Keith Duggan profiles Dublin's Ray Cosgrove, who is central to the county's hopes against old rivals Meath tomorrow at Croke Park
He sounds familiar, Ray Cosgrove. His is a name that rings bells. On a dim and frosty February, you stood on the stone steps of a county ground and he made you glad and optimistic that you decided to forsake the Sunday newspapers, the hearth.
You chased his heels around a muddy Sigerson pitch back when you had time to burn. Before life wised you up. Or he narrowed the scope of your filial ambitions when he ghosted past your kid in some forgotten underage classic. He defined the limitations for those around him without even realising it.
Oh, you have heard of Ray Cosgrove. Some wonder goal, some feat that is more rumour than fact bears his penmanship. He got injured or something, or sent off. His old man was a legend, perhaps. You can't be sure, but you know that Ray Cosgrove has been at this point in life before.
Tomorrow is the beginning for Ray Cosgrove. It is a dream start, wearing the number 14 sky blue jersey in front of the Hill, the glamour role in the underground ritual of cult worship that is bestowed upon the capital's footballers. And there to applaud it is Darren Fay, Meath's finest, the best full back in the land, who will nod at you in benign country fashion and then stalk you into quietude. He has shepherded many a glittering reputation into oblivion and seems to reserve his most feral days for this brilliant, bloated rivalry. Dublin and Meath. The Dubs and the Royals. Biggest against Baddest.
How perfect the stage, with the newly-laid lawn in Croke Park as smooth and true as the plains of Augusta. After a decade of exhaustive chipping and filing, the GAA are at last ready to unveil their Sistine Chapel on the Jones's Road and we could not wish for a better scene than tomorrow's east country derby.
All over the field are individual battles that whet the appetite and carry echoes of previous encounters But Fay territory is always key. Nostalgia is already threatening to claim Dublin's last ferocious stand against Meath, back in their darling summer of 1995. The city team trounced them that day with fearlessness and something approaching the aloofness associated with Meath. There was talk of a soft closing to the Seán Boylan chapter then.
But instead, of course, the herbalist retreated to Tara with potions and points to make and when next Meath arrived in Croke Park, they were shorn of so many of the great totem poles of the Colm O'Rourke era. Boylan's Babes were young and lean and watchful and ruthless. They were winners. It was the beginning for Darren Fay and within three months, we observed him accepting an All-Ireland medal in that humble, sweet way of his. When you are from Meath, beginnings can be like that.
For footballers from the city, it can be different. Greatness gets lost in the flux of young players and the labyrinthine suburban system. Voices of genuine quality that would silence most other counties frequently get lost in the sheer traffic, the volume of the city game.
Shortly after Fay ambled out of the Pale on the back of another Meath All-Ireland success, Ray Cosgrove was preparing for his provenance as a Dublin footballer.
He was shockingly young then, still a teenager in an era when the game belonged to mature men. This was in the autumn of Mickey Whelan's era, a foggy time now for Dublin football when the glorious All-Ireland summer of 1995, those days of Jason Sherlock and brilliant sunshine, sadly and noisily disappeared.
In retrospect, Whelan arrived at a thankless time, when a great team had been sated with the arrival of one All-Ireland after half a decade of desperate chasing. Whelan needed youth and like you, he had heard of Cosgrove. Most people had.
"He was always a wonderfully talented young fella growing up. I remember one particular competition, it might have been under-15 and he just took the final over for us. Scoring from all angles," remembers Kilmacud's Michael Dillon.
"Ray could kick with both feet from a young age and knew how to put the ball over the bar. He always looked a very promising player and he has been incredible for us at all levels."
Leitrim was his beginning. The details hardly matter - wretched day and a loss for Dublin, a goal from Fintan McBrien that rose above the dreadful conditions. Cosgrove, according to the yellowing reports, acquitted himself well. If it were straightforward, he would have ascended slowly and steadily from that lesson near the hawthorns.
But instead, we have to flash forward for the next clear, remembered sighting of Cosgrove with the Dublin seniors. This occasion had a more sulphurous whiff about it, the 1999 Leinster final against Meath. As it happened, that match would trampoline Darren Fay, by now seasoned, towards a second All-Ireland while Dublin stalled, losing by five points, the heaviest defeat against their neighbours since 1964.
"It didn't go well for us that day," says then manager Tom Carr. "Ray played for us and it probably didn't work out so well for him either. It was a game that we didn't perform in. But Ray is a very gifted lad, he can kick a killer ball off either foot which is a tremendous asset. It just didn't happen at that particular time."
And that might so easily have been it. Seven million stories in the naked city and all that. It wasn't as if Ray Cosgrove simply played two games with Dublin. From that bright start in a dark period in 1996 to the disappointing pinnacle in 1999, Cosgrove never stopped kicking ball. Sometimes he was on the Dublin panel, other times not.
He was present for the infamous under-21 Dublin/Offaly debacle in 1998 which descended into the kind of brawl that Mike Tyson would have shirked. He starred along with his friend Mick O'Keeffe on Kilmacud's Leinster final run around the same time.
Some residual part of him refused to quit, to be content with the ha'penny legend of underage phenomenon.
"Around the time of the Leinster final in 1999, he was undoubtedly at a low ebb in terms of confidence. He just wasn't reaching his potential," says Dillon. "But I think some small part of him never gave up on playing senior for Dublin again.
"And he has looked like the old Ray Cosgrove recently except for the fact that there is a more physical dimension to his game. He was always a sizeable fellow, 6ft 1in or so and he has been playing a lot of midfield for us, which forced him on the ball more and I think aided him."
And Tommy Lyons, closely associated with Kilmacud over the years, always had high regard for the rangy forward, constantly encouraging him. Lyons's arrival as Dublin's new hope coincided with a rich vein of form for Cosgrove, who has been kicking frees and scoring freely since his rebirth.
He notched up 1-4 in a friendly match against Galway. He fired three from play in a nine-point haul against Roscommon. He finished with 0-5 in a win against Westmeath, the game after which Lyons reminded people that had promised to get "this Dublin team to play with a swagger". Against Donegal, the total was lower, just three points, but again Cosgrove was part of a winning equation.
The same is about all that can be said for the championship performance against Wexford. But Dublin did the business and everything that has come before is just chicken-feed compared to Croke Park tomorrow. And Ray Cosgrove has been thrown the number 14 jersey on a day of truth.
"Ray's a very good footballer and we believe he will deliver," is Lyons's succinct reasoning.
"That is really as much as there is to say. You go with the players you believe will do a job for you. If there were eight different managers, you'd have eight different teams. We are going for a different balance and we feel that Ray is an important part of that."
Tom Carr, whose brave and luckless reign with Dublin ended controversially after last season, believes there is no reason now that Cosgrove can't revisit the Leinster maelstrom in happier circumstances.
"He appears to be playing well atthe moment. He can win ball, he's a big fella. There is no reason why Ray can't stick over significant scores for Dublin."
And all scores will be significant. When these teams meet, every passage of play is potentially momentous. Dublin are seeking to erase a trend of Meath mastery that is approaching the comfort zone.
Dublin are the eternal mystery. And Cosgrove finds himself still part of that clouded equation long after many would have lost faith or interest. It is not exactly a beginning, not in the truest sense, but it is a start. It is enough.
