Many people from the Pope to His Holiness George Dubya have been calling me recently on the mobile to sound out my position on the rights and wrongs of human cloning. Ostensibly, there are no easy answers but my own position is simple. Human cloning is morally justifiable only up and until the point where Dublin can play John Crowley and Mike Frank Russell in their attack. There is a caveat, of course. If a slightly younger Maurice Fitzgerald can be recreated than that would be alright too.
The devastating lack of moral ambivalence in this answer obscures what is an interesting moral crux for the GAA, however. Can a clone play for a county other than the county of his originator? Would John Crowley end up playing against himself or would the Dublin version have to be called Barney Crowley? Would clones be allowed at Congress. Would Congress be allowed be at Clones? If every province had a Frank Murphy, how would that look, would it be right? Suppose we created a surplus, a Frank Murphy mountain? As I say there are limits to how far we can and should go.
Life as I never tire of telling the kids is fundamentally unfair. I, for instance, had the enthusiasm and the spare time to be Dublin's full forward right through the 80s and 90s but had none of the talent. Tom Carr would pick really great forwards if he had them, but he hasn't.
Forwards win All-Irelands but there aren't enough of them, not enough of the great ones born to operate in tight spaces. David Hickey once said of his goal against Kerry in the dying minutes of the 1977 All-Ireland that everything seemed to slow down and from 10 yards out the goal seemed really huge, in all that turmoil and noise it seemed impossible to miss. Michael Jordan described a similar experience in relation to the many games in his career where he scored on the buzzer to alter the outcome.
We don't seem to have anyone like that living in the capital city at the moment. On Saturday Dublin and Westmeath (but Dublin especially) endured that spiked heartache that comes from having a genius deficiency. Dublin huffed and puffed for 70 minutes in Thurles but the pattern was written early on when having conceded a point to Noel Kennelly they toiled manfully for the next 15 minutes or so and emerged with a pointed Declan Darcy free to show for it all. Then in the space of four minutes Kerry stitched 1-3 into the pattern of the game without drawing breath. They started that sequence with a beauty of a goal, four swift passes and John Crowley with work to do made it look like play.
Crowley has to be in pole position for player of the year. His summer has been instalments of excellence. 1-2 against Tipperary; 0-3 against Limerick; 0-4 against Cork; 0-3 against Dublin the first day; 2-2 against them on Saturday. When Kerry play Meath in the semi-final Crowley and Ollie Murphy will essentially be jousting for the end of the year baubles. That alone makes the game worth slavering over.
Like Crowley, the Meathman looks like a danger every time the ball is dispatched into him. He created two goals this week, scored two last week and right at the end of the game on Saturday contributed a point which just broke Westmeath hearts. Westmeath had been heaving down the field again and again, their efforts crashing on the granite of the Meath defence. Than Murphy took a greasy ball and calmy hauled it over the bar from about 35 yards out.
With good scoring forwards a team can make football look easy. On Saturday, for both Kerry and Meath the ball from the half back line or midfield was delivered early and crisp and often. John Crowley might have contested 20 balls and only won half of them but he scored four times, got fouled a few times, and laid off a few useful passes. The same applied to his full forward line colleagues, lots of space to work with plus the knowledge that the ball was coming.
Meath have known for a long time that games are won by ferrying the ball quickly to the player who will do most damage. In the 80s good possession went to the space in front of Bernie Flynn. Anything more rushed got fed to Stafford and O'Rourke. Everything travelled express.
If there was good news out of Saturday for Dublin and Westmeath it was that next year's Leinster championship should be excellent. Westmeath have arrived as a team, probably the second best team in Leinster. They got three summers' worth of experience condensed into a couple of months this year and in their corner forwards they have a cutting edge which will serve them well when they begin to play everyday with the abandon they showed fleetingly against Meath. Sometime in the next couple of years they'll make history and win their first Leinster championship and that will be a fine day for the GAA..
Dublin can look back on where they were when Tom Carr took over and be satisfied they have made progress. They have rediscovered the intensity needed for championship football. They just need the scorers now. Collie Moran will be a great player and Jason Sherlock contributes more now than he did in 1995. Wayne McCarthy needs a little more weight and a little more length in his kicking. Dessie Farrell has another season. In the meantime, they'll have to improvise (Meath's most recent full forward successes Brendan Reilly and Graham Geraghty have been converted defenders) scour the clubs again and get forward coaching in.
Because not every forward is born with the gift. Ollie Murphy looked just a little above ordinary in his first couple of seasons. John Crowley couldn't convince Kerry people he was the new Bingo Driscoll let alone the new John Egan for a couple of years.
Perhaps this year's fine young minor team will throw up a blithe talent who pops over three or four a game from 30 yards out. Perhaps not.
Meanwhile, football is back, great forwards have restored a little joy to the game and I'm wondering would it be possible to clone a Roy Keane for GAA purposes.
