireland in that context would have had a huge bearing on me and my brothers in terms of our experience of life.

JH: Did the stories of Bill Casey's exploits plant the seed in your head that it was something you could aspire to yourself?

BM: I suppose looking back on it or thinking about it, it might have been a sub-conscious thing. I was born into a house on Collins Avenue just below Whitehall Gaels. That's where the family lived, and I was the second youngest of seven. But when I was three years of age we moved down to Stiles Road in Clontarf. Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe it was Clontarf and the fact it was a very sporting environment. Between St. Anne's Park, the sea, Clontarf cricket and rugby, Oulton lawn tennis club, there's loads of sporting opportunities around and I somehow just gravitated into all of those environments.

I spent my childhood in Clontarf cricket and rugby club playing both, and both of them to inter-provincial level. At the same time I was playing with Clontarf GAA, but when I was 15 years of age they couldn't field a team. At the time I was playing hurling with Eoghan Ruadh, because Clontarf didn’t have a hurling team. And playing football with Clontarf until they disbanded because people left.

My brother Seán then arranged a transfer to St. Vincent's for me. All of those things just happened as a matter of daily routine. I was just interested in sport, full-stop. And it so happened that when I came to Vincent's at 16 years of age, the legacy and history and the culture of this club was about winning Dublin Championships and being the best club in Dublin and then feeding onto the Dublin team.

I played my first All-Ireland at 19 years of age in 1974. And whether Billy (Casey) or the history and culture of West Kerry and Gaelic Football was in the picture or not, it probably was, but it probably only added to the rest of the pile.

JH: So between nature and nurture you had every advantage?

BM: I had, yeah.

JH: What were your parents’ names?

BM: My father was in the Civil Service in the department of education and that's where he met my mother. But my mother had to leave the Civil Service once they got married. Lispole and West Kerry is on the edge of the Gaeltacht. The vernacular and spoken language in Lispole is Irish in an awful lot of the families. So my mother's family was as Gaeilge. And my father was the same even though he wasn't from a Gaeltacht area.

He became eventually the translator, if you would, or language corrector for An Gúm and he was a stickler for Irish grammar. With the result that we all went to the Irish model schools opposite the Pro Cathedral in Marlborough street and then onto Coláiste Mhuire. My father was known as Pádraig Ó Maolain. An tUasal Pádraig Ó Maolain. And my mother was Anne Casey, but she was Áine ni Cathasaigh.

JH: So did you all speak Irish in the house growing up?

BM: Oh yeah.

JH: Exclusively Irish?

BM: Exclusively Irish. Even down to the rosary being said as Gaelige.

JH: As you say, you were actively involved in all sports. I was interested to read that the day before you played your first game for Dublin you played for Leinster against Ulster in a U-20 rugby interprovincial. Is that right?

BM: It was U-19.

JH: And you scored a try?

BM: Yeah.

JH: How did that all come about?

BM: To some extent it was coincidence that the two fixtures fell side by side. I had been playing rugby all that winter with Blackrock. A friend of mine, Tony Moran, had persuaded me to go over to Blackrock and I won what's known as a McCorry Cup medal that year with Blackrock, U-19. I was selected then for the Leinster team as a second-row. And captain of that Leinster team was a man called John Robbie, who later became the Gay Byrne of South Africa. He played on a Lions team that toured South Africa and ended up staying on.

John was captain and he knew of the fact that I was playing for Dublin the next day and had been selected. It had been in the papers and what-not. It's just coincidence that the series of matches for the Leinster U-19 rugby team, the last of that series was the Ulster match in Ravenhill. It was just a fluke to some extent that it happened on the Saturday the day before Corn na Cásca in Croke Park that I was picked for my first Dublin match.

I was studying in Limerick at the time and was travelling up and down. And when we got off the train in Dublin, John was a bit surprised that this big brute of a second-row could actually play a bit of football. He thought from his rugby times that the only people who could play football as rugby players were the scrum-half and the out-half. Everyone else was just trying to win the ball and give it to him, kind of thing.

The odd time in the middle of matches and after matches I used to say, "John, you know, you could do better than you are. You gave a sloppy pass there and the reason you gave it was because you didn't hold the ball properly or you didn't move your wrists correctly." He'd be looking at me funny then!

So, this match in Ravenhill, Jesus, it was a ding-dong match. At a certain stage, three-quarters through the second-half, I was struggling to get from ruck and maul to the next ruck and maul. And I arrived late to this continuation of ruck-maul that was just on the Ulster line and John took the ball out of the ruck to fire it back to, I think, Ollie Campbell, and I arrived and just literally grabbed the ball and dived over the line for the try.

He was so shocked. He said, "F**k, I didn't see you coming at all!" After the match when we were getting off the train in Dublin he said, "Look, Brian, it's been a great experience playing with you and well done. Sincerely, best of luck tomorrow, one never knows what pathway you're taking, but give it your best and the best of luck."

That was the last time I nearly spoke to him until two or three years ago when I spoke to him on the phone. He was home in Dublin for some short period and I had asked somebody that if he was ever home to give him my number and ask him to call me and he did. And we just spoke for 15 or 20 minutes. He was heading back to south Africa and it wasn't possible to see him.

JH: When he was wishing you best of luck with whatever path you took, at that point in your life did you know what path you were going to take?

BM: I wasn't thinking too much about it. I was in Limerick, I was up and down every weekend, I had just been playing rugby for the previous winter because I was in Limerick. I was in a bit of a gap between U-21 football and senior football with Dublin. I would have been playing senior football with Vincent's. And playing with what at the time was the National College of Physical Education.

I wasn’t necessarily thinking about anything much except that I had been picked for this Dublin match. Remember, at the time, Dublin were nothing. Dublin were beaten by Louth in the previous year's Championship in the first round. And there was deep depression, and Dublin had not yet got out Division Two in the League. So me being selected for Dublin and Corn na Cásca, it was a Mickey Mouse match, it was an annual fixture. And sure Dublin were going nowhere. And it was against Sligo.

Heffernan and his selectors, they knew what they wanted to do. But sure I was innocent of that. I was just 18 turned 19 and I was just doing whatever I could. I was drinking away on occasions down in Limerick, studying whenever I could, it was a new experience because the college was a new experience.

We had been in Tralee. Actually, I don't know if you've ever heard this story, but our first year in college was spent in Tralee rather than Limerick. Because the facilities in Limerick weren't ready. 30 to 40 young lads from all over Ireland on one floor of the Mount Brandon Hotel. And 30 to 40 girls from all over Ireland on the lower floor.

JH: Sounds like paradise!

BM: Just think about it. Lads and girls who had just done their Leaving Cert and are in Tralee in Kerry and if ever there were bonds and friendships built for a lifetime, they were built there.

No, coming off that train and talking to John Robbie, I wouldn't have been doing too much thinking about anything much except where was the next match.

JH: Thomond College must have been a real football hot-bed when you were down there. Weren't Pat Spillane, Ogie Moran, and Brian Talty all in Thomond around that time too?

BM: Pat was the year behind me. Ogie was with us in my year for about three months and then he transferred to UCD to do a B Comm. Brian Talty would have been another year back, two years back.

JH: Was there much of a Gaelic Football culture there?

BM: Ah, sure it was the only culture. In the first year John Tobin was there. Previously Jimmy Deenihan and Tom Donnellan from Roscommon and a whole load of Irish GAA lads had to go to Strawberry Hill for their first year because the Department of Education were planning the building and the concept of a National College of Physical Education and were only making progress. The custom and practice at that time was that 12 or so applicants for PE teaching would be trained over there. Mickey Ned O'Sullivan and Billy Morgan would have gone there too.

So, anyway, in the group that came back from London to start their second-year in Ireland, Jimmy Deenihan was in it, Tom Donnellan was in it. A fella called Andy Shorthall from Laois. There were a few hurlers. A Dave Barry from Clare. So, they came into the group with myself, John Tobin, a fella called Liam Fardy from Wexford, Joe Mulligan from Offaly. Fran Ryder from Dublin here. And a whole host more.

So the first club and team that really got up and running was a Gaelic Football team. There was a good sprinkling of hurlers too so we had strong football and hurling teams from day one. At the time we competed in the Higher Education Colleges League, but the Sigerson Cup was a closed shop. They would only allow the Universities to play and we weren't considered good enough to be considered to play.

It was a bit of ethnic cleansing! It was two years or so for us to prove to them that we were of the standard. Because we beat UCD in a League Final in 1976. Deenihan manoeuvred that very well. He was dealing with John O'Keeffe and the boys and he was coming back and attending training sessions with us and telling us the lads were laughing at us. 'They're going to f**ing beat you up', and all of this stuff. That rose us, and Deenihan of course laughing behind it all, the cute Kerryman!

Yeah, Richie Bell, God be good to him, was in Pat Spillane's year. He was a Mayo footballer who died very young. A lovely man. The strong GAA presence culminated in that All-Ireland club win in 1978. Spillane would have graduated in that stage but he was entitled to play back. I graduated in '76. My period was '72 to '76. So Brian Talty would have graduated in '77 or '78.

JH: You mentioned that Dublin were at a low ebb when you made your debut in '74. Is it true that in '73 you were selling programmes at the All-Ireland Final?

BM: I did, yeah.

JH: So as a lad selling programmes for the All-Ireland Final, how far away did you think Dublin were to playing in a game like that?

BM: Ah sure, if I thought about it, I don't remember thinking too much about it, but if I did I would have said they'd be miles away from it. I would have attended every All-Ireland as a programme seller for ten or more years beforehand. That's just what you did when you were around here and you were so close to Croke Park. The '73 All-Ireland was Cork and Jimmy Barry Murphy and Ray Cummins and they looked like they were world-beaters. The previous year Offaly...Offaly had to some extent...dominated would be the wrong word…but they had a big presence from '69 through to '75/76. Because for the first time in their history they won a number of Leinster Championships and two or three All-Irelands.

How far Dublin would have been away from it? God, I don't know. I wouldn't have understood the dynamics of it. Team-building, management and that. What you saw out on the pitch in pure visual terms was the culmination of an awful lot of planning, preparation, and buy-in and good-will and energy. It didn't just happen on the day. I probably didn't understand an awful lot of that and didn't get to understand it until I got into the Dublin panel and saw how Kevin and his selectors operated in terms of building momentum and building morale and a culture of wanting to win but understanding that wanting to win was one thing, but the other side of the house was that if you don't prepare, if you don't put in the effort, if you don't work hard, then winning is only a dream, a fantasy.

So, in looking at other teams around at the time, I wouldn't have believed that it was possible to sell programmes in '73 and be out on the pitch in '74. Like that would have been a total crackpot proposal.

JH: So you play your first game against Sligo. When did you start thinking something special might be building? You would have known Kevin Heffernan already of course from St. Vincent's, but when did you think he was on the cusp of something special with this Dublin team?

BM: It's hard to say, really. There were milestones if you will. The day we beat Offaly in the quarter-final when Leslie Deegan scored a goal and a point. Going into that match I personally didn't think we were going out the other side because I had seen Offaly. Not least of all because I had a cousin playing with Offaly, Sean Evans. If I thought about it too much I would have said, "Nah, we're not where they are." But we beat them. Some people would say fortuitously, but, you know, it's the old Gary Player thing, the more you practice the luckier you get and we were at that stage and on some sort of a roll in terms of having a group ethic and the next milestone then was a Leinster Final. Imagine we were in a Leinster Final and imagine we won it.

Then we were into a semi-final against Cork and we had the cheek to think we might beat them. So it was stepping stones, really. I know when we came to the All-Ireland Final against Galway we weren't in awe of them. We did definitely see this as an opportunity because it wasn't Kerry and it wasn't a team with a huge reputation from the years beforehand. Galway were novices in the '74 All-Ireland Final to some extent. They had won an All-Ireland since their three-in-a-row in the sixties. I always remember that that was part of the thinking.

I was one of the younger people in the group. Jimmy Keaveney, Gay O'Driscoll, Tony Hanahoe, had ten years of failed Dublin performances. So you'd probably get a more contemplative response from them on that question than you would from me. For me it was all new and it was about just not letting anyone down here, least of all yourself, you know?

JH: Before that Dublin team came along, it's fair to say the GAA didn't have a huge presence in the city?

BM: People throw terminology around and I suppose I do it myself as well. But in trying to understand the dynamic of what that Dublin team of the '70s under Kevin's leadership established I suppose you could say that they initiated a culture of buy-in to the games and to the sport.

I like to think that the impact that was not just big matches and the supporters that went to them. It was all those people giving back to their own small communities because they witness the effort of the team and the ambition of the team to do as well as they could. I would hope that filtered down to all levels.

I do believe at times that this country would be seriously imperilled if it wasn't for the GAA, their clubs, and the spirit of community that the games have delivered all over the place.

JH: How transformative was it in Dublin at the time? If you were to compared '73 to '77, how much change happened in that period of time?

BM: I'd say there was a seismic shift in terms of being switched on suddenly, an awful lot of people who were at best a remove or two from the organisation. Suddenly they switched into thinking, "Jesus, I can get into this." And I'd say that over the period from '74 to 1980 there was a huge explosion of young kids being brought to GAA clubs as opposed to being brought nowhere or brought to a soccer club. Rugby probably wasn't the way it is now, all the clubs have mini-rugby, whereas back in those days they didn't.

The GAA at that time was the first organisation in the city that got a large section of the population, you'd describe them as middle-class, upper-class or whatever you want, but they suddenly switched on to thinking they could be a part of it. I think that happened, yes. I'd say it was significant in that context.

JH: How did Kevin Heffernan create a winning culture within that group of players in a very short period of time?

BM: That's a good question and it's not an easy question to answer. Others in the group that you might talk to might have a different reply to me. For me, I'd be nothing without the GAA. And I'd be a lot less than I am if I hadn't at a very impressionable period of my life come in contact and had the opportunity to avail of an individual who had been through life and understood what it took to make it in life.

I'm not talking about earning big money or being very successful in business. I'm just talking about the basics of being the best you can be in life. What he did very successfully with us as a group was he brought us all to understand that we were capable of great things if we all bought into the team theme. And that the sum of our parts were better and probably much better than the parts of the sum.

There's no doubt that the training we did to get to a level of fitness won us an awful lot of matches in the early days because our opposition weren't prepared in that way. Our opposition were, at best, turning up for collective training and kicking a few balls and playing a bit of football. Whereas we were better prepared because of the influence of Mickey Whelan on Kevin. Mickey had the sports science to back up the theory that if you want your team to perform over 60 minutes you have to build some kind of a cardiovascular capacity. Other teams weren't doing that.

The best players on other teams were maybe going on a solo-run and getting a score and then they were bollixed for five minutes before they'd come back in again and maybe go for another ball. Whereas what Kevin built with us was the capacity that for 60 minutes from start to finish we could go at the highest pace and we that we didn't need rest or recovery in the game. One of the principles of cardio-vascular fitness is cutting down and cutting out your recovery time within a specific game and time.

That definitely started in '74 and was different. We very quickly knew that Kevin was saying, "Look it lads, you know you're well able to turn, and tackle, and twist continuously. You will find this opposition are not. So if you push them hard enough and quick enough, they'll be gone." And that's what happened.

We could see witness to this. So that built confidence in us. There would have been plenty of people in the room who would be able to better remember facts and figures about that time than I would. I had an uncle, a brother of my father's, Maurice, and he lived until he was 100 and he was a great story-teller. But he could pick out things in matches and say, "What were you doing there?" And I'd hardly remember it at all.

He would say, "Brian, when I was growing up the only thing we had were books, facts, and figures, and we had to learn by rote. So I'd remember everything because if I didn't remember I wasn't going to find it out somewhere else." It was a fascinating insight into how different people learned. Because I rarely remember actual happenings in that way.

But I can remember this incident in the little room in Parnell Park where we used to have meetings in. It was a wooden room and, Jesus, the windows used to steam up. We'd be in there for two or three hours analysing and talking about things.

I remember the night before the Cork semi-final in '74 when we had won the Leinster Championship and we were over the moon. I personally just couldn't believe it. Here we were training for an All-Ireland semi-final against Cork! Sure I had sold programmes for their All-Ireland Final win the previous year!

We were all talking and different players were contributing about what they needed to do and what they had to do. Kevin was making sure that everyone understood their jobs. And he finished up by saying, "Guys, that's it now, enough talking. We'll meet on Sunday and we'll kick the shite out of these f**kers".

I said to myself, "He actually believes. He thinks we're going to win!" I didn't say anything to anybody. I was just thinking to myself, "If he thinks we're going to win what am I going to do?" I spent some period of time getting my head around it and I eventually decided was, "Brian, what you do here is you shut up and you just do your best so you don't let him down."

But I can remember that sensation. He had the fag in his mouth and he was banging the table saying, "Right, that's it now, we're going to kick the shite out of these f**kers." I had been listening to all the talk of all the guys saying they were going to do this and that. But it didn't hit home to me really about the ambition to beat the reigning All-Ireland Champions until Heffernan said what he said.

JH: What was it about Kevin Heffernan that gave him that sort of innate self-belief and confidence and the ability to make others believe too?

BM: He could articulate it in layman's terms. He had a way of recognising or detecting what made sense to different people. And he had a way of articulating that both in a group situation and an individual one-to-one. He had a huge capacity to communicate the basics of any aspect of the game of Gaelic Football. And a lot of his mantra around those various things are applicable to all sports. Through my own career in PE teaching and being involved now as Director of Sport in UCD, I would still figure that he could have coached any Olympic champion.

I was looking at Richie McCaw, the All-Black, when he came to Dublin. Just think of his performances. Kevin would have been up there with any coach that the All-Blacks have or any sport has in terms of understanding the requirements of performance.

JH: You talk about being in that room for hours at a time with the windows steaming up...He obviously encouraged a group dynamic and wanted every player to feel a part of it and to drive it on?

BM: Yeah, hugely. Hugely. He gave everybody free licence to contribute to the effort.

JH: Did he maybe think that if you all verbalised your ambition, you'd start to believe it? Or what was his theory there?

BM: It was that and much more. Imagine, we would have a panel of 30, sometimes 31, 32. And on occasions every single one of them from one to 32 had their opportunity to say what they felt was important. And, like, looking back on it now, I'm amazed that he orchestrated it that way. But I can fully understand why he did it.

JH: How honest were you all with one another? Any punches pulled?

BM: Oh Jesus, no. He insisted on that. There had to be honesty and it had to be eyeball to eyeball. And there were some harsh words said by individuals who wouldn't necessarily frame their commentary in any kind of a sensitive way. Like, one of the most enjoyable individuals to make contributions in that context was David Hickey. He was phenomenal! David had a way of framing it in a way of dismissing the opposition..."Lads if we do half of what we're capable of doing, these fkers won't live with us."

He would dismantle any opposition be it Kerry or anyone else. He was just ultra-confident. But, then, everyone contributed. Paddy Cullen, Jimmy Keaveney, Jim Brogan, even the subs who were always on the fringes on the team. But their effort in training and their effort in the whole scheme of things was as important as anybody's.

JH: Robbie Kelleher said once that it wasn't a team of great footballers. He said there was just five great footballers - yourself, Cullen, Hickey, Keaveney, and Kevin Moran - and that it was a team of characters rather than footballers.

BM: That was Robbie's way of putting it. David Hickey wouldn't agree with him. Hickey would say, "Sure, Jesus, Robbie you were as good as anybody." Robbie would admit and he'd say it at meetings that he had to work hard on his game and he had little or no time to be worrying about anyone else. That if he did his job to the best of his ability that would be him happy. The word characters is probably relevant in that context alright. There was a lot of different characters but Kevin's capacity was to get them all working in the one direction.

JH: It's interesting that so many of that team have been very successful in their private lives as well as sporting lives which would suggest there was something fairly special about that group as people.

BM: Yes, innately, but on the other hand it was the experience of being together as a team that we all leveraged off and that we all benefited from. You can probably never prove this, but I suspect that a lot of us wouldn't be half of what we are if it wasn't for having that opportunity. We were going for six years, six All-Ireland Finals, four National League Finals in a row, '74 to '79. Then the break-up came for various reasons, age being one of them.

I believed it was a double-edged sword in terms of us all benefiting and being better people because of our good fortune to be brought together in that way and for having someone like Kevin merge all our talents into one direction.

JH: Jimmy Keaveney once said that Kevin was so ruthless that if there was a fella in Mountjoy for stabbing his wife and Kevin thought he could help win Dublin an All-Ireland, he'd break him out.

BM: In a way that's a bit of an exaggeration. What Jimmy's trying to get across is that Kevin would literally do anything for the benefit of the team.

JH: What sort of relationship did you have with Kevin? Was he the same with everyone on the team?

BM: No, no. Unfortunately, and I can see how this happens, some of the lads would have fallen out with him. They wouldn't necessarily resent him, but they'd regret different things that happened to themselves or that they would say he did to them. Dropping them or whatever. I think that's unfortunate.

Kevin was a great friend to me and I like to think that I was very close to him in spirit. It was a coincidence that we were both in the same club and of the same culture. Again, that was my good fortune. He was private person and it took a bit of work to warm him up and get him to open up. I got the opportunity on quite a number of occasions to have that with him. He was very honest with me and I learned an awful lot from him.

When you asked me the question about '74 and what I was expecting going in, he was determined one way or another that we would be successful, and that's probably what Jimmy is referring to. I wasn't there, I heard this second-half, and he told me he said it, but he stood up in the Dublin dressing-room after they were beaten by Louth in the first round of the 1973 Leinster Championship.

In the doom and gloom after the match when lads were togging out, Kevin stood up and said, "Lads, that feeling you have now, just keep it with you, remember it. Because by hook or by crook, I'm going to get 15 lads together that are going to make sure you never experience that feeling again." Or words to that effect.

JH: So he saw it from a long way off?

BM: He saw what he wanted and because of the '50s and his own success in captaining the Dublin team in 1958, in his view he knew it was possible, it was just about how you go about getting that. I don't know whether he would ever admit or realise that at any stage between '74 and '76 that he had a bunch of people who could deliver on what his vision was.

JH: Here are three things Heffernan said about you - "He was grumpy as a young fella", "Huge intelligence", "A heart of gold". Are those three character traits accurate?

BM: Grumpy? (laughs) We used to slag each other about that. When we'd greet each other I'd say, "How are you Grumpy?" I'd get the grumpy bit in before he would. And 'Narky'. I'd call him 'Narky' at times, you know. Ah, he was a unique individual alright.

Part 2 of the Brian Mullins Big Interview can be read HERE. In it he talks about...

• Dublin's All-Ireland wins in '76 and '77.
• Their famous rivalry with Kerry in the seventies.
• The car-crash that put him out of football for two years.
• Dublin's '83 All-Ireland win and his sending off in the Final.
• Life after football.