TIPPING POINT:Dublin possess the physical attributes to claim the Sam Maguire but Kerry will provide the acid test of the team's mental resolve

I SUPPOSE IT would be right to do something about those damn crisp ads, the ones with totty poured into various bits of floss shrunken to two sizes smaller than they should be. But really I can’t be bothered. For one thing, everyone’s got their pound of flesh out of it by now. The spud-peeler that ordered them has never had it so good, the ‘morketing’ genius who went to college to learn that men will ogle pulchritudinous young women prancing around in their pelt is busy counting his commission, and all that faux-tabloid outrage was assuaged by the chance to use some free skin pics. Everyone’s been a winner in the smoke and mirror world of advertising, otherwise known as bullshit.

As for anyone genuinely outraged, one can only wish them a future safe from harm, and wonder if such people should be entrusted with the keys to any type of motorised vehicle. Yes it is intrinsically unfair for such crass opportunism to prosper.

But it is a very unfair world and since cruel and substantive evidence of that unfairness exists everywhere, but especially in undemocratic parts of the globe where a woman isn’t allowed outside except in a black barrage balloon, the freely-made decision of a well-stacked western ‘young wan’ to lean suggestively over a football is small beer.

Certainly any other ‘young wan’ who feels unduly “influenced” by such pictures – and doesn’t automatically dismiss them as the optical lighter-fluid for sad, middle-aged men barbecuing alone that they are – is exhibiting an intellectual rigour that suggests if it isn’t one kind of bullshit that frets her up, it will be another.

It is the GAA’s very own bullshitters though who will be fretting the upcoming week away, eager to make the most of such a dreamboat All-Ireland football final. In Irish sports advertising terms, Dublin and Kerry is Apple versus Microsoft, Coca Cola versus Pepsi, BP versus Shell, Walkers versus Pringles: the motherlode in terms of public attention. Selling it is like flogging heating oil to an Eskimo.

That probably means a plethora of more dumb-ass ads to look forward to, a curious coincidence since this final is set to revolve around whether or not the glitzily packaged Dubs are too dumb to pick up a title that is just leaning over them waiting to be plucked.

Speaking to those much more knowledgeable about these things, this is a final for Dublin to lose. Apparently Kerry are getting on, and even those that aren’t have plenty mileage on the clock. And there’s no way they can be as hungry as their opponents. So goes the logic.

Those of us who over the years have noticed how rare it is for any Kerryman, no matter how bejewelled, to be sated of that All-Ireland-winning feeling may not be so convinced but there are any number of experts who will tell you that while Kerry have some great forwards, so have Dublin. And the Dubs have better backs and a better midfield.

What they don’t have though is that latent Kerry cuteness that might just be the Kingdom’s most potent weapon next Sunday.

Johan Cruyff once explained the importance of sporting intelligence by pointing out that insight is often confused for speed – “if I start my run earlier than the others, I appear to be faster”. Such smarts are distinct from anything academic.

That intellectual titan, Joey Barton, has taken to quoting Nietzsche. Paul Gascoigne’s only response to that would probably be “F*** Nietzsche!” But Gazza, troubled as he always was, could see what was happening around him on a field and play the angles and tempo with a Rubenstein fluency that Barton can’t even comprehend.

It’s not a class thing either. Through the course of his turbulent career, Craig Bellamy has exhibited a somewhat feral personality but also an appreciation of the game which combined with lightening speed has encouraged Kenny Dalglish to bring him back to Anfield.

Theo Walcott is blessed with pace too, and comes from the sort of solid middle-class background that thinks a naff golf-swing is a pretty cool way to celebrate scoring. But the Arsenal man plays with a one-dimensional, head-down style that will always make a defender’s life easy. That’s because Walcott plays dumb, and there isn’t a real sporting champion alive who hasn’t been able to think their way to success when required.

When he was riding, Lester Piggott existed in an obsessive tunnel where most kinds of social interaction were an irrelevance to the all-consuming business of passing the post first. Certainly no one ever mistook the Long Fellow for any kind of intellectual, something that probably contributed to getting himself put in the chokey when anyone with even a modicum of cop-on could have stayed outside. But on the back of a horse, no brain ever whirred faster or to such telling effect.

Once Bjorn Borg quit tennis the world started making a lot less sense to the legendary Swede. Try squaring that with watching reruns of that famous 1980 Wimbledon final against McEnroe. Borg had no right to win that match. But he did. And he did it with his brains.

The question now is, has this Dublin team got it within themselves to think their way through Kerry. And that’s a big question because if ever you needed an exhibition of how not to use the old noggin, you need only hark back to that pig of a semi-final game against Donegal.

The euphemism used most afterwards was that Dublin were naive. They weren’t naive, they were dumb. What will haunt Donegal is the idea of how just 10 or 15 minutes release from their “catenaccio” could have taken them to an All-Ireland final. Even “Trap” McGuinness may experience a few moments of “glome” up in the cold north this winter.

Dublin can run all day, they have the physical power to impose themselves on anyone, and there is enough football in the Brogans and Diarmuid Connolly to turn possession into scores. But when it comes down to it, are there enough brains throughout the team to make those plusses count?

They got luckier than they’d any right to expect against Donegal. Kerry will present a different sort of challenge, certainly not the dour negativity, but just because it will be different won’t make it any less demanding. At some stage, the Dubs are going to have to man up, not in terms of brawn, but brain.

That will be the intriguing core of this final, not any flash shoulder-to-shoulder stuff, or high-fielding or those roaring expressions of “passhion” beloved of advertisers flogging their latest piece of crap. That might not get the bored nor the right-on into a sweat but it’s as pure and righteous a sporting prospect as the rest of us could wish for.