Locker Room: The Emperor Nero fancied himself as something of an entertainer and periodically, despite public demand, he would tour with a large entourage, thousands of whom were claquers - or people whose responsibility it was to provide applause no matter how dire the entertainment.
During performances by the emperor nobody was allowed to leave the theatre and contemporary accounts speak of men being so bored that they "furtively dropped down from walls at the rear or shammed dead and were carried away for burial." Fortunately, fire and safety regulations allowed regular patrons to leave Croke Park early yesterday as even among the massed ranks of the Mayo claquers there must have been guilty thoughts of slipping out and beating the traffic when just 10 minutes of the calamity had passed.
As for myself, when the crushing news came that there was going to be four whole minutes of time added on, I vaulted forward to the front of the press box and passed like a show jumper over the railing and out into dreamy oblivion. My landing in the lower deck of the Hogan some seconds later made road kill of several Mayo supporters, but their relatives shook my hand and thanked me for ending the sufferings of the deceased.
What is there to say about Mayo this morning? Only the sourest and most damaged of curmudgeons would have begrudged them an All-Ireland title yesterday morning. Not many Kerry men considered the possibility of defeat in the run up to yesterday's game but the few who were placed at gunpoint and forced to think about such a calamity conceded there could be worse ways to lose than against a backdrop of Mayo celebration.
And yet when it was over, there were men and women in the red and green, the most loyal supporters in the country, I would argue, shaking their heads and rolling their eyes and deciding to take an interest in something else, anything else.
There must be other forms of masochism which wouldn't hurt as much as following Mayo does.
Neutrals, meanwhile, were positively annoyed at having called in favours to get tickets. And Kerry people, nature's diplomats in victory, were lost for the precise words with which to express their feelings for Mayo. Sympathy was part of what they wanted to express but English has no word for the simple desire to go into the losing dressingroom with a fistful of smelling salts and an inquiry as to what the hell just happened.
Yesterday, Mayo were pushovers. While Kerry ran in their winning margin in the opening few minutes we played little games with ourselves in the press box. Cliché Derby: Mayo were coming apart like a cheap suit, no wait, more like a two-bit grifter's alibi or a reality show marriage. Kerry were going through them like hot knives through butter, like liver salts through an incontinent duck, like Twink through public embarrassments.
There's nothing to say to Mayo except words of condolence. Mickey Moran and John Morrison are a smart managerial team. Just last month they cajoled a side from a county whose history is pockmarked by footballing catastrophe to come back and beat Dublin. We hailed Mayo football as cured forever of its crippling self doubts.
Now this. There may never be enough clues lifted from the wreckage of this final for them to figure out what went wrong and why. Best to start again. Change the county name and colours. Have a Stalinist purge on history and the faces of failure.
Lordee! Those opening 10 minutes yesterday were stunning and gruesome all at once. You imagined how many times Mayo had told themselves to stay tight for the opening quarter, they must have those pacts, don't let Kerry settle, stop them playing first and then impose your game on them.
For a team whose mantra has been the phrase , "you only lose if you quit" they would have been forgiven if they had disappeared under an avalanche of their own resignation letters during the first quarter.
There have been times down through the years (the much overrated 1989 final for instance) when Mayo's tendency to go all loosey goosey on big match days has been misinterpreted as a charming contribution to exciting games. Yesterday so excessively generous was their loosey goosiness that they appeared to be merely dressing the stage for an exhibition of Kerry set dancing.
It's funny but during last week we were attempting to think of reasons why Mayo might win. In logic , as you know, Mayo came equipped with a team of fine footballers who should have had a great chance yesterday. Yet something in the back of the mind kept heckling at us. Get real. wake up and smell the coffee (when you are a sports hack even your subconsciousness heckles in cliches). Look Bozo, said the voices, Mayo don't beat Kerry on days in September. Full stop. The analysis can come later.
Hmmm. The differences between yesterday's sides in terms of football skill and achievement this summer is negligible. It's just that the evolutionary outcome of Mayo's wretched last 55 years of football failure is permanent flakiness.
In Kerry, meanwhile, things are different, winning is bred into the bone. You could see it in the drawn minor game yesterday. Roscommon were fantastically brave and lovely footballers. Kerry were wonderfully self-assured, though. When Roscommon went a point up late on through a Devaney free, Kerry merely swept downfield and scored two extraordinarily confident points from play in the space of seconds.
Kerry got caught by a fine equaliser in injury-time but you could see the confidence oozing out of them even as they swapped jerseys and headed for a replay. They'd had a job to do. The job was unfinished. They'd tie it up the next day.
That self-assurance comes from a culture of consistent winning and excellence. It comes from the habit of doing the hard things again and again. And that self-assurance is a product of more that, though. It's not doing things either.
If walking slowly and theatrically towards Hill 16 can't do it for you neither can an endless series of huddles or a reliance on gimmicks.
An eminent Kerry football man of our acquaintance watched the Dubs do all those things this summer and hoped that for the Dubs sake "they weren't believing their own bullshit."
When the pressure comes on in front of 82,000 in Croke Park you either know how to make the right decisions on and off the pitch or you don't.
Kerry know how. They don't submit bad All-Ireland final appearances. Occasionally they lose in September and sometimes they just don't have the players to get over the final hurdle but damn it, they know what they are doing.
This summer has been quintessential Kerry. Everyone else talking about them and their sufferings and strife while Kerry quietly keep their eye on the prize. There was indeed trouble between two Kerry players last weekend, club rivals in north Kerry, they had to be torn apart. It was in the course of a full-scale practice match in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, though, and everyone walked away grinning. The hunger was just at the right pitch. Meanwhile, outside, the rumour factory was still issuing grey smoke from its tall chimneys.
Kerry were superb yesterday. When a team flatlines like Mayo did it can be easy for the opposition to subconsciously bring the level of their own play down a notch or two. Kerry kept looking for the higher gears of intensity, though.
When they were 10 points up they wanted to be 11 points up. The only hint of charity came when Séamus Moynihan fisted a point over the Mayo bar instead of taking what would have been his first ever championship goal.
For Jack O'Connor this season has been quite a feat of management. He gambled hugely on several occasions but never more so than this week when he stuck Declan O'Sullivan back into the number 11 jersey. If Eoin Brosnan's supporters had a gripe it was that Eoin wasn't shoving Tommy Griffin out of midfield but O'Sullivan is seen as O'Connor's clubmate and acolyte and there would have been Dromid men's blood on the streets if it had all backfired yesterday.
Everything worked perfectly. O'Sullivan showed the footballer he is. Griffin too. And Brosnan got a goal and a points' worth of the action.
An odd and slightly surreal way to end the season. A finale which only a claquer could clap. Yet so many things to savour and admire on the video. Kerry are back at the pinnacle doing what they do best. We, their subjects, salute them.
