There are some things you should know. In Dublin he's been held personally accountable for just about every defeat the county has spat out this decade. Westmeath 2004 . . . it was him that never raised his game. Tyrone 2005 . . . despite claiming six clean kick-outs between the 10th and 33rd minutes of the drawn encounter, he was judged on the second half.

Mayo 2006 . . . when David Brady came on late, charged at him and told him "his f**king All Star was gone now" it was the line that summed up his summer.

He's justified in his frustration. Right to defend himself. More often than not, he's been taken out of games. All of the above ended up bypassing him on their way to victory. There was no other way, such was the impression he made early on.

But there's a side to his game not so easily excused. In every other county he's been held up as a dirty player. Amazingly, only once in his 11 championship seasons has he seen red, that against Wexford in 2005, but there's a litany of bad refereeing decisions to give lie to that record. Meath in '05, a game when he drew blood before the throw in. Mayo in '06 when Ronan McGarrity was taken high around the neck and had to be withdrawn.

"That's something I don't like going into, not because I'm trying to escape anything but because I think too much has been made of all that.

They happened and there was no intent. Last year I was going for the ball, I arrived late, I apologised to the player [McGarrity] afterwards and I meant that because although it was accidental, I still didn't like to see it. It looked bad but I'm not the referee and he was closest on the day and he made his decision. But look, I really don't want to get into this too much.

To be honest, a referee makes a decision and I don't want to jeopardise my position going into this year. It's something I want to put behind me.

"Then I look at the Meath one and the ball was thrown in and I snapped. I was being held onto, and I lashed out. There was no malice in it, it was just a reaction. It was overhyped. It was put on The Sunday Game for the next six weeks by every Meath player who walked onto the programme, who were no angels themselves let me add. It was rubbish. There was nothing in it but they tried to point out this is part of Dublin's game and attitude and this is what's wrong with Ciaran Whelan. They were clearly clutching at straws."

We'll let you make up your own mind on that but if they ever wanted to point out what's wrong with Ciaran Whelan, it's sitting on the surface. For a player of his calibre . . . one of the great scoring midfielders in a generation blessed with Sean Cavanagh, Ciaran McManus, Joe Bergin and Seamus O'Neill . . .

okay has to be good enough on occasions. He cannot always make the difference and when there are average days, average spells, Whelan is a player who needs to step back and stay on the pitch. Too often he has burned down the house to get the flies out of the kitchen but that cannot be the case if he's to lose the tag given by Brian Corcoran of being one of the best current players never to win an All Ireland. Dublin supporters need to realise that as well.

"I suppose Dublin is very fickle in that regard. When the team is going well there's a great buzz but then there's the other extreme and things can and have got very unpleasant.

The case of Tommy Lyons in 2004 was particularly bad, no doubt about it. There's been personal experiences and players would have taken a lot of abuse, especially that year as well. But I've been around too long to let it get under my skin and you just get on with it. It's the people that are throwing the abuse, they are the ones that really need to sit down and look at themselves although I have my doubts if they will. But we move on because it comes with the territory.

"And besides, it's usually nothing that's too bad, people would just have a jibe and call you a load of shite. At the time it seems worse than it is. But don't get me wrong, the last two years have been fantastic and the compliments when things go well far outweigh the negatives.

"There's no better place to be when the team is going well and I compare Dublin football to the Irish soccer team or Premiership teams. It's very similar in a lot of ways. Like, the result is always over-hyped by our own fans and by others who I guess don't like to see us do well. I've seen us lose O'Byrne Cup games and people calling for the manager's head, so I've seen a lot of rubbish during the 11 years I've been with this side. At this stage it's water off a duck's back to the team. We are judged on how they perform in the summer and that's the bottom line."

It's an easy way to rule out a disappointing league campaign that saw Dublin finish fifth in Division 1A, leaving them looking up at the top flight next season. Whelan admits the Mayo defeat in their penultimate league game came down to luck, a missed penalty, a sending off and that Kerry on the last day were just better for those 70 minutes. Yet eight months on, it's only now that he's able to speak of the All Ireland semi-final defeat to Mayo in such surgical terms.

"I think this Dublin team has grown and considering where we were in 2004, we were at the bottom. Confidence was low, results were very poor and I think Pillar put his own stamp on the job, brought in his own team and in '05 physically and mentally we made huge improvements and were very unlucky we let it slip the first day against Tyrone. Last year we went that one step further and slipped again and that was the hardest defeat I think any of us have had to deal with and one of the most difficult in Dublin's history. We were seven points up with 20 minutes to go, we can only look at ourselves. We have to accept a lot of responsibility for Mayo's fight back.

"I wouldn't say we were already thinking ahead but having not had a game that went down to the wire all year maybe didn't help us.

We were coasting. We were cruising and didn't know how to handle anything different. But we can only learn although it took a while to look at it this way. But we can only use that to our advantage this year in terms of motivation and dealing with similar endings to matches.

We've been getting better each year and we'll know more very soon."

They'll start their campaign this year against either Kildare or Meath 3 June and Whelan doesn't like daydreaming into the distance. They'll play either a Division One semi-finalist or the Division Two champions that day in Croke Park and will have been without a competitive game for six weeks. But this Dublin side has finally gotten into the habit of beating lesser teams, they now need to reach an All Ireland final.

"I think we are good enough to go all the way.

We are only getting into championship mode now both mentally and physically and we'll see how things go over the coming weeks but I like to think I've become more of a team player, I score less because we have so many good forwards and I can sit back more and no matter where I look we have a really good squad.

So I think we are good enough to win an All Ireland. Then again, every year I like to think we are. Certainly last year we were good enough to win one. We didn't so we have to try and reach the heights of our performance last year and hopefully we can get there."

And if not?

"Well we'll all get it in the neck again."

Something he's all too familiar with.