LOCKER ROOM:Pat Gilroy is smart enough to know that opportunities like this don't come knocking too often

AUDEN CLAIMED all art is born of humiliation. It’s a pity he didn’t write a little more about GAA. What would he have made of Dublin on Saturday as they finally staunched that sea of troubles which has brought humiliation with tidal regularity?

End-of-year awards are arbitrary things not to be taken remotely as seriously as those bestowing them think they should be taken but if there is a better managerial performance than Pat Gilroy’s this year or a larger pair of brass cojones in show it will be very surprising.

Having said plainly and simply he was going to experiment through the league and the Leinster championship he did just that, dismantling not only a team but a style of play and a way of doing things which had the virtue of being guaranteed an acceptable amount of success if left untampered with.

The price was high. The Hill withdrew support which since 1974 we had assumed was unconditional. There was some derision and certainly some players who had thrived under the old system needed persuasion to knuckle down to the new regime. Hype left town and the city didn’t fizz as usual with crazy hopes.

On Saturday, Dublin didn’t win anything other than a football match but they beat not just Tyrone but their own fears, that grain of self-doubt which led to so many humiliations. They eradicated their inner startled earwig. They were rewarded with their most significant win since the 1995 All-Ireland final.

Afterwards Bernard Brogan, for instance, spoke about how important the game was for him personally. He didn’t have to spell out the fact that Saturday marked the end of his painful metamorphosis from the ranks of the startled to the elite pantheon of the game’s absolute top-level forwards. In previous years when the going got tough he disappeared as mysteriously as 45,000 Dubs disappeared from Croker this summer. On Saturday, he delivered and it was a good to see. His success was emblematic of his team’s progress.

There is a tedious form of hindsight which gets delivered on days like this. People claim they saw it coming and the giants who got slayed hadn’t been looking themselves lately. Since Saturday, Tyrone have been variously described as flat, out of sorts and aging.

They were none of those things and Mickey Harte – impressive and gracious in defeat – came to the press room and told it like it was. He hadn’t seen it coming. Tyrone had prepared as well, if not better, than they ever had. They had done extensive forensic examination of Dublin’s style of play, he didn’t consider his side old or past it. They had 17 wides but they were pressured and harassed into most of them.

Dublin, in short, delivered on the template they had created for themselves. They got the reward for colossal self-belief, exceptional work and the faith they could cash it all in at the right date. They did early morning sessions and evening sessions and ignored the catcalls of critics and fans for whom another Leinster title would have created a brief but happy buzz. Another Leinster title would have been enough surely for several players who have become accustomed to an easy sort of low-level celebrity nourished by the steady drip of provincial success.

Croke Park was a lonely place when they trailed badly to Wexford and when Meath put five goals past them. And it was lonely in the 10 to 15 minutes before half-time on Saturday when it looked to everyone, including Mickey Harte, as if Tyrone were ready to absorb Dublin’s challenge and cut loose. Not many of us had faith then. Dublin had to keep visiting the crucible of previous humiliations and striving for a better fate.

Gilroy stressed on Saturday Dublin are in bonus territory now, that getting close to a top-three team had seemed a more realistic objective for the year than actually beating one. Pat is too shrewd a student of Dublin footballing history not to realise this terrain offers opportunity which may never come again. And he is too shrewd a manager to get weighed down by that history.

Still, 1974 will have crossed his mind and Mickey Whelan’s mind. That year began with Kevin Heffernan demanding a huge act of faith from his players. Through the winter they trained indoors in a hall in Finglas, engaged in a new fangled business which Whelan had suggested from America. Circuit training. It was so unknown a couple of panellists thought that they were going circus training.

Come summer they started off slow and the Hill was a drafty and empty place. By August they had beaten the great Offaly team of that era and were in an All-Ireland semi-final against a Cork side who had won the previous year’s All-Ireland. Bonus territory. A huge point from Leslie Deegan had given them the win over Offaly in Tullamore. After that the clouds lifted and they played with freedom and abandon.

Heffernan had a belief, founded on Cork’s native hubris, that Dublin should always beat Cork. The 1974 All-Ireland semi-final was one of the great games of the era and, when we look back, one of the great shocks of the decade. Bonus territory.

It is in bonus territory that teams get the chance to truly seize the day. Dublin have no guarantees, far from it, but this is the most open All-Ireland championship in seven years. Three teams of the last four are in bonus territory. The fourth, Cork, seem uncomfortable with the weight of favouritism. There is an All-Ireland there for a team which can ride the winds of momentum and confidence.

Bonus territory is a place teams only visit once in their existence. There are no guarantees of year-on-year progress in sport, this year’s David is next year’s Goliath. If Dublin refuse, as they have done so far this year, to accept mere celebrity as their reward they could walk through bonus territory to the promised land.

Why not? As the other great American poet said, “when you ain’t got nothin’ you got nothin’ to lose”.