The post-match interview that possibly best captured the day was the one RTÉ’s John Kilraine conducted with a young Mayo fan leaving Croke Park. What was his verdict?

“[Heavy sigh]. Emmmmmm. Ah.”

Then he shook his head and set off for home.

That summed it up pretty well, if not decisively, it being hard to make sense of what we’d witnessed. As Senan Connell put it on Sky, “both teams could have won it – and should have lost it”.

It was only half-time and already Colm O’Rourke was describing it as grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented, largely down to those two own goals, a double boo-boo that only added to the gubu.

And if you had walked into a bookies before the game and asked for the odds on Dublin not actually scoring for themselves until the game was a half-hour old, you’d most likely have been told “there there pet, keep your money in your purse”.

Gubu, indeed. Pre-match, no one held out much hope for Mayo, they hadn’t even a Jim McGuinness masterplan to work with, the man himself, punditing on Sky, poo-pooing reports that he’d liaised with the team ahead of the final.

Optimism

Back on RTÉ, Pat Spillane was trying to offer the county some cause for optimism, but when he started listing out the difficult things they had to accomplish during the game, he ran out of fingers. Dublin it was, then. Joe Brolly, meanwhile, reckoned their only hope was to “bring war” to Croke Park, imagining that, like the Dubs, they were waiting in their dressingroom for their call on to the pitch “like soldiers in their Saracen being told ‘right, we’re ready to rumble in to the Bogside’”.

Michael Lyster is never too sure what to do at Joe moments like this, so he just told us there were people watching the game in the Sahara desert, that news an oasis in quite a belligerent build-up. But 20-ish minutes in to the contest, Martin Carney had good news for Joe. Mayo, he declared, would “die on this pitch rather than lose it”.

That was a whole lot of war-ish death talk, this only being a game, but any notion Mayo might have had that their 2016 platoon were soldiers of destiny was a bit dented by those two own goals.

Still, they weren’t stuck in the trenches quite yet, their opponents having a decidedly off-day in the points-accruing department. “An important stage in the game, a Dublin player is going to score,” said Ger Canning as Dean Rock sized up that free, its conversion signalling the end of possibly the maddest half hour in Gaelic football history.

Trailed by five

“I have never seen an All-Ireland final like it,” said Martin, and not many of us had, to be honest.

“Mayo did everything right . . . and yet, and yet, and yet,” said Colm at the break, at which point they trailed by five points, having contributed six to Dublin’s tally. Gubu.

It was forward, march from the second-half whistle, though, five points in a row squaring the increasingly wacky game. There was nearly a third own goal, too, which would have earned an entire episode on The Twilight Zone, with a sprinkling of cards of various hues thrown in to the mix.

A yellow for Colm Boyle, for example. “He’s one of those guys who carries more heart than a tribe of Apache Indians, great bit of stuff,” said Martin, saluting Colm’s shoulder.

(There’s an Apache saying: “It is better to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightning in the hand.” They might have had Joe in mind, though, rather than Martin).

On we went. Barry Moran came on for Mayo. “That’ll be the Twin Tower approach,” said Martin, which might not . . . well, you know.

Time ebbing away. The Dubs home and hosed. A bit of a Mayo comeback, though. Last 30 seconds. “It’s now or never,” said Martin as Mayo sought an equaliser. “It’s been now or never for 65 years,” said Ger.

But, equaliser secured, replay circled in the diary, the GAA accountants’ hands sore from the high-fiving.

Michael checked with the lads to see if they’d all be available on October 1st, each one of them nodding, while fretting over whether their insurance covered changing the dates on their flights to Lanzarote.

Colm went all Johnny Gilesie, saluting Mayo’s “moral courage”, noting, while not actually stabbing his forefinger into Joe’s face, “they silenced their critics today”. Back on Sky, Jim feared the worst. “I don’t think we’ll ever see Dublin as bad again . . . I think Mayo missed the boat.”

You’d have a hunch that might, indeed, be the case. But . . . if they carry more heart than the Apaches, you’d never know.