Ah, bloody marvellous. As a near breathless Darragh Maloney put it late on in that second half, “this is something else”, and that summed it up neatly. A thrillingly epic skirmish, the only disappointment the ref’s failure to pretend his watch was four minutes fast thereby ensuring a replay. In time we [and the GAA powers-that-be] will just have to forgive him.
One of those rare days when you wished you had the power to fast forward through half-time, so gripping was the prospect of seeing what the Dubs were made of after Kerry had knocked them senseless with that late first half surge.
Pat Spillane had been rendered similarly senseless (behave) by Dublin’s opening to the game, which called to mind Eoin Liston’s observation earlier in the week, that “Dublin have their heel on our throat and we will fight tooth ’n’ nail to make sure they don’t press down on it”.
They were pressing hard until Kerry finally got a point on the board in the 14th minute, but Michael Lyster revealed at the break he, Ciarán Whelan and Joe Brolly were there for Pat, in a tender way, in his moment of need. (“We told you at that stage that you were going to be skinned.”)
Pat, though, had insisted the Kingdom was travelling to Croke Park “more in hope than confidence”, promising he wasn’t being a cute Kerry hoor in saying that, even though “if there was an Olympic gold medal handed out for cute hoorism, Kerry would be the world leaders”. Eamonn Fitzmaurice had echoed those thoughts when he told Joanne Cantwell “I don’t think too much is expected of us”, at which point you starting having a hunch Kerry would have win by half-time.
Turnarounds
Not quite, although that five-point lead was handy enough, the last 12 minutes yielding 2-3 for Kerry and nothing for the Dubs. As turnarounds go, it was dizzying. If tickets had been put on sale to attend Jim Gavin’s half-time chat, they’d have been snapped up in 20 seconds. Joe Brolly put much of it down to the fact The Gooch started “remembering that he’s one of the greatest players to play the game”, but pre-match he hadn’t anticipated anything like it, suggesting Kerry had become “the Donegal of the south”. If Jim McGuinness wasn’t busy punditing over on Sky he’d most likely have replied, “what, winners?”
That would have been premature, though, because Dublin woke from their second-half-of-the-second-half slumber and proved they’re a half decent team with more than a little fire in their bellies, and a generous dollop of resolve. Their youthful supporters will just have to trust their Mas and Das when they tell them there was a day they’d crumble on days like this.
Shifted gear
Still, with not a heap of time to go it looked like Kerry had removed that heel from their throat, until Dublin shifted up a gear and pressed even harder. “Dublin have gone now from being an irritant to Kerry to becoming a full-blown plague,” said Martin Carney in the commentary box, Ciarán chuckling in the studio about the notion they mightn’t be hungry enough. Famished, like.
Pat, before taking a detour to reminisce fondly about the day he was hit with an umbrella by a Mayo woman, saluted his fellow countymen, going from being “fuming” after last year’s very awful All-Ireland final to being proud “they died with their boots on”. And he was gracious enough, too, to doff his cap to some of those Dublin hits that almost sent his fellow countymen flying in to next week. “Your relations in America would have felt some of those hits,” said Joe, and Pat didn’t disagree.
Joe waxed lyrical about the Dubs, “the All Blacks of Gaelic football”, suggesting they are single-handedly saving the sport, although if he’d taken a peak at the minor game, where Kerry annihilated Kildare, he wouldn’t rule out the Kingdom coming again. The nugget that is David Clifford is only 16, so if he stays fit he could be captaining Kerry in their 20-in-a-row seeking All-Ireland in 2038.
For now, it’s Dublin and Mayo who will contest the final. Did Joe hold out much hope for the Connacht men? “If they sit back and defend the way they’ve been doing they’ll get murdered.” Not a lot then. But look, Munster beat the All Blacks once, so anything at all is possible.
