TV VIEW:Liam O'Neill leads the conga line after blazing Joe shows some pluck with that final puck

DES CAHILL wished Liam O’Neill well on Up for the Match, on the eve of his first All-Ireland final since becoming GAA president. “I’m hoping for the first draw since 1959,” he smiled in reply, to which the maroon-clad Gráinne Seoige could only gasp: “my heart couldn’t stand it”. The bulk of the audience, no matter their allegiance, nodded in fretful agreement.

By full-time, then, O’Neill and his calculator-wielding, euro-counting officials were possibly doing the conga in the stands, pausing only to genuflect in Joe Canning’s direction, the black and amber and maroon and white flag- and hat-sellers outside doing so much high-fiving their palms were stinging.

The rest of Croke Park’s occupants, though, were stretched after the drama of it all, no one entirely sure whether to be relieved, gutted or exhilarated.

A little bit of all three, you’d imagine.

“Wow,” said Liam Sheedy back in the studio, and that about summed it up, really. RTÉ could have stopped their post-match analysis right there, just bidding us farewell with a “see you on September 30th”.

There are, we’ll have to concede, however reluctantly, one or two factors that separate those of us who watch these occasions on telly from those who actually participate in them. Talent, brilliance, commitment, dedication, determination, character, those class of things, being among them. Pluck, though, is another. Almighty pluck.

And you sensed they were a bit pluckless in the RTÉ commentary box in those dying seconds, Ger Canning and Michael Duignan, by the sounds of them, hardly able to watch as Canning – Joe, not Ger — stepped up to take that free.

And that would have been problematic, seeing as all the Kilkenny and Galway folk back home were depending on them for the good/bad news as they lodged themselves behind their couches.

Ger: “Did it go over?”

Michael: “It must have – the Galway people have spontaneously combusted.”

That wouldn’t have done.

It was one of those awesome/horrific (delete according to your loyalties) sporting moments, the pressure on Canning so preposterously unimaginable it will remain forever a mystery his knees weren’t jellified, as were those of even viewers with divil a horse in the race.

At half-time, Cyril Farrell, chatting pitch-side with Darragh Maloney, noted “Joe Canning’s on fire”, which meant the latter had followed Ger Loughnane’s pre-match advice that Galway “meet fire with an inferno”. Blazing, he was.

So, were Galway about to do it again, repeating their success of just a few years ago?

“Twenty-four years ago the Olympics were about to be staged in Seoul, Ray Houghton had already put ball in the back of the English net, Who Framed Roger Rabbit was in the cinemas, Enya was top of the charts and a pint of stout cost you the equivalent of 1.80 – it was 1988.”

Lovely, that was Ger reminding us that time has flown so supersonically, we’re appreciably older than we like to think we are. Yes, 24 years since Galway last triumphed. And it only seems a month since Roger Rabbit was the centre of our lives.

“Can Galway do it?”, Claire McNamara asked a group of Galway supporters, some of whom were wearing sombreros, evidently the county’s traditional headwear.

“No bother to them, they’ll crucify the Cats,” said one fella, which led to loud guffawing from the Kilkenny contingent, one of whom must have had some Galway blood because he too was wearing a sombrero.

Everyone up for it, then.

Earlier on TV3, before their coverage of the minor final between Dublin and Tipperary – another draw, making it the kind of day Liam O’Neill thought only existed in his dreams – John Allen likened Kilkenny to elephants, but he was paying homage to their collective brawn, rather than suggesting they were less than slender.

The elephantine Cats had no answer to Galway in those opening moments, though, not least when Canning did his goal-scoring thing, Kilkenny racking up so many wides you wondered if they could even hit Dumbo’s backside with a banjo, so to speak.

“Kilkenny haven’t clicked,” said Michael Lyster at half-time. (Off topic: is this telly malfunctioning, or was Michael taken hostage by an over-exuberant make-up artist earlier in the day?) “They haven’t been allowed to click,” said Loughnane, which was true enough.

But then, King Henry. Ah, you know yourself.

And then Prince Joe.

“Epic stuff,” said Loughnane come full-time, “my God, everyone around us had their hearts in their mouths.” And it’s ‘a poor heart that never rejoices’.

Ask Liam O’Neill. Once he stops doing the conga.