GAELIC GAMES:CALL IT Blue Magic. Dublin could have been forgiven for losing yesterday's All-Ireland final. There would have been no shame in bowing to the imperiousness and control with which Kerry close out these September days. There would have been no shame in going down honourably.
The signs were there in Colm Cooper’s sublime 63rd minute point. Kerry were 1-10 to 0-9 ahead and there were seven minutes and change left on the clock and, for all the mystique and mythology surrounding this rivalry, it all pointed to another victory for Kerry.
As they watched from the corridors, the beer and ice-cream vendors might have read the signs and returned to shut up shop for the season. And then, for 10 enthralling minutes, the old stadium went berserk and when the smoke cleared, the Dubs were All-Ireland champions for the first time since 1995.
The details of Dublin’s incredibly brave escape to victory have been replayed on televisions a thousand times already. Kevin McManamon steaming through the broken last line of Kerry’s defence and burying a goal that changed everything. No substitute has made such an impact on an All-Ireland final since Séamus Darby broke Kerry hearts with that immortal Offaly goal back in 1982.
Then the gripping five minutes that saw Kevin Nolan land a terrific point and Kieran Donaghy match it with a score for Kerry that was outrageous in its accuracy and ambition. And finally, of course, the heart stopping endgame: the late free and Stephen Cluxton’s long walk from his goalmouth to where the ball lay on the ground, waiting for him to kick it directly into the waiting dreams of those gathered on the Hill. 1-12 to 1-11. Game over. It was dizzying.
“You couldn’t write it in a fairytale,” Bernard Brogan marvelled afterwards.
And it will take a while for this unforgettable All-Ireland final to make sense in the football enclaves of the capital. For now, the fact that Dublin are All-Ireland champions again is enough: it will feel fabulous and slightly unreal for quite some time. And in Kerry too, they will ruminate on this match through the long Atlantic winter.
Oh, the Kingdom played it smart and sometimes beautifully here. Ordinary they may have been in the first half, depending on Cooper’s fine 18th minute goal – after Darran O’Sullivan’s devastating burst and pass – to keep them in touch on the scoreboard. It was cagey and tough and fascinating but Dublin were full of running and purpose and there were signs in that first half that we might be seeing a changing of the guard here.
But then Kerry did what Kerry do. They reinvented themselves. They came out and set up checkpoints across the half-way line that the Dublin boys repeatedly tried to breach to their cost. From the 40th minute, they outscored Dublin by 0-6 to 0-1 and they looked to have mastered the situation.
Darran O’Sullivan was a blur of brilliant fury and Kieran Donaghy too smothered Dublin men, a Preying Mantis with those long arms extended. For 24 minutes of the second half, Dublin registered a solitary Bernard Brogan free and looked to have lost their way.
The Hill fell silent: fans in blue looked glum. Kerry played keep ball, they knocked over a free and conducted the match on their terms. This is what they do to teams and Dublin suddenly looked like a novice team playing in its first All-Ireland. But if this is a young team, it is one that has suffered intense disappointment. Yesterday, they kept on running as if their lives depended on it.
“There is only so much pain that any humans can take and I am only here with this team for a short time really,” Pat Gilroy said.
“Nobody was happy getting to a final. We wanted to push on and win it.”
Dublin earned their stripes this summer. Nervy against Wexford. Glittering in the rain against Tyrone. Tough out against Donegal. And finally sensational – when it counted – against the most accomplished team of modern times. This was an All-Ireland title with weight.
As Bryan Cullen lifted the Sam Maguire, silver streamers fell across the pitch and on the disconsolate Kerry men who gathered to watch scenes of triumph which might have been theirs. The beaten players seemed understandably shattered afterwards, Kieran Donaghy lying on his back and staring at the grey sky as pandemonium reigned in the stadium. The big man sounded hollowed out when he spoke about the game after emerging from the dressing room.
“It’s just hard to take but that’s life. There’s people in hospitals all over the country that are far worse off than us right at this moment. This is going to be a tough one to take but we’re just going to have to come back again next year like this Kerry team has always done.”
That much is fact. Not far from where Donaghy stood, Stephen Cluxton emerged from the Dublin dressing room and stopped to pose for photographs with some fans. He shook his head and politely declined to talk about that score, that nerveless free which had the look of one of those immortal GAA moments even before it sailed across the bar.
“He has probably hit about a million frees from there since he has had the opportunity to take them and that is where he practises them from,” said Gilroy. “It wouldn’t faze him or bother him so we had every faith in him.”
So on a day when old ghosts and much nostalgia swirled around Croke Park, Kerry and Dublin delivered a sparkling new instalment to this rivalry. It would be dangerous to believe that this defeat will lead to the dismantling of the heart of a great Kerry team. Nothing will restore their appetite for these days like the thought of a Dublin team it its pomp. The Dubs are back and the city is in song.
