Out in the frosty air of Tralee, Kerry and Mayo are going through their post-match warm-down. Micheal turns to Sheehy, asks him if the great Kerry teams of the 1970s and 1980s ever had such a ritual.

Sheehy rolls his head back, lets a long laugh escape.

"Different times, " Sheehy says later. "We'd have done very little stretching or warm ups before the game not to mind after it. In our time it was shower, change the clothes and out the gate. These days there are ice baths, rub downs and effective methods of recovery. Different times."

Ogie Moran tells the story that Kerry players trained on their own just so they could train effectively under Mick O'Dwyer. His sessions were tough, severe affairs. Plenty of running, plenty of joints pounding the crisp sod of Fitzgerald Stadium. Drills that had lungs choking for air. Practice games with an intensity that wouldn't be found in Croke Park come September.

"Nobody wanted to go in cold to Micko's training, " recalls Ger Power. "And it wasn't just because the training was hard.

Players were always fighting for their place. There was that pressure too."

Out of season there were days when players would bump into one another. Say, Mikey Sheehy would see Sean Walsh on Denny Street in December. Walsh would enquire if Sheehy was training.

Sheehy would tell him of course he hadn't been training, not to be ridiculous, it was the middle of winter.

"But I could have been running four or five nights back in Banna Strand at that stage, " says Sheehy. "And sure Seanie might be training on his lunch break but he'd say he wasn't doing a tap. That was the joke.

You'd never let on you were training on your own, you'd act the rogue and tell another fella you weren't training at all, but for us training was year round. You see, nobody wanted to go into Dwyer in January carrying a few pounds. If you did you knew he'd run the legs off you."

Even a Munster final victory could bring the odd groan.

When the cheering was over and the dressing room was calm, O'Dwyer would gather his troops once more. He'd call out three or four names . . . his special projects . . . and they were summoned for training two nights later. The rest of the panel had the week to themselves.

Sometimes, sessions went ahead night after night and limbs became weary, muscles began to creak. "The knowledge of how to approach training wasn't there in our day, " says Power, who recently completed a course in neuromuscular therapy. "There were a few PE teachers on the team who would have done their bit of stretching but that was it.

Today you only have to look at the likes of Roy Keane to see how things have changed. A couple of years back a top athlete using yoga to improve flexibility was unheard of."

That the team clung to the top rung for so long and with such gusto and style demonstrates the desire that lived among management and team. Eight All Irelands in a dozen years is a tale in itself.

Yet success like this doesn't arrive without a price tag attached. With the playing year more often than not craning its neck deep into autumn, maintaining standards became key. Players were pushing harder, digging deeper. Sacrificing. Without the training programmes and injury-prevention methods of today, something was going to give.

In 1978 Sheehy damaged his knee for the first time. A normal, every-game knock and he continued to play and train at the same fierce pace. Four years later he was told by a surgeon that the road to Knocknagoshel had fewer potholes than his left knee.

He went under the knife and then was advised to forget about running for three weeks.

Seven days later, though, he was back on the field. "I felt fine and then you'd be genuinely afraid of losing your place. The knee began to stiffen and swell after training but you'd live with the pain. Anyway, you'd be very slow to stop training even with an injury. You'd be thinking there're plenty of years to put the feet up."

Sheehy brought that special polish, that sliver of genius to those golden years. Remarkably, from 1975 to 1987, he failed to feature only once . . . when his knee ruled him out of the 1984 All Ireland final. He started and finished every other championship game for Kerry in that 13-year period. Tiring, dedicated work, but as he says, "I wouldn't change one second".

By the time 1987 rolled around, Ger Power was beginning to look at the wounds of war his colleagues had racked up. He played golf with a few who were beginning to hobble around the fairways and he began to wonder.

"I saw the pain some of the lads went through with sore hips and knees and I said, 'Look, this isn't worth it. 'There were players with continuous aches and it would make you think about how you'd fare when you finished it [football].

Considering the amount of games we played I think the players came out of it well enough. At that stage for me, though, I reckoned I had two good hands and two good legs and I wanted to keep it that way. It was time to finish up."

Even with the massive breakthroughs in approaches to training and the treatment of injuries, nobody is saying the crop of 2006 will leave the football field unscathed. The intensity of games has increased, so has the physical power of today's Gaelic athletes?

Current Clare footballer Odran O'Dwyer, one of the country's leading sports therapists, treats a number of past and present inter-county men at his clinic in Ennis and believes what has occurred is a shift in the type of injuries players now receive.

"Hopefully, 10 years down the line these lingering problems with hips and knees won't be there. But as the outlook towards training becomes more professional there will still be this element of longterm trouble. The game is played at a faster pace and the guys playing it are stronger.

There are a lot more collisions and the hits are harder. Obviously the body can only take so much."

It's an aspect of the game the GPA is continuing to examine. The player's association has just launched a nationwide strategy designed to educate GAA coaches in the prevention of injury. They also hope the directive, launched in conjunction with IRFU director of fitness Dr Liam Hennessy, will ensure training schedules are of benefit to players.

"The question of health and well-being of players is of huge importance, " says Dessie Farrell of the GPA. "The question of burnout has also become an issue and we need to get it across that rest and recovery are vital. Young players of 19 or 20 are taking part in far too many games and this has meant the age of retirement has reduced dramatically. If the trend continues we could end up without anybody over the age of 25 competing at the top level of Gaelic games."

Odran O'Dwyer agrees that more education is the way forward. He's seen and heard of new managers coming into a county set up just to offload the same techniques and the scuffed training programmes they were exposed to. For years, he reckons, there was little in the way of evolution to Tuesday and Thursday night training.AS "Guys will train a team the same way they were trained and not necessarily with the correct background or knowledge. Just because a guy is a good coach doesn't mean he will put together a structured training session. County sides are traditionally overloaded with training two nights a week. Lads are then crippled and they're going into a game the same weekend without adequate rest. That's how injuries occur. That's why players will sometimes suffer after they've finished their playing careers. But more counties are coming round to the advances that are there."

Credit those revolutionaries in the north for the shift in attitude. Ulster sides were among the first to enlist the help of respected sports scientists who subsequently applied new methods to the structure of Gaelic football training. Given the destination of Sam Maguire over the last few years, it's little wonder other counties followed suit.

"Take the Clare footballers as an example, " continues O'Dwyer. "This is the first time we've put in place a full-time, paid physical trainer. And we'll see the benefits in both the long and short-term. Even when I was growing up the knowledge that's there now didn't exist. You'd be told to run off an injury. Looking back on it, those are the things that will lead to wear and tear and that attitude has led to some former players having hips replaced."

In late 2004, a study confirmed what many already knew and what most had at least suspected: leading GAA players run a high risk of suffering from arthritis-related pain. The study, published by consultant rheumatologist Dr Doug Veale, found a majority of former players experience regular unease and stiffness.

More than half of the 262 former players surveyed said the pain made their lives uncomfortable. Inroads into tackling this obvious problem are being made says O'Dwyer.

Continuing these advances becomes the next step.

"Tailor the training to suit the individual and you're moving in the right direction. Splice it with proper recuperation and you're almost there." This is what O'Dwyer would like to see happen and he cites the Munster rugby squad as a good example. "Munster can train twice a day and players can rest for a few hours or spend some time in the pool.

"Obviously GAA players don't have that luxury of time but it's this attitude we should look at. We must also realise that no two players are the same. One fellow might have to follow a totally different training programme to another and this is where coaches really have to be clued in. Some players will need to bulk up; others will have to work on speed or endurance. In the coming years we'll see a move towards the individual training programme mixed, of course, with collective training."

When the weather turns Baltic in Tralee Mikey Sheehy will feel a pinch in that famous left knee of his. There's also a touch of arthritis in the hips but he's not complaining.

Maybe things would be different had today's methods been known when that Kerry side balanced for so long on that tight wire of success.

"Maybe we would have fared better injury-wise using the structures that are in place now, " muses Sheehy. "But I know that some of the current players will have long-term niggles and aches years from now.

"It's like this. Football is a physical game and wear and tear will always be part and parcel. The players from my time, you know, we're getting a bit older and even fellas who never kicked a ball are complaining of aches and pains when they hit 50. The thing is we enjoyed the football, we loved it. Jesus, we'd start over again tomorrow morning."