Laugh if you will about the referee's final shrill of the whistle so quickly into injury time - what, 40 seconds? - and the new rows of seats that it will pay for. Already, we can hear the mocking birds singing: "Ha, ha, that's the Grab All Association for you." But, come on, who wouldn't want to be in Croke Park again on Saturday week for the replay of the All-Ireland football final?
So what if Pat McEnaney ignored, or simply forgot about, the slow kick-outs, or the times when players needed attention. Yesterday, we had fantasy football. We had sport in its most raw state. We had unadulterated passion, enough to take the breath away (and it did for most in the attendance of 63,349). We had a game that gave us every facet - bar a goal - of what makes Gaelic football great. Mistakes and brilliance and amateur sportsmen raising the temperature far beyond the weathermen's assertion that it was just 17 degrees out on the pitch. In truth, it was boiling.
Kerry and Galway must meet again to decide the first winners of the Sam Maguire in this millennium and, if the GAA's bank manager is happy, then so be it. That extra couple of million will come in handy to be sure.
Brian McEniff, manager of the Irish International Rules team, may not share everyone else's enthusiasm for a re-match - his side take on Australia on the day after the replay - but at least the Aussies will get to see our Grand Final in the flesh.
That yesterday's match brought about such excitement by the end was a wonder at all, given the situation 25 minutes into the game. At that stage, Kerry - like thoroughbreds racing against the farmer's plough horse - were seven points ahead, 0-8 to 0-1, and Galway's mentors, demonstrating much cooler heads than their increasingly frustrated supporters behind the wire, were forced to make switches and swaps all over the place.
In those early exchanges, there was a buzz whenever Michael Frank Russell got the ball (which was often), while Liam Hassett, wearing the number 14 jersey but who moved out to centre-half forward before the throw-in in a switch with Dara O Cinneide, popped up all over the place and rowed in with a couple of fine points, too, in an inspirational display.
Around the middle of the field, Kerry were utterly dominant. Not only did Darragh O Se and Donal Daly outjump their markers time after time, but a succession of Kerrymen hoovered up any loose ball. The supply route into Russell was quick and lethal, with his original marker, Ray Silke, eventually switching corners with Tomas Meehan. Kerry were so scintillating that we wondered could there be any way back for Galway.
And, of course, there was a way back. That man mountain from Killanin, Kevin Walsh, was thrown into the fray in place of Joe Bergin to immediately good effect, and Padraig Joyce was released from Seamus Moynihan's chains and dispatched to centre half forward in a dramatic reshuffle in the Galway attack. Everything changed and, by the break, Kerry's lead had been reduced from a mind-numbing seven points down to just three, 0-10 to 0-7. The game was on.
Was this a route towards respectability, or something more, for Galway? Kerry's immediate response after the break suggested that they had weathered the storm as, firstly, O Cinneide and then Darragh O Se kicked the first two points of the half. Back five points ahead, we waited and waited for Kerry to strut their stuff. Instead, Galway rolled up their sleeves even further and slowly but surely chiselled away at the difference.
Even the long-awaited introduction of Maurice Fitzgerald, to the loudest roar of the day, failed to re-ignite Kerry's fire. In fact, for the time that Fitzgerald was on the pitch, Galway out-scored them by three points to one. But, by then, the momentum was definitely with the westerners.
On a pitch that was quite heavy, and actually poor in certain sections (particularly in the corner where what were the Cusack and Canal End stands meet), it didn't come as any surprise to see players wilting as the final whistle approached. And, yet, both sides created match-winning chances: Galway twice, with Sean Og de Paor and Derek Savage both opting to shoot instead of pass to better-placed team-mates, and, finally, Kerry substitute Denis O'Dwyer putting his kick narrowly on the wrong side of the upright.
And that was that, back again on Saturday week to do it all over again. Niall Finnegan wasn't the least bit surprised that the referee's whistle sounded so promptly. "Once we got to 35 minutes, we all knew what was going to happen," he quipped.
"It was as if we won the first half, and they won the second," remarked Russell. "You can't afford to give a team like Galway a second chance and they came back at us."
Galway manager John O'Mahony's head was still swirling in the minutes after the draw. "I'm still trying to get my head around it," he admitted. "After 20 minutes or so, we'd have been happy enough to take a draw. But in the last 10 to 15 minutes, we might have won it. That's the way it goes. We'll take it in and come again."
