Sting in the tail proved fatal for Monaghan

Gaelic football: Keith Dugganreflects on a memorable afternoon when Kerry had to dig deep to keep their quest for a second successive All-Ireland title on track

As the curtain falls on another football season, another affirmation of the enduring splendour of the Kerry standard, the words of Séamus McEnaney serve as an epitaph. "Like I had my heart taken out without surgery," was how the Monaghan man explained his feelings after his team were knocked out of the All-Ireland quarter-finals through a desperately late surge from the defending champions.

Given the parlous state of the health service in this country, it was a topical simile and, boy, was it honest. You could see the hurt in Séamus's brown eyes. In body, he stood in the antiseptic silence of the corridors underneath Croke Park. But in mind and spirit he was still up there on the field, his head reeling with a million questions and his heart burning to shoulder time back just a few precious minutes, no more than 10, so that his Monaghan boys might have another chance, might do things that little bit differently.

The championship is such a meandering, epic project it seems wrong that it can all turn so furiously and suddenly. It seems daft that it should boil down to minutes and seconds.

With 66 minutes gone, Monaghan had a two-point lead and Kerry had looked prosaic all afternoon. The champions looked stuck in third gear. And this was a mean Monaghan defence: organised, muscular and clever. Denying the concession of two points over four minutes and whatever discretionary time David Coldrick felt the game merited should have been grist to the mill.

Around the stadium, Monaghan people chuckled uneasily about a draw and held their breaths. But they were just being polite. In their minds, Monaghan people were there for the kill. That had been the form of their team.

Now, Bryan Sheehan, fresh on the field and giddy with a point to prove, was moving with supreme composure through the centre of the Monaghan defence and he scored a point. Within a minute, he had clipped the equaliser. Now, the pressure came crashing down on Monaghan, a rogue wave of relentless power. Now, with time ticking down, every mistake counted. But surely Kerry wouldn't . . .

And yet here was Tomás Ó Sé on one of his cavalier, weaving bursts from the half-back line. The quietest of the Ó Sé brothers has garlanded Kerry's modern All-Ireland years with these deadly, unexpected attacks which seem born of impatience with the men ahead of him and to serve as a warning bell for what must happen next.

We watched transfixed as Ó Sé played a return pass with Colm Cooper and then elected to fist his point. Even as he raced back up the field, Ó Sé's intercession had changed the mood of the afternoon, like a sudden blast of cold wind and shadow alerting revellers on the beach.

Out of the blue, Monaghan folk had goose pimples and veterans used to these afternoons smiled wryly and declared that this was just the kind of game Kerry needed. And after receiving the slain heroes' encore - the farewell - the Monaghan boys shut their dressingroom door and asked themselves how - how in the name of God - they had just been beaten out there.

They were not alone. Waterford, Cork (twice) and Dublin joined Monaghan on the short list of counties over whom Kerry marched to All-Ireland title number 35. It may not have been a vintage year but it established this Kerry team as special. No team had retained the All-Ireland title since Billy Morgan's Cork team in 1990 - the last football triumph for the Rebel county.

The last Kerry team to successfully defend the title had been the 1986 vintage, and at the conclusion of that championship, Kerry's winning years stopped abruptly. This was their fourth final in a row and to the disbelief of the Cork crowd, it turned into another September procession, with Kerry obliterating Cork just as they had done Mayo the year before.

There had been slight misgivings about the relative ease with which Cork had made the final, with comfortable wins over spluttering Sligo and Meath sides. But nobody anticipated a landslide. The final score was 3-13 to 1-9. It meant that Kerry had won their last three titles by an aggregate of 31 points, and afterwards the talk was of dynasties.

"The greats are the greats but maybe we can create a new dynasty," Paul Galvin, who will captain the county next season, noted on that afternoon.

So Kerry will gun for a three-in-a-row and with Darragh Ó Sé guaranteed to return in search of a sixth All-Ireland medal, the contenders know what to expect. With Kerry, there are few mysteries.

But the championship left many other counties with hard thinking to do. Out west, Mayo and Galway misfired and Sligo stepped in to add novelty to the summer, claiming an emotional Connacht title for the first time since 1975. Dublin delivered in Leinster as expected but fell again at the All-Ireland semi-final.

And if their match against Kerry was heavyweight in quality and tight until the finish, it ultimately finished as another defeat and the pressure, the public requirement, that Dublin appear in - and win - an All-Ireland final will intensify next season.

There were glaring signs that Ulster has had its day. Donegal again flattered to deceive, playing some fine football on their way to an historic first league title and then finally earning a break against their old nemesis, Armagh.

But that was the last sting of a dying wasp: instead of being liberated by felling Joe Kernan's team, Donegal disappeared, losing heavily to Tyrone before ultimately getting knocked out by Monaghan. Armagh's vulnerability in close games continued: Derry beat them by a point in the qualifiers, a loss that presaged the end of the Kernan era. While Tyrone won the Ulster title, they went out against Meath, the surprise package of the championship, in a messy, thrilling Saturday match in Croke Park.

The general impression was of hyperfit teams more or less at the same stage of evolution, anxious and harassed into making mistakes. Nowhere in evidence was the icy, methodical brilliance that Armagh demonstrated in their best years.

Nowhere was the poised, mercurial skill and the mental toughness that Tyrone evinced in 2003 and 2005. Nowhere was the sheer delight in ball-playing that characterised the best years of Galway.

No, Monaghan, the hardiest of flowers, were the alternative success of the championship, but ultimately they missed out on the chance to beat Kerry.

Managers went in abundance. Billy Morgan found himself roughly treated by the native apparatchiks after taking the county team back to the brink of national silverware. Player discontent rumbled on, culminating in the threat to strike and the eventual announcement that the Government grants scheme had been approved.

The GPA originated in Ulster and it was from that province that the loudest voices of protest now emanated, with declarations that the grants were a de facto version of pay for play. They said it could spell the death of the GAA.

It was an undistinguished year of turbulence, then, and the season ahead could be bumpy too, both in the administrative offices and on the playing fields. But Kerry remain as smooth as ever. It is 35 titles and counting now, with a three-in-a-row on the horizon. The task is clear.

What we already knew . . .

When no outstanding team presents itself, Kerry will win the All-Ireland championship. Cork athletes and Cork administrators rarely see eye to eye. Dublin must play smarter.

What we learned . ..

The league is no reliable barometer. Ulster football has slipped back considerably.

What might happen . . .

Cork may field a second-string team and Kerry will win the Munster championship but may get caught at the All-Ireland quarter-final stage. Tyrone will get their act together again. Dublin will reach an All-Ireland final.