"Armagh had a lot of Christian Brothers playing for them, " he smiles. "I'll always remember running across the field and colliding with this big hefty Christian Brother and flattening him. The referee, I don't know if he knew the rules that well, but as he was taking his notebook out, the Castleblaney crowd invaded the pitch.

'Alright, ' says the ref, 'but he'll go off at half-time!' I didn't though. In the first half he had put off an O'Halloran from Ennis who was our full back. Their full forward had been put off as well. What did the ref do? He brought the two of them back on. At half-time the fellas over the teams went to him, saying, 'Listen, neither of us will have a team the next day if you report those fellasf'" Then later that year he returned home to Galway. It was barely more organised there. His first game for them was in a challenge game at the end of '62 against Dublin, at centre forward. "I had never played in the forwards before so they hadn't much research done; I had always played midfield for [the club] Cappataggle."

He didn't hear from them again until the league of '64 when they played Clare in Ennis. He started at centre field but shortly after halftime the great Joe Sammon hobbled off injured. It was Sammon's last game for Galway and Lohan's first game at midfield. Later that year they played Cork in the first round. Before the game Sammon had told Father Jackie Solan, the godfather and visionary of Galway hurling, that Cork's best forward was another Glen Rover clubmate of his. Gus chuckles at the memory of Father Jackie's pep talk. "'Now, ' he said to Jimmy Conroy, 'you're on Patsy Harte! And if you're not able for him switch with Jimmy Duggan!'" And the two Jimmys did end up swapping men, as Cork hammered them. But the two Jimmys were the best Galway had. For the next three or four years the two of them and Lohan seemed to be the only players that kept being invited back. In '67 some injection of talent came along in the form of an 18-year-old John Connolly, but despite Lohan's protestations to the selectors, he wasn't started in the championship against Clare. The following year Connolly would start. By then Lohan was working in and playing for Clare.

But it all started with Galway. In the old world when "everything seemed geared towards a first-round exit".

It continues today against Wexford, in the backdoor era and new world stadium of Croke Park. Today Brian Lohan plays his 53rd senior championship match for Clare.

Frank Lohan plays his 48th.

When you add in Gus's 21 games for Clare and Galway, that will bring the family's tally to 122, two more than the previous holders of the record, the Whelahan dynasty in Offaly. Frank Lohan's not paying much heed though. Today he only sees Wexford because he knows it could all end today.

"It's a tricky game for us, " he says, "because what people are saying about Wexford is totally playing into their hands.

We're totally aware that if we don't win, we're gone. It's as simple as that."

It's been some journey though. Frank's first year was '95. Like the father it started against Cork. That was the day of Seanie Mac's broken shoulder, Ollie Baker's lastminute goal, and, as we tend to forget, Frank Lohan's last-second block on Kevin Murray. It could all have ended that day but it didn't and by that September the two brothers were on the rooftop of Shannon Airport lifting the Liam McCarthy Cup to the masses below. It was a magical day, bordering on the miraculous. That night their mother's mother was up on the rooftop with them, without the aid of her walking stick.

"It was hilarious, " says her daughter Brede. "We still don't know how she got up there without that stick."

Gus thinks of that day as a miracle too. When he joined Clare, All Irelands didn't enter their dreams or stratosphere.

Even when they reached the Munster final in '72, things were haphazard. "It was as if they went to the casualty ward of the Regional Hospital in Ennis to pick a team. Mick Moroney had a broken hand.

Now Mick would have gone out without any hand, but like, he shouldn't have played. Pat Cleary had a broken toe. Sure Cork hammered us. I was centre back. After 15 minutes I had to go off. I went back under a ball and Jack Moloney from Clarecastle came out swinging and I was pumping blood. Jack said to me afterwards, 'If Clarecastle were playing Newmarket [who Gus won 12 county titles with], they'd say I did it deliberately.'" Then Father Harry Bohan came along. "Harry brought a great old professionalism to it, " says Gus. "The only criticism I used hear of Harry was that he was too honest for the crowd he was dealing with."

Their problem was that they ran into a great Cork team.

And that those games weren't in Tulla. "No one could beat us in Tulla, " remembers Gus, whose last game was the Munster final of '77. "The joke at the time was that we'd win every Munster final if it was in Tulla."

To win in Thurles would take another generation, another breed. Like Gus's old teammate, Ger Loughnane.

Like Mike McNamara, who Gus served with as a selector with the county minors in '89 ("We often say, we trained Mike") Like, as Loughnane once put it, "that monster that they know as Lohan". And like his brother, "the best left corner-back, " Loughnane once said, "I've ever seen."

They weren't blue-chipped talent. Brian's absence from the Shannon Comprehensive team that played in the 1989 Harty Cup final has become exaggerated; he couldn't play because of a hamstring injury (though such a restriction wouldn't prevent him finishing the 1995 and 1997 All Ireland finals). But even when he recovered he wasn't picked for the county minors, despite Gus being one of the selectors.

He was knacky and athletic though. He was handy at the football, but as Gus puts it, "He wasn't too gone on the Clare approach to it." One year the county minors called him up to play a challenge game against Limerick. "He doesn't say much, Brian, " says Gus, "but he came back that day, saying, 'God, what was that about? One of the mentors went into the middle of the dressing room after the game, took a handkerchief out of his pocket, blew his nose, folded it, did this then [wiping his forehead], put it back into his pocket and said, 'Now, lads, forget about the Leaving; the GAA looks after its own!'" At that, the future University of Limerick Business Studies graduate decided his first day playing football for Clare would be his last.

Frank stuck with them for another eight years. "Loughnane used to tell Brian to get onto Frank to give up the old football, " recalls Gus, but it was only after playing in the 1997 Munster football final that he finally did. He played two years in his mid-teens with Garryowen and a lot of soccer with his friends in Shannon too. The more sports they played the better, Gus thought, and Frank noticed and appreciated it. "He was excellent as regards not getting involved, you know, in terms of lecturing and that, " says Frank, "but he would always provide a car, whatever sport it was." He was a mentor to the Wolfe Tones teams Frank played on that never lost a football match from under-12 to the minor county final. Frank was good alright, they both were. It would take Loughnane and when they were out of minor though for their real strength to be sought and identified.

Character.

They were incredibly sensible. So were their two sisters, Aine and Sinead, but they were always buying presents, like the famous red helmet Aine got Brian. Brian the auctioneer and Frank the accountant were different. "I opened a credit union account for them when they were kids, " says Gus, "put a fiver a week in for each of them; the two boys never spent theirs."

Praise, criticism or any form of attention didn't affect them either. Gus chuckles that great chuckle of his when he recalls a story his good friend, Father Kennedy in Lorrha often tells.

"Brian had been on the Clare [senior] team and the 21s but he broke his collarbone so he was in his clothes doing the line in this Clare Cup match between Newmarket and Wolfe Tones. Frank was playing that night but he wasn't yet playing for Clare. Anyway they shouted Frank's name a few times and Father Kennedy says to Brian, 'Is that the Lohan that's on the Clare team?' And Brian says, 'No.

That's his brother.'" They're known now. As Gus points out, Brian introduced new skills to the game, like being able to pick a ball low and having the temerity to go back across his own square. And Frank? "I played [football] a few years with the Gardai in Limerick. Young Paidi O Se used to play for us. He was brilliant. He'd go for a ball and be yard or so behind his man but he'd make it just that bit much ahead of his man and win it. Frank reminds me of Paidi that way."

Frank's back home in Shannon this year. He had worked the previous four years in Cork, and the four before that in Offaly, but he doesn't have to do all that commuting now. Next year he'll be going up the aisle just like Brian has this past year. Brian's never been busier. Last 6 October little Cathal was born ("Same birthday as me, " chuckles Gus, "I was disappointed he wasn't named after me!") while he's now set up a new auctioneering and financial services office in Shannon to go with the one in Ennis.

But then he's a Lohan. It's his duty to be busy. Brede is constantly on the go with all her charity work and running the family B&B. This is the first time in 30 years Gus isn't taking a team in the Community Games but he's still chairman of the local camogie club and was on the radio recently about his passion for coin-collecting ("Did you know it was Henry VIII who came up with the idea of the harp for Irish coinage? Henry VIII!") He was diagnosed as a diabetic two years ago and claims he's never been better "because I'm obeying the rules. See I'm very bad at cutting down but I have no trouble in cutting out so now I only eat what I should."

He loves his poetry too because "it tells the truth and it's so accurate". He particularly likes 'The Dog of Aughrim'; he recited it actually at the Singers Night in Ennis on St Patrick's Night.

"It's about the Battle of Aughrim. Nine thousand were killed in it. This dog went through all the dead until he found his master. He stayed with his master for seven months. All the bodies were scavenged but not the Fitzgerald body. A chaplain involved with the English forces spotted this dog and was intrigued by this dog. An English soldier strayed across the field. The dog went for him. The soldier drew his pistol and shot the dog and he died. But like, the love the dog had for his master.

I was touched by that."

A bit like the two boys with Davy Fitz and Clare. One hundred and twenty two games and the Lohans keep going.

You'll have to shoot them to finish them.

CLARE TO ADVANCE AS WEXFORD PLAY FOR A LOT MORE THAN PRIDE ALL IRELAND SHC QUARTER-FINAL CLARE v WEXFORD Croke Park, 2.15 Referee M Haverty (Galway) Live, RTE Two, 1.55 Wexford have been here before.

Not this day a year ago, but on Leinster semi-final day two years ago. Remember? Remember how they were written off beforehand, how they for once went out to think their way around Croke Park, how they bypassed Kilkenny instead of charging at them, how they succeeded in turning their opponents' flank and how this flying-column approach brought the All Ireland champions to their knees?

Of course you do. You always will. The blueprint for victory here, then, Wexford already possess. But there's more to it than that. After the Leinster final fiasco, there has to be.

Much as yer man at the top of the page would decry mentioning the memory of Fr John Murphy in a Wexford dressing room, if ever there were a day to stir up the rocks with a warning cry, this is it.

Ten years on, the legacy of 1996 is clear for all to see . . . and there ain't no legacy. Not when you lose to Kilkenny by eight points in senior, 12 points in minor, 17 points in under-21 and 18 points in intermediate in the space of a couple of months.

Wexford aren't playing for pride here. In a sense they're not even playing to win. They're playing for their very relevance as a hurling county. And yes, they do remain good for one big performance per summer. But in case they need reminding, 0-9 to 0-8 versus Offaly wasn't it.

It's hard to know which was more disappointing three weeks ago, the abject flatness of their performance or the way in which a vaunted defence conceded 1-23 to a Kilkenny attack that contained two corner-forwards on the half-forward line and three present or sometime halfforwards on the full-forward line.

Richie Kehoe, so impressive against Offaly, appeared bypassed by the big day and should do better here, even at centre-forward. Ditto, with another outing under his belt following his winter sabbatical, Rory McCarthy.

To say it's a tricky game for Clare, for whom Jonathan Clancy is coming along nicely while Niall Gilligan is always able to punish teams an inch below the top level, is an obvious truism. Should they struggle, the purveyors of finest retrospective knowledge will doubtless point out that Anthony Daly's team lacked the heavy ordnance to merit the tag of long odds-on favourites, that the two McMahons in particular had been struggling for form and that Clare were in an unenviable position even before the sliotar was thrown in. But speak now if you can make a plausible case for Wexford winning. The Tribune can't.

Verdict Clare CLARE D Fitzgerald; G O'Grady, B Lohan, F Lohan; B O'Connell, S McMahon (c), G Quinn;

J Clancy, C Lynch; D McMahon, T Carmody, N Gilligan; D Quinn, A Markham, T Grif"n WEXFORD D Fitzhenry; D O'Connor, D Ryan, K Rossiter (c); M Travers, D Ruth, D Lyng; R McCarthy, C Kenny; M Jacob, R Kehoe, E Quigley; S Doyle, R Jacob, T Mahon