Sideline Cut: On Sunday last, 82,000 people witnessed Kerry reconfirm their status as the insatiable, deathless winners of the Sam Maguire. Their 34th All-Ireland championship was achieved at a canter that seemed unimaginable at mid-summer.
And the rest of the country can but admire Kerry and wonder at the internal dynamic that pushes them towards a need for multiple Celtic Cross medals. If it is a form of greed, it is a magnificent one. And, of course, the sense of entitlement and composure that seems to possess Kerry players and teams on September Sundays makes the plight of Mayo, once again cast in the role of beautiful losers, seem all the more poignant and pitiful.
By freezing against Kerry twice within three years, Mayo have become an object of pity and perhaps derision among football counties across the land. Kerry won another All-Ireland title through gargantuan physical effort, through consummate football ability, through mental toughness, through arrogance and through a grim-minded adaptation of the more negative realities of the modern game. They look well primed to win more All-Irelands this decade, and the thing about Kerry is they know how to lose and win with a touch of class - they have had plenty of practice.
The thing I admired most about Kerry on Sunday last was that they destroyed their opponents without once belittling them. Kerry All-Ireland football victories are generally a reflection of the better nature of the game and of sport in general, and in that sense, last Sunday's finale was heartening.
But as Kerry house the Sam Maguire in all the familiar abodes, the story of Mayo is the more interesting part of the equation of this year's final. Once again, the totality of their collapse meant what ought to have been the climactic minutes of a long, gruelling championship were played out in muted, slightly hallucinatory circumstances. As Kevin O'Neill noted, one could write a thesis on the psyche of Mayo teams on All-Ireland final days. It was as though the sight of Kerry jerseys induced an LSD-type flashback that had a physical as well as a psychological effect - because some of the Mayo guys seemed to be moving in a slower motion. Afterwards, Mayo fans spoke of their hurt, embarrassment and frustration, all of which should be remembered.
But it is important to remember that since 1996, only Mayo have reached All-Ireland football finals as frequently as Kerry. Mayo know how to get there - which is more than can be said for the majority of other serious football counties. Already, the revisionism has begun on the management style of MickeyMoran/John Morrison, which can be now slammed by Hard Chaw traditionalists as New Age, all josh sticks and fancy jargon. But the fact is, they got to a league semi-final, and won a provincial championship and a semi-final that has been deemed The Greatest Match of All Time. That hardly constitutes a bad year.
The criticism over the removal of O'Neill last Sunday has substance; and maybe even the disapproval of not starting David Brady is justified. But it ought to be remembered Moran and Morrison resurrected O'Neill's career and persuaded Brady out of retirement.
As for the performance of the players, it is wrong and curmudgeonly to harangue them for behaving like the amateurs they are in the face of another dog-whipping by Kerry. The truth of it is that very few of us can even imagine what it is like to be out there in Croke Park in those conditions.
Maybe there is truth in the general belief that for Mayo to actually win an All-Ireland, they must develop a meaner streak. On Sunday, James Nallen's record of one yellow card in a decade of service was presented to him and he was asked if maybe he ought to have been a bit more cynical over the years. Nallen's reply was dignified and profound: he played the game how he played the game; clean was his philosophy. If Mayo wanted an alternative centre back whose philosophy involved the removal of opponents' teeth, then they were welcome to select him.
Mayo play clean and they play stylish and on days like Sunday, when it goes bad, it makes them look like dandies and pretenders. Over the past few days I kept on wondering how the football life of Ciarán McDonald would have evolved if, for whatever reason, he had moved to Kerry at the age of 15. McDonald has, for better or worse, been the bright, burning emblem of the best and worst of Mayo football. In Kerry, flair is important and celebrated but fairly rigidly harnessed into the team ethic. It could be argued that in Kerry hands, McDonald would have become a more fully realised player and added a few All-Ireland medals to his name in the process.
But maybe in those circumstances, some gift to Gaelic football, something intangible and arguably more precious than a medal, would have been lost. In Mayo, McDonald has, under several managements, played as an out-and-out free spirit. As late as this year, arguments raged as to whether his highly strung, daring genius was detrimental to his team and anathema to the speed and urgency of the modern game. McDonald infuriates some observers, who believe him to be self-indulgent on the ball and ponderous, complicating the fundamentals. Their frustration is understandable.
But I have come to think of McDonald as someone helplessly in thrall to the finer possibilities of Gaelic football, a guy who plays the main game - the contest we all watch on the field - but also a game in his mind where he is constantly and helplessly computing passes and angles that the rest of us cannot see, partly to put a colleague in a scoring position but also for the plain aesthetic joy of it.
Maybe he does not possess that eye for the main chance, that winner's coldness that so many managers and players will tell you counts for everything - although he was pretty icy in clipping the score of the year against Dublin a month ago. But here is the thing: in Ciarán McDonald, Mayo have a player who can play the game of Gaelic football like nobody else on earth. His capacity for elevating what is a fairly simple and rudimentary game into the realm of the sublime, often through a single foot pass, has to be classified as a form of genius. It will not always win you the championship match and, when it deserts him, as it did in the second half last Sunday, the sight can be shocking and dismaying to behold. But the fact remains he can ordain prosaic league Sundays and high-octane championship days that are brutally loaded with effort and brutally lacking in class with one transcendent moment that stays crystal clear and alive long after the season ends. If the game has no room for the celebration of a gift like that, then we might as well say to hell with the game.
There is no denying Mayo and her talisman are in a dark and uncertain place right now. But only one county is fully entitled to feel pity for Mayo. That is Kerry. And Kerry are too respectful, too cautious and too damn hungry to ever allow pity to come into it. If you belong to any other football county and shake your head at the plight of Mayo, you are only fooling yourself. The old adage that winning is everything in Gaelic games is a complete nonsense, except for the footballers of Kerry and the hurlers of Cork and Kilkenny. If winning is everything, we may as well end the championship now. For the vast majority of counties, the idea of winning the big prize is just a summer conceit, a mass delusion.
And if Mayo are the beautiful losers of Gaelic games, then most other counties are just regular, everyday losers with nothing to distinguish them. Don't pity Mayo, because they will be turning up and beating you before too long.
