SIDELINE CUT:NOW THE recession has replaced the weather as the national obsession, it has become clear the Dublin football team has a moral duty to win the All-Ireland. This godforsaken place needs something spectacular to lift it out of the doldrums and the Blues are the very boys to provide that.

Everyone seems fairly adamant the good times are over. You cannot turn on the radio for fear of hearing yet another sobbing economist explaining why he got it wrong. But for most Irish people, the real and unmistakeable sign the bad old days were back with a bang was the sight of Brian Cowen sitting disconsolately in Nowlan Park as the Offaly hurlers took what the immortal Norwegian commentator described as "one hell of a beating" from Kilkenny.

A day later, the Taoiseach was in Belfast to meet GW Bush and Gordon Brown. But you can be sure, as he stood there for the photo call with those two beleaguered leaders, his thoughts were pre-occupied by the fall from grace of the Faithful hurlers. You can be certain that as GW whispered sweet nothings in his ear about Eye-Raq, precious memories of the Pilkington Boys or the Dooleys of Clara, of Johnny Troy's box of tricks or of Whelahan on the rampage were dancing across his mind.

It was well flagged during his ascension to leadership that Mr Cowen is a proud Offaly man and GAA to the bone, having lined out for the under-21 football team back during the first recession. As he stepped on to the podium in front of the leaders of Europe to explain the contrary nature of his people, Mr Cowen wanted to talk not about the future of Lisbon but about the best way of closing down Shefflin and the Cats' half-forward line.

He might well have been privately wondering when the next great Offaly renaissance was going to come along. And he may well realise that during Offaly's golden years of 1980 and 1981, Ireland hadn't two black pennies to rub together. In fact, he might have come to the same conclusion as many other Irish people this week: a recession might be a bit of craic.

If we are to believe what we are hearing this week, then Ireland is about to be squeezed into the back of a souped-up DeLorean car for a spin along with Michael J Fox and Christopher Plummer right back to the 1980s.

The kids don't know what is about to hit them. Youngsters at this very moment strolling down their main street dressed in the finest hip-hop livery yapping on iPhones about plans to hold their 21st bash in a Manhattan loft will, in about five weeks' time, find themselves wearing stonewash denims, shapeless Aran jumpers and listening to the Undertones on a battered Sony Walkman while standing in a mile-long dole queue. Children will be woken at dawn and brought to a very large field where a vast audience will gasp when a faraway man dressed in white will preach to them and declare, "Cheeldren of Ireland, I lof you." "Now, pet," their parents will tell them. "You'll always remember the day you saw Bono."

Kids will head to America after the Inter Cert. Murphy's Micro Quiz-Mwill return as the zenith of Sunday evening entertainment and Bibi Baskin, as tipped around 1986, will take over the Late Late Show.

If that, broadly speaking, is what the future holds, what are the consequences for the GAA? You can be sure the purse strings are already being tightened - no free ketchup at the concession stands on championship days and those grand plans to have the Rolling Stones for the half-time entertainment on the day of the hurling final postponed indefinitely.

The young players cannot imagine how drastically things are going to change. For instance, a recession could have a profound impact on the tailoring of GAA outfits. Flashy ensembles featuring fade-in colours with stretch material and all the rest will be ditched in favour of the traditional long-sleeved cotton geansaí, which can be washed a thousand times and still hold their colour.

The humble GAA shorts will subtly shrink until they are, once again, farcically snug and brazenly revealing in outline, modelled, as was memorably noted on Newstalk the other evening, on "the pornographically tight shorts worn by [Galway's] Sylvie Linnane."

Trendy half-forwards with Timberlake-style haircuts will find the offers to promote beauty products and sportswear have disappeared and instead will film an advert where they place a bewildered calf in a headlock and advise the public to beat Mastitis - fast.

Because nobody will have any money, players will continue on for longer. Lads used to retire at 25 so they could spend more time in their summer pads on Lake Como. Those are all being sold - for negative equity - right now.

Gaelic games will become the domain of real men again, of old men. In the 1980s recession, county dressingrooms were the stuff of hoary 38-year-olds, wheezing badly from the smokes and arthritic in both knees, but pure lethal from the left wing when the wind is blowing the right way. County board treasurers will savagely trim away the extras; psychologists, nutritionists, life coaches, masseuses and team chefs will all be ditched in favour of a general bagman with a magic sponge and a never-ending supply of Milky Moo sweets.

There will be ice baths but only because the caretaker has locked the cupboard with the immersion switch. Summers will arrive when Leitrim cannot field a team because of emigration.

However, New York and London will contest the Connacht final five years running. And the All-Ireland football final will belong to Kerry and Dublin. With most of the Western seaboard too busy scrounging for the price of a pint and hitching lifts to the Lisdoonvarna festival, only the Kingdom will field decent teams, led by the three Ó Sé brothers and six of their sons. And Dublin will stand in their way.

Many people have been anointing Dublin as champions elect for a few years but it may take a bad economic crash to give them that final push. When the country was last on Skid Row, it took the Dublin football team to play the national game with a bit of swagger and glamour, to show a clueless, backward nation the way forward.

When we had nothing down in the bogs and the seasides, the city had the Dubs and Philip Lynott. The Dubs won championships while down the country everyone looked on half-jealously and half-admiringly. Dublin had panache and toughness and class, qualities the nation needed in dark times. Bernard Brogan's goal wasn't just for Dublin. It was for Ireland.

Now that the storm clouds are gathering, it is time for Dublin to stand up and put a bit of manners on the country teams. Time to knock the last of the new money out of country folks, to once again hear the strains of Molly Malone lifting the rooftops on Dorset Street and remind us all that in Ireland, there is, and always will be, a pecking order. Dublin winning will be painful but it will be for our own good.

If Dublin win the All-Ireland in September - and if you find you are having a bit of craic for the first time in years - then you will know for sure the recession is back.