The Sporting Year - Review and Preview

After Mayo lost the All-Ireland Final to Donegal in 2012, a football man, a fatalist, and a personal friend of the blog remarked that this could be the beginning of an unprecedented era in Mayo football, where the heather county would manage an unprecedented feat of losing three finals in a row.

We’re two up on that now so those of you unlucky enough to be from somewhere other than the sweet county Mayo may excuse us if we’re a little twitchy in the year ahead, and whistle past every graveyard we see. James Horan has committed to another year, and the crusade will begin again in New York City in May. Fingers crossed.

The main story in Gaelic football was of course Dublin, who won their second title in three years and are showing all the makings of a dynasty. They have the best squad of players they’ve had since the 1970s, and the best coaching and management. They’re the team to beat in 2014, no question.

A rebuilt Kerry will be interesting, God only knows what Cork will be like, Tyrone are a team it’s hard to be fully convinced about and if you’re looking for a dark horse you could do worse than Galway, curse them.

It’s hard to see Donegal reaching the heights again, there’s no reason to expect Meath or Kildare to raise the bar in Leinster, which means that we could be looking at our first repeat matchup in the All-Ireland Final since 2009. Mayo are looking good for those three losses in a row alright.

In hurling, Clare were deserving champions as Davy Fitzgerald answered his critics for once and for all. To read the papers during the Championship was to be told that John Allen, Jimmy Barry-Murphy and Anthony Daly were the Balthazar, Melcior and Casper of hurling, while Davy Fitz was some sort of monkey that only recently swung down out a tree.

But Davy outgeneralled them all, tying Limerick in knots in the semi-final, playing an unexpectedly traditional lineup against Cork in the drawn final and then pulling a substitution masterstroke in the replay. Cork fought to the end and their iconic manager proved his class once more by looking on those two imposters, success and failure, and treating them just the same.

In rugby, the long-anticipated end of the Lions Tour was brought closer by Sky Sports’ genuinely awful coverage of the 2013 campaign. By the end it was hard to escape the conclusion that Will Greenwood would see a trip to the shops for a pound of tea as a timeless Odyssey across a desolate, barren plain, while Scott Quinnell would declare Samson bringing down the Philistine towers as one and the same with his opening the curtains of a morning. The level of hype was ridiculous, embarrassing and one of the reasons why so many non-rugby people find the Lions a joke.

Of course, the Lions touring Australia of all countries was half the problem. The Lions tour only works in countries were rugby is king, which means New Zealand or South Africa. Australia was only added to the schedule when South Africa was in its apartheid exile, and should have been swiftly removed once the Springboks returned. There is a better case to be made for the Lions touring Argentina than Australia. The Australian public could not give a stuff about rugby and indifference is a much greater enemy to the tradition of the Lions than countless hammerings at the hands of the All-Blacks.


As for the tour itself, there was shock, horror, hurt and genuine sorrow at home when Brian O’Driscoll was dropped for the third test but, in the bigger picture, the team justified Warren Gatland’s decision by not just winning, but by destroying Australia. A bad ending for O’Driscoll, but the correct call by management.

O’Driscoll is on his goodbye tour now – all rugby people’s one wish now is that this great man just doesn’t get hurt. It would perhaps have been better if he had retired, but Brian Moore was right when he said that if O’Driscoll were to retire, someone would have to retire him. A brave man fights to the end. We have been lucky to have seen him.

In soccer, the return of Roy Keane was best summed up by Ken Early of the Second Captains, who tweeted “my own feeling about the o'neill/keane combo is an unfamiliar and almost unsettling sense of excitement, anticipation and wonder” on the second of November, when the news broke. And even though Martin O’Neill is the manager, it’s Roy Keane who’s the story, as ever. The team isn’t any good and people who think it will get good when the players whom Trapattoni didn’t wouldn’t pick return may be fooling themselves. But throughout all this there will be Keane, O’Driscoll’s brother from another mother, and for that a nation will count its blessings.

Being from Mayo is Just Great

The Palace Bar, Fleet Street - the south-western
corner of the Mayo triangle, September 21st, 2013.

First published in the Western People on Monday.

These are days of magic and wonder in the county Mayo. It’s not always obvious to us, just as it’s not always possible to see the wood from the trees when we’re in the wood. But in time, when the world has turned a little more, and the young have grown up and the old have passed on, it’ll be clear as crystal to those who can look back just how great these recent years have been.

Twenty years ago next summer, the Leitrim Observer was the butt of some cruel jokes when that newspaper published a map of Dublin with directions to Croke Park prior to Leitrim’s 1994 All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin. Ho, ho, ho, thought the bigshots. God love them down in Leitrim, lost in the big city.

But it hadn’t been so long since Croke Park was a mystery to the County Mayo as well. It took twelve long years between 1969 and 1981 for Mayo to win the Nestor Cup, and the win over Tyrone in 1989 was Mayo’s first summertime win in Croke Park in thirty-eight years. Cities change a lot in thirty-eight years; we could have printed a map ourselves, and found it useful.

Now? Now, the people of Mayo know Croke Park as well as we know Croagh Patrick – backwards. We know where to park, where to eat, where to stay, where the good seats are, why it’s not wise in an age of austerity to buy from the concession stands inside or from the hats, flags and headbands men outside. We can spot a ticket scalper from fifty paces, and a man with a spare ticket from one hundred. We meet the same faces in the same places, tell the same jokes and dream the same dreams.

And we’re dreaming yet, of course. The ashy taste in the mouth come five to five on those third Sundays is something we could do without, and you can read better informed opinion on the finer points of the football side of things in the sports pages. But on the social side of things, on the cultural side of things, on what it means to the people of Mayo, at home and abroad – these are days of magic and wonder.

By the time August rolls around, three quarters of the counties in Ireland have resigned themselves to watching the Championship on telly, with no shouting interest. Not us. Mayo are consistently in the first division of the League, and consistently in the final eight of the Championship for the past twenty years. How many other counties can say that? How many other counties carry their banners to the capital, year after year, summer after summer?

For who knows what reason, the stars seemed to align on the Saturday night before the All-Ireland this year. There are two approaches to the All-Ireland Final always – either have a settler or two at home and travel up in the morning, or travel up on Saturday and do your settling in the city on Saturday night.

As your correspondent is currently exiled in the city, this isn’t an issue. Normally, the plan is to have one or two in town and then get home at a Christian hour, the better to rest for the trials ahead. This column made the same plan this year – town, few pints, home on the last bus.

But, for whatever reason, there was something happening in Dublin city that night. Something Mayo. Thanks to the Mayo GAA Blog, the best Irish sports resource on the world wide web bar none, it’s become a thing to assemble in a bar called Bowe’s, on Fleet Street, just south of O’Connell Bridge, before big Mayo matches. And on this particular night, it seemed like everybody in the county was in a transplanted Mayo triangle, formed by O’Connell Bridge, Bowe’s on the eastern side of Fleet Street and the famous Palace Bar to the west.

In Bowe’s, I met my cousin’s daughter, a child in my mind, a clever, chic and sophisticated young woman in reality. In the Palace, I met another cousin, home from Northampton for this most Mayo of events.

We sometimes forget how big Mayo is, and what a distance there is from north to south, from east to west. On that Saturday night, the plain of yews seemed to shrink to that one triangle in the capital, as we compared townland pronunciations, memories of past teams and dreams of the future.

After the disappointment of the All-Ireland Final, Keith Duggan wrote in the Irish Times that it isn’t that Mayo people don’t care about football; it’s that we care too much. And Duggan had a point, up to a point.

We do care too much. Football in Mayo isn’t just football. It’s everything we were, are, and hope to be. Everything that has gone wrong in our lives, everything that we regret, everything that we wish for, is wrapped into the fabric of the jersey that features the green above the red, and that’s an awful lot of weight to carry in one jersey in any one year.

And when Mayo do with their fourth All-Ireland we’ll find that it hasn’t solved everything. That regret is still real, that what’s done can’t be undone, that not all wishes come true. But when that small disappointment subsides, we’ll realise that what we want is what we had all along – the togetherness of it all, the adventure, the having something to look forward to all summer, the camaraderie under the green and red flags and banners, and the heady and thrilling pride of being from such a place as the sweet County Mayo.

Happy Christmas, one and all, and especially to yet another cousin whom I met high up with the eagles on the big day itself and who told me he enjoyed the column. See you next year, Mike. Up Mayo.

All-Stars and the All-Ireland Final

Des Cahill, genial host of the Sunday Game, tweeted an interesting question after the All-Stars presentation on Friday night. Not interesting in the way that getting figs into fig rolls is interesting but interesting in that the All-Stars give us the last occasion to have a row over GAA affairs in the year. We know they don’t matter but dammit, what else is there?

Des Cahill’s question was this: in the light of no Mayo forwards getting an All-Star this year, despite Mayo having gotten to the All-Ireland Final and having the top scorer of the Championships among their ranks, when was the last time this happened? When was the last time not one forward on a team that participated in the All-Ireland final failed to win an All-Star?

Funnily enough, it wasn’t that long ago at all. But even funnier, it wasn’t the runners-up who drew the duck egg up front.

Cork, All-Ireland Champions of 2010, had no All-Star forwards in 2010. Down, whom Cork beat in the final, had three – Marty Clarke, now in the land down under, Danny Hughes and Benny Coulter. The other three were Kildare’s John Doyle, the Gooch and Dublin’s Bernard Brogan, who also won footballer of the year.

The All-Ireland runners-up have failed to win an All-Star among the forwards seven times in the 42-year existence of the All-Stars – Mayo this year, Cork in 2007, Mayo again in 1997, Galway in 1983, Roscommon in 1980, Dublin in 1979 and Kerry in 1972.

The 1979 forward unit was made up of four Kerrymen – Ger Power, Seán Walsh, Pat Spillane and Mikey Sheehy - Seán Lowry of Offaly and Joe McGrath of Mayo. McGrath was there because of an epic display in the Connacht Final when he belted 2-5 past Roscommon. The fact that Mayo still lost by eight points tells you something about just how good that Roscommon team were in their day.

1979 is one of six times that the All-Ireland winners have supplied four of the six forward All-Stars, which is the record for most forwards from one team. The other years were Tyrone in 2005, Kerry in 1981, 1980, and 1978, and Dublin in 1976. In the light of the negative pall that hangs over Mickey Harte’s Tyrone, it’s interesting to note that they got such a haul of creative players in 2005.

The record for the losing finalists is also four, which is held solely by Meath of 1991. Tommy Dowd, Brian Stafford, Colm O’Rourke and Bernie Flynn were joined by Greg Blaney and Ross Carr from the Down team that beat them in the final, taking Sam across the border for the first time since 1968.

Every All-Ireland winning team has had at least one back win an All-Star, while five runners-up failed to win any All-Stars in the backs at all – Down in 2010, Kerry in 2006, Mayo in 2006, Dublin in 1994 and Cork in 1993.

Midfield pairings are not common among All-Stars. The runners-up have only 14 midfielders of the 84 awarded, an indication of how important the position is. Only twice have both midfielders come from the same county, and the county won the All-Ireland that year – Kerry’s Jack O’Shea and Seán Walsh in 1981, and Derry’s Anthony Tohill and Brian McGilligan in 1993.

There is less of a spread in hurling, where not as many counties compete at the highest level. The All-Star hurling midfield has featured one or both counties that contested the All-Ireland eighteen times out of forty-two. Of these, the midfield of the Champions has taken both positions three times – this year, 2003 and 2001, while the runners-up have taken both positions once, something that never happened in football. However, that year was 1994 and, although it was small consolation to them, it was the least Limerick’s imperious Mike Houlihan and magical Ciarán Carey deserved.

Is there a position where an All-Ireland final appearance or win especially helps to win an All-Star? Yes, there is - it's football goalkeeper. The All-Star goalkeeper has gone to a man between the sticks in September 33 of the 42 times it’s been awarded, in contrast to the 24 times in hurling.

Of the football goalkeepers, the goalkeeper has been on the winning team 20 out of those 33 times, with the losing goalkeeper winning 13 All-Stars. The last time the All-Star went to a goalkeeper who watched the final from the stands or the comfort of his own home was 2008, when the award went to Gary Connaughton of Westmeath. Connachton was the third of a three-in-a-row of All-Star goalkeepers who didn’t participate in the All-Ireland Final – Stephen Cluxton won in 2007 and 2006.

Dublin have won 14 goalkeeping All-Stars since the awards began in 1971, shared between three men – Paddy Cullen has four, while John O’Leary and Cluxton have five each. Cluxton is probably good for a few more too and, if he had won Footballer of the Year as well this year, few could have argued against it.

Mayo Football Is Alive and Well

William Smith O'Brien sporting
a Mayo flag yesterday

If a team loses an evenly-matched game by a point, there’s no great mystery in it. The reality of the 2013 Final is that if Mayo caught or broke the next kickout after Cillian O’Connor kicked the final point of the game, thirty seconds would have been an age to either kick the equaliser or engineer a free. That’s all that Mayo lost by. A hop of a ball. Nothing else.

Would that have been fair on Dublin? No. It wouldn’t. Dublin were the better team over the seventy minutes and deserved their second All-Ireland in three years. Mayo got off to a flyer but didn’t score commensurate with their dominance. A very bad goal to give away brought Dublin back, and then Dublin had the upper hand for the rest of the game without ever really putting Mayo away. If Mayo had caught that last kickout, today’s narrative would be about how this is a different Mayo team and about Dublin’s failure to close it out against Mayo’s worst display of the year.

But that’s not what happened. Mayo didn’t field the final kickout and that was the end of them. Things could very easily have gone differently, and although Dublin deserved to win, that doesn’t mean that Mayo couldn’t have snatched a draw. Think of the events of 1996, when the shoe was on the other foot.

But this is only your correspondent’s opinion, of course. A quick flick through yesterday’s papers suggests a different analysis.

I have always, and will always, maintain [sic] that a team will not win an All-Ireland without a marquee forward.
Eoin "The Bomber" Liston, Irish Independent.

But whereas last week I said to myself that if Mayo lost this final it would be a massive setback because they were so good and well prepared, I now feel that they are certainly capable of going further – but not unless they can unearth a forward or two that could be ranked in the top 10 [sic] in the country.
Eugene McGee, Irish Independent.

Interesting, isn’t it? McGee isn’t always noted for his sympathy to Mayo, but the old buster is the only man for whom the penny has dropped about just how tantalisingly close Mayo were yesterday. Closer than even McGee himself realises.

McGee and the Bomber an the rest trot out this same old stuff about Mayo’s lack of quality forwards every year, each man going to stable to take out the same old hobbyhorses for a gallop around the paddock. These are the same people – well, except McGee; he’s always been very careful of letting Mayo support get big-headed – who’ve been telling us all summer long this is the new-model-Mayo, completely different from the one that went before. One game later, and it turns out to be same-old-Mayo all along.

But they can’t have it both ways. They can’t say that Alan Dillon has been the one shining light upfront for Mayo in ten years and then turn around and say Alan Dillon never had it. Alan Dillon just isn’t big time.

They can’t say that Mayo were crippled last year by the loss of Andy Moran and then say well, you know, Andy Moran has never been a top-ten forward.

The greatest mystery of all is that of Cillian O’Connor. Cillian O’Connor has racked up 6-22, an average of eight points a game to make him the top scorer in this year’s Championship, and then turn around and say that Mayo don’t have one marquee forward. If the top-scorer of the Championship isn’t a marquee forward, who in God’s holy name is?

The argument, insofar as an argument exists, is that many of O’Connor’s scores were put up against children of a lesser god; that is to say, that they were scored in the Connacht Championship.

You don’t see anyone holding their noses when James O’Donoghue scores 1-3 against mighty Tipperary or when Cork’s Daniel Goulding pops five points past hapless Limerick. Tipp and Limerick? Titans of football. Galway and Roscommon? Bums and makeweights. As for why O’Connor’s 3-4 against the All-Ireland Champions themselves doesn’t count, your correspondent really doesn’t know.

But it seems that football pundits just don’t care. When it comes to Mayo they are only interested in taking the hobbyhorse over the jumps rather than looking at what’s just happened.

If the Mayo full-forward line yesterday wore any jersey other than the green above the red, they would have been given the benefit of the doubt. People are second-guessing James Horan on his substitution of Alan Freeman, but look at the choice he had picking his team during the week.

Horan knows that there are issues with the form of the wing forwards, that Keith Higgins is marking a man who doesn’t need marking because he doesn’t attack and that Andy Moran and Cillian O’Connor are both walking wounded.

All of that is bad enough, but then the one man who is in form becomes ill during the week and there’s now a question mark over all six of the Mayo forwards. Every blessed one of them.

What could Horan do? He did the only thing he could. He danced with the ones who brung him, and hoped for the best. Is he given any credit for it? Does anybody say it’s a medical miracle that Cillian O’Connor played at all? Does anyone say that you can’t start a totally new inside line in the All-Ireland final of all games? That not even Kerry could do that?

No they don’t. Same old Mayo, they say. If Lee Harvey Oswald had been a Mayoman, JFK would be alive today. Ho ho ho. Giddy-up there, hobbyhorse.

Fair enough. It’s all only paper talk, after all. Perhaps the real proof of the pudding was in McHale Park last night, where eight thousand turned up to see the minors and seniors come home. That’s what football means in the County Mayo.

People are saying that Mayo will never come back from this. We all believe what we must but reader, if you are from outside Mayo think on this; any team with the two O’Sheas starting in midfield will have a fifty-fifty chance in every single game it plays, and the O’Sheas have a good few years in them yet. Mayo go away? Dream on. Mayo are only starting out.

FOCAL SCOIR: Best of luck to Dublin manager Jim Gavin in his attempt to become the fourth member of the Après Match team with his post-match comments about the referee on Sunday. This sort of zaniness is just what tickles the Irish funny bone. Roll on Brazil ’14!

Respect and the County Mayo

First published in the Western People on Monday.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T – find out what it means to me, because, in truth, it’s been something of a source of debate in the county over these past few weeks, if not the past few years. How do you get it – is it bestowed on you? Is respect like Shakespeare’s lovely description of mercy in The Merchant of Venice – does it drop like the gentle rain of Heaven unto the place beneath? Or is it only given to those who take their lesson from Henry V, and disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage? Is respect something to be won, just like the game of football itself?

Was it the presence of fair nature and the absence of hard-favour’d rage that denied Mayo respect for years? “Ye’re too nice,” people from other counties would say. Your correspondent watched the Sunday Game of the 1997 Final in a village in Meath where the locals were more than a little bemused by a team that would allow itself to be beaten by one man. Being too nice hasn’t been a problem for Meath down the years.

This year, the pundits are talking about a new steel in Mayo, and there is undoubtedly a certainly solidity to the current Mayo team. But Colm McMenamon was the personification of the Mayo team of the mid-nineties, and there nothing soft about that iron man. Or think back to the second-last time Mayo played Dublin when the team’s march on the Hill turned out to be just an aperitif for the thrills to come – what was soft about those boys?

One thing that is soft, and in more ways than one, is the attitude in Mayo now that there was nothing to be done about some of the recent All-Ireland defeats. That Mayo had as much chance before Kerry in 2004 and 2006 as the frog had before the harrow. But that’s not necessarily true – there is no such thing as an unbeatable team. Ask Pep Guardiola. Ask Brian Cody. Even Jim McGuinness himself may not be quite as sure of a team’s manifest destiny as he seemed to be.

Replaying those lost-All-Irelands in the what-if torture chamber of the mind, people are now coming to the conclusion that you won’t get any of this thing, respect, until you win an All-Ireland. That respect is one of the spoils of victory.

But then, that hasn’t always been the case either. There exists such a thing as the “soft” All-Ireland, in the culture if not in the actuality. Cork’s All-Ireland in 2010 wasn’t soft, but it wasn’t exactly glorious either. How much respect does that Cork team get, really?

When you think about it, this notion of respect is like an eel. The more you think you have it, the more it’s likely to slither out of your hand and back into the river. So let’s ask another question: who’s bright idea was it that whether or not Mayo, either the team, the land or the people, were to judged by someone, somebody or something outside ourselves?

For years in Mayo, the quest for an All-Ireland title itself wasn’t enough. Not only was the All-Ireland to be won, it had to be won by a team playing “the Mayo way” – flashy, stylish, knacky football, if you like. The changes that have overtaken the ancient game in the past decade have made that less of an imperative for people, but the need for “respect” is still there, nagging.

People at matches text the folks back home at half-time to find out what Joe Brolly or Pat Spillane is saying. They rush to the pundit pages of the paper to see what the one-time greats are writing about Mayo in the hope that either the pundits are giving Mayo “respect” or, better again, that they’re not so they can be read out from the high stool later. Who crowned those jokers pope?

What right has king, Kaiser or commentator to pass judgment on the County Mayo, her land, her people or her footballers? Respect comes from deep within the soul and the mind and the heart, and not from without.

Just put the paper down for a moment, take a look around, and take note of what you see. Depending on where you are, you can see Croagh Patrick, where the Apostle of the Irish went to commune with Almighty God himself. You might see Nephin, the most beautiful of mountains, or Lough Conn, most beautiful of lakes.

You may go to Ballycastle, where men worked the land over five thousand years ago. You may go to Erris to hear the most beautiful of Irish spoken, home and wellspring of the true Irish soul, and native heath of such laochra na Gaeilge as the poet Riocárd Bairéad and the scholar Seán Ó Ruadháin.

You may go to Killala and from there to Ballina and Foxford and Castlebar, following the path of General Humbert and the banner of Napoleon, the man who brought freedom, liberty and equality from France south to Egypt and east to Poland, and did his best to bring it here. The liberty tree was planted and the Republic of Connaught declared in Castlebar in 1798 – reader, how many other counties have declared a republic and stood for freedom over tyranny? Very few.

Respect? What need has Mayo of respect, when the county is so bathed in glory? Bedeck the cars, vans and caravans with the green above the red on Saturday night and Sunday morning. March on Croke Park just as Humbert marched on Castlebar, with drums sounding and fifes playing. And when Andy Moran holds Sam high in the Hogan Stand on Sunday remember that winning this cup doesn’t redeem Mayo for past failings – it’s just a very sweet grace note on the long and beautiful melody of Mayo’s everlasting glory.

De Dubbalin Man - a Natural History

First published in the Western People on Monday.

For all the diversity of its population, the true citizen of Dublin is convinced to his or her marrow of one fact that supersedes all others – Dublin is the greatest city in the world, and no-where else comes close. If you ask a Dubliner for a list of the greatest cities in the world, he or she will not hesitate to name his or her home town with New York, London, Paris, Rome and the rest.

Dublin is the standard against which all other things are measured. If you tell a Dubliner about the miracles of civil engineering that are the Brooklyn or Golden Gate bridges, or the rich history associated with the Pont Neuf in Paris or the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, he will concede your point out of politeness, but go on to remind you the O’Connell Bridge is actually wider than it is broad, and consider the matter settled.

Very few Dubliners have read Ulysses, but there isn’t a taxi driver in the city who will not give his oath that it’s the greatest novel ever written. The gods of Ancient Greece would have chucked their ambrosia out to the dog if only someone in Olympus could make coddle. And while Aoibheann Ní Shúilleabháin is certainly easy on the eye, for true female beauty the connoisseur should look no further than Mrs Agnes Browne. She’s a whole lotta woman, Mrs B.

Having the last word is very important to the Dublin man. It’s essential to his own self-respect that the Dublin man knows something you don’t and that he then deigns to share that something, out of the goodness of his heart.

For instance, Frank Sinatra died of a Tuesday fifteen years ago – at the time, your correspondent was desperately trying to reinvent himself by doing a FÁS course and catch up with the technological revolution. As I reached the office where the class was being held, I met a classmate, a native son of Anna Livia, outside the door, having a smoke. I told him the news, that Sinatra had been called home during the night. “Ah yeah,” said the Dub, taking a drag. “Frank Sinatra. A great man for singing.” Pause to exhale. “And dancing.”

And dancing. He couldn’t let it lie. It wasn’t in him. He was from Dublin, and I was not. He had to know something that I didn’t, and to make clear he knew. Strangely enough, he failed the course in the end – he mustn’t have known quite everything after all.

But with that sort of swagger in the city, that sort of bravado, you can imagine the regard with which the football team is held. Seán Ó Síocháin, former Árd-Stiúrthóir of the GAA, once told Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh that, before the modern information age, the worst fans in Ireland for buying programs were the Dubs. They already knew who was on their own team and they really didn’t care who was on the other team. The entire attitude of the city is summed up in that one observation.

Of course, once removed from the city, the Dubliner is a little less at his ease. He is puzzled when his culchie friends announce they want to move home, “for the sake of the kids.” He can’t understand how life can truly be lived in the absence of Clery’s, Croke Park and coddle. But he realises that his friends are culchies, after all, and feels more pity than anything.

The Dub’s own forays beyond the M50 are undertaken with same level of planning and grim-set determination as Stanley’s trip to Africa in search of Doctor Livingstone in the 19th Century. Sandwiches are packed, in case there is no food in the country. A medical bag is packed, in case there are no doctors. And most importantly of all, the driver is told to only stick to main roads insofar as that’s possible. So, if a party of Dubs are going to Westport for a big Saturday night, they will first go to Galway and hang a right. No point taking chances and breaking an axle in the tracks left by the cartwheels.

Some journalists in the national media are inclined to write how the city gets behind its boys in blue when those boys in blue are playing well, but that’s not really true. It’s been said that one of the reasons that the GAA has been so strong over the years is because of how deeply its embedded in local communities, but that is not true of Dublin.

The size of the city and the density of its population means that parish boundaries did not mean as much in the city as they did in the country. The city has always been culturally diverse – “Augustan Capital / Of a Gaelic nation,” as Louis MacNeice so eloquently put it – and the changing demographics of Ireland in the 21st Century have made it even more so.

Mayo people who have travelled long distances in the hope of a ticket but who strike out on the day should brace themselves for further disappointment when they have to repair to the pub to watch the game instead. You go in expecting a cathedral-like quiet as the congregation prepares for the greatest sporting and cultural event of the Irish year. What you get instead is Manchester City versus Manchester United, live from Eastlands on the big screen. And if you get Crystal Palace v Swansea as well, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

Dublin GAA people find this every bit as unbearable as anyone else. The true Dublin GAA people will live and die with every kick of the game on Sunday and will be well able to analyse it afterwards – one of the treats of 2006 semi-final was how well the Dublin fans handled their disappointment, and what good company they were afterwards. If this Dublin generation do win another All-Ireland, it won’t be begrudged to them by the County Mayo. Just so long as they do it next year. Any damned year, but this one. We’ve waited long enough.

All-Ireland Football Final Preview - Mayo v Dublin

Any sensible bettor looking at this year’s All-Ireland final has to bet the draw. Dublin are even money favourites, Mayo are 6/5 but the draw returns nine clams for every single clam invested, which isn’t too bad for a result that’s often 15/2 or thereabouts in games where draws are less likely.

Right now, a draw is the nightmare prospect because the country still rings with hunting horns as the faithful search for tickets and the prospect of having to do it again chills the blood. There is something fundamentally unsatisfying about the draw too, as Darragh Ó Sé remarked in last week’s Irish Times.

However, as last Sunday week’s hurling final showed, if a draw is the difference between getting another crack at it and losing an All-Ireland that you had in your pocket, you’ll take the draw and be glad of it.

We’ll have to wait and see how the final turns out. It’s one of the most eagerly-anticipated finals in years, and will no doubt show facets as it’s played that nobody expected, as big games so often do. What is certain is that the teams are the two best in Ireland this year, that they are the best exponents of the modern game this year, and that they are so similar as regards their football if they were people you would suspect them of being twins, separated at birth.

Both Dublin and Mayo play the high-tempo game that has evolved from the blanket Tyrone introduced ten years ago. It’s a version of the Dutch total football in soccer of the 1970s, where attackers are expected to defend and defenders are expected to attack.

The criticism that sometimes appears, about it being some sort of bad thing if a back scores more than a forward, is based on dial-up football, instead of the broadband that’s currently being played.

All outfield players’ first duty is to retain possession now – if a forward catches the ball and doesn’t shoot but recycles for another man to score, that point is just as good as one the forward might have scored himself. Go back and watch the last ten minutes of the first half of Mayo v Tyrone – that’s how the game works now at the highest level.

And this is the game both Mayo and Dublin play, and play well. It’s a kind of scorpion football – the opposition are watching those great pincers in the 13 and 15 shirts, only for tail to swish forward for the kill.

The differences between the teams are slight, and balance out overall. Mayo have an advantage in experience, having played in the final last year. Dublin won in 2011, but the team has seen a lot of changes since then – perhaps too many; we’ll wait and see. Dublin have home advantage, but that home advantage has been a double-edged sword in the past. The Hill has been known to shower its heroes with scorn as well as praise when things aren’t quite working out.

Dublin have a more mobile midfield in McAuley and O’Sullivan, whereas the O’Sheas have the advantage in terms of bone and muscle. Ger Brennan has nothing like the attacking potential of Dónal Vaughan, but Brennan has those gifts that would get him a place on the great Dublin teams of the past, with such Legends of the Hill as Seán Doherty, Gay O’Driscoll and Brian Mullins. Brennan knows what he’s there to do.

Upfront, there’s more bite in Dublin. Paul Mannion is one of the stars of the year, Bernard Brogan is coming back to form, Paul Flynn is outstanding and, if he can keep his head, Diarmuid Connolly has all the talent in the world. Mayo have injury concerns over Cillian O’Connor and Andy Moran. It’s grief James Horan doesn’t need.

That said, Mayo are a little steadier at the back. Ger Brennan is undeniably slow, and his compadres are inexperienced. The Mayo defence has been forged in the flames, and their tackling this year has been a masterclass in a misunderstood art.

What, then, of the bench? Again, it’s honours even. Dublin have experienced All-Ireland medalists sitting on the bench, among them the greatest impact sub the game has seen since Jody Devine used to wear the big numbers for Meath in the mid-nineties. Mayo aren’t thin on the bench either, and have replacements for every line – a luxury denied Mayo teams of the past.

Anyone who can say with confidence how this game will pan out is using their heart more than their head. He or she either believes in Dublin in a way he or she can’t believe in Mayo, or else he or she thinks Mayo are “due,” whatever that means. Assuming that Horan has told his players that there are no circumstances in which they can start as badly as they have in previous finals – a reasonably safe assumption – that means the game is likely to be even into the final minutes.

This is a final, above all others, that will be decided by the small things. The 27th minute shot that went barely wide. When Cillian O’Connor went off. Who got carded, when, and for why.

When it’s all over, hindsight will inform judgment – Dublin’s experience carried them through, or Mayo weren’t to be denied, or a draw was the fairest result, for both teams. But reader, remember this – that’s not how it’ll look at the time. Between half-past three and five on Sunday, it’ll all be in the bounce of the ball more than anything else.

Up Mayo.

The Evolution of Tyrone Football

1996. Peter Canavan is reminded of his place.

Bill Simmons of ESPN remarked in the run-up to this year’s Super Bowl that the US media is considerably behind the general public in its coverage of steroids in American football. In the same way, the GAA media does not always cover what people are talking about in regard to Gaelic games.

There are rows in camps that are never reported on but are discussed among GAA people in every bar and at every crossroads in Ireland. There are peculiar funding issues that the media do not touch with a ten-foot-pole but that, again, are very much the lingua franca of common GAA debate.

And then there is the question of what’s on and what’s not. This is one of the reasons why we’re still talking about Joe Brolly disgracing himself three weeks later. There have always been teams that, ahem, play on the edge in the GAA. It’s just that they are not discussed in the media, other than in code. Such-and-such a team play on the edge. They’re hard, but fair. Theirs is a robust brand of football.

And these codes cover a multitude of sins. The problem as regards journalism is that once someone breaks cover as Brolly did, and accuses one team of being dirtier than any other team in Ireland, the language doesn’t exist to discuss the accusation properly.

For over one hundred years teams and players have been given the benefit of the doubt, and then anointed in retirement, as the sepia tint of history and nostalgia washes out the blood and bruises of the opposition. As such, people are very unsure of their ground as regards Tyrone’s particular style of play.

Which is a pity. It’s a pity in terms of journalism, because the games are one of the few things that have been an unqualified success in Ireland since the Civil War. They should be correctly recorded, so that future generations may understand. And it’s also a pity because Tyrone, three-time All-Ireland Champions and still in with a chance of four, are being given a bad name that those good football people do not deserve.

“Dirty” play, in GAA terms, is hard to define. Striking – that is to say, punching someone – is considered a worse offence than spitting, in sporting and in civil law. But in sporting culture, spitting is by far the worse offence.

If you punch someone, there’s an above average chance that someone will punch back, and the best puncher will win the day. Spitting doesn’t work like that. Spitting back doesn’t even the score, so all the spat-upon can do is punch the spitter. This will get the spat-upon sent off, and the spitter wins hands-down.

That’s just one example. There are many, many more examples, at different levels of nefariousness. The GAA rules as written are different to the GAA rules as refereed, because so many decisions are at the discretion of the referee. And that is the root cause of the issue.

Ger Loughnane remarks in his autobiography that he repeatedly told his great Clare team of the ‘90s that the referee would not protect them. They had to protect themselves. This is a fundamental truth of the GAA, and one that Tyrone have learned the hard way.

Look at the history of Tyrone football. Tyrone won their first Ulster title in 1956, when they were the first new county to win Ulster since 1900. Tyrone won only four more Ulster titles before beating Galway in an All-Ireland semi-final and were then unlucky to lose to Kerry after being seven points up in the 1986 Final.

Ten years later, Tyrone were back in the All-Ireland final. They lost to Dublin after a free was awarded to Dublin in the dying seconds. A visibly distraught Tyrone manager, Art McRory, was interviewed coming off the pitch. “I knew Dublin needed to win an All-Ireland,” he said, “but I didn’t know they needed it that badly.”

McRory apologised for his unsporting remarks almost immediately, but all he did was vocalise what a lot of people watching thought. The following year, Tyrone retained their Ulster Championship but lost the All-Ireland semi-final to Meath.

Tyrone were mugged in that semi-final. Peter Canavan carried Tyrone on his back in the mid-nineties. Meath sandwiched him while he was still in the air after kicking a point and that was that danger taken care of for the rest of the game. Two other Tyrone players had their heads stood on.

Meath went on to win the All-Ireland in 1996, and again in 1999. One of the men who sandwiched Canavan is considered, along with Anthony Tohill, the greatest midfielder of the 90s. One of the men who stood on a Tyrone head is on the GAA Team of the Millennium.

The referee will not protect you, said Loughnane. You have to protect yourself.

Liam Hayes wrote about Meath’s robust style of play in his memoir, Out of Our Skins. He admitted that Meath were dirty, and did no small amount of chirping during a game.

There is one remarkable passage in which he describes how Meath made a point of mentally breaking a new Dublin midfielder on his debut, for fear he might develop into a player down the line. A solution worthy of King Herod himself.

Hayes also wrote that Meath developed that tough style because they were tired of being pushed around by the great Dublin team of the 1970s, a team that included a number of notoriously dangerous characters. And Dublin got tough, they say, to go toe-to-toe with the great Meath team of the 1960s. And so on into the past it goes.

If there’s a problem with Gaelic football the problem is in the rules, not in the men. Tyrone are no better or no worse than average and are not doing what so many teams have done before them. You can only dance with the girls in the hall. If the girls in this particular hall can crack their knuckles and drink pints in one swallow, you have to match them or go dance somewhere else. The referee will not protect you. You have to protect yourself.

The Mayo Fan's Metaphysical Dilemma - What Does All This Really Mean?

Do people from other counties agonise over metaphysics the way Mayo people do? When they won their respective finals or quarter-finals, did the four counties lining up the for the next two weekends’ hurling semi-finals spend sleepless hours wondering what those wins meant, or were they just glad to be still be in the show, and have their summer extended by a few more weeks?

Maybe Limerick. Limerick and Mayo followed parallel paths of misery in the mid-nineties, losing two All-Ireland finals, at least one of which was entirely winnable. The jubilant scenes in the Gaelic Grounds when they won the Munster title would suggest that, in terms of dementia, Limerick could give Mayo a game of it.

Clare’s success of the 1990s is still warm in the memory. Maybe the Bannermen are enjoying a feeling of belonging as they prepare for the Treaty County the weekend after next. As for this weekend’s semi-final, there are very few Corkmen or Dubliners who could be described as quiet and unassuming. They don’t get dazzled in the limelight. If anything, they’re inclined to wilt without it.

Not so, historically, for the County Mayo. Times are changing, certainly. Since John Maughan took over a team that languished in Division 3 of the National Football League in 1995 these have been glory years for Mayo. Mayo played in Croke Park just three times between 1951 and 1981 and, naturally, bit the bullet each time. Now, the place is as familiar as Moylette’s corner is to a Ballinaman – and they used to be very familiar indeed on Moylette’s corner, back in the day.

But can we enjoy it? Can the people of Mayo, like the man in the song, take the day for what it’s worth and do the best we can? Or will that longing for September redemption hang over everything we do?

Justly or no, Mayo are the All-Ireland favourites as you read this piece. This may be due to a quirk of bookmaking – because Kerry and Dublin are playing each other in the semis, they tend to cancel each other out, pricewise – but the fact is that national favoritism is not a place to which Mayo are accustomed. There is too much water under the bridge not to feel a frisson on uncertainty when thinking of what’s ahead.

Is this justified? Isn’t this the best Mayo team we’ve seen since the 1950s? Strong on every line, with depth on the bench, a messianic manager and a back-room staff who leave nothing to chance? They even have a team psychologist, to make sure the marbles are all correctly accounted for and the lazy media cliché about Mayo’s “mental toughness” is suitably addressed.

Well. We’ve seen this before, and we don’t have to go back to the 1950s to find it. There’s a new steel in Mayo, say the pundits. How is the current steel different to the steel of Horan’s team when he was a player, when the team were – allegedly – banned from the Valley of Diamonds in Enniscrone because the ferocity of their training was eroding the beach? Or the team of 2004, who went 1-3 to 0-0 down against Galway, only to come back and win? Wasn’t there steel there?

The Mayo forwards are different to what they were. So too in 2004, when Ciarán McDonald was in his full pomp at centre-half forward, his favourite position, pinging in passes to the Mortimers on the full-forward line. Conor Mortimer had his best season in 2004, in this writer’s opinion, probably due to the fact that his brother beside him and McDonald behind him effectively fenced in his more impish tendencies and forced him to concentrate on the job in hand.

The Mayo celebrations shook the Big Tree the night after Mayo beat the reigning All-Ireland Champions, Tyrone, in 2004. It all fell apart then. A stutter against Fermanagh, rumours of trouble in the camp and some difficult to understand selection decisions saw Mayo suffer the same fate as the frog before the harrow in the 2004 All-Ireland final. So it goes.

Mayo are unlikely to see this year’s campaign collapse as 2004 collapsed. These are different men, in different times. But then, fans are inclined to judge losses on when they occurred, rather than why. The 1998 team got a Mayfly summer of one match, when they were unlucky to lose to a Galway team that went on to justify their win by returning Sam to the West for the first time in thirty-two years. But could that ’98 team have been The One, if it survived past May?

The 1998 Championship was far from vintage, and Mayo ’98 were better than ’97. Or how about 1999, when Mayo ended the Tuam hoodoo on a hot day when St Jarlath’s Park was so full that a spectator could have lifted his or her feet from the ground and still not fall over? John Maughan was chaired off the ground that day; how long ago it seems. Ifs, buts, and maybes – these are what we build our summers from in the County Mayo.

Maybe this team will win the All-Ireland and join the immortals. Maybe it won’t. Maybe their destiny is in their hands. Maybe it’s not. Maybe Dublin or Kerry or Tyrone are better. Maybe someone else will get injured, as Andy Moran got injured last year or John Casey in 1999.

What would be nice would be if Mayo fans could live in the now, and drink the sweet taste of victory and vengeance from the weekend. The All-Ireland will hang over every Mayo team until that wanted is sated but in the meantime, the Green and Red still flies high as summer moves towards Autumn. That’s a feeling of deep, deep satisfaction and should be enjoyed fully while it’s here.

The Running Men - Donegal, Mayo and the State of Modern Football

There was a schoolyard game in the 1970s in Scoil Pádraig, Béal an Átha that may have been played in every schoolyard, or may have been unique to that particular grove of academe. Boys would line up at one end of the yard, hands joined, forming a human chain. A single boy would then run at this chain, choosing the weakest link – invariably small, fat kids with glasses, not dissimilar to your correspondent – and attempt to burst through the cordon. Those that did, did. Those that didn’t were surrounded, and probably shipped a few belts for their pains.

It will be extremely hard not to flash back to the days of the old school yard in Croke Park at four o’clock this coming Sunday, when Mayo and Donegal will both play a version of modern football that bears a closer resemblance to that schoolyard hurly-burly than to the sublime elegance of Ciarán McDonald, Michael Meehan, Maurice Fitzgerald or Matt Connor. But there it is. This is the modern game, and if you want to win, you have to play it.

The eagerness with which the modern philosophy has been embraced by the Mayo football public is an interesting study of the conflict between idealism and practicality. Mayo were always a Fancy Dan, tricks-on-the-ball football county. For Mayo, it wasn’t enough that the county should win the All-Ireland; Mayo should win the All-Ireland playing Mayo football.

Now, the penny has dropped that Mayo’s commitment to Mayo football may be one of the reasons why they lost all those finals in recent years. And, having failed to beat them, Mayo have now decided to join them. The fact that James Horan’s fighting talk at the start of the week was received without a murmur of dissent shows just how much Mayo have bought into the new orthodoxy. Substance trumps style every day of the week.

Of course, this is not to say that there are no skilful players out there. For all the talk of the Donegal System, Donegal would have won nothing if they did not have players of sufficiently exceptional ability to operate the System. Karl Lacey, Mark McHugh, Michael Murphy – you don’t get many of those in the one crop. There’s a case to be made for Murphy being the best forward in the country.

People thought same old Mayo when that first goal crashed home in the All-Ireland final, but how many forwards other than Murphy would have been able to score it? How many could have made the catch, broken into space and rifled home the shot? Murphy is worth his weight in gold.

Mayo have players too. Mayo are looking at what could be a golden generation of players who are young, talented and natural leaders. They’re on every line, and there are a few on the bench as well, chomping at the bit to get on. It’s a heady brew for supporters who have supped the bitter gall in the past.

Livening up the Sunday Game

Not just that, but the current Mayo team are ideally set up to deal with the Donegal System. Darragh Ó Sé wrote a how-to guide for playing against the System in his excellent and essential Irish Times column after Donegal beat Down in the Ulster semi-final. Kicking it long won’t work – the ball may travel faster than the man, but that doesn’t make any difference if the man doesn’t have to travel at all. It doesn’t make any difference is the man is just waiting there for the dropping ball with two or three of his best friends for company. Backs in the System eat that for breakfast.

Modern football is about possession in collision. You have to retain the ball when you collide with them, and you have to strip it when they collide with you. And then you have to be able to take your scores in what space is afforded to you outside of the slaughter zone. That’s how you win.

Last year, Donegal played with an aura not seen since those old Ready Brek ads of the early ‘eighties. Not only were good players playing a System they trusted and believed in, but the System was the talk of the country. It was like football alchemy, a magical formula for turning base metal to gold. Shell-shocked and beaten men limped off pitches in Ulster and Dublin, wondering what in God’s name had just happened them. They’d never experienced the like of it before.

But that was then, and this is now. The aura is now gone from Donegal – after an imperious display against Tyrone in their first game out, Donegal struggled when Down used Donegal’s own weapons against them and then Donegal got wiped out in Clones by Monaghan. Donegal recovered to win against Laois, but Laois isn’t the most prized scalp in the country.

The pivotal question before last year’s All-Ireland Final was what could Mayo do to stop Donegal? This Sunday, it’s about what Donegal can do to stop Mayo. By all accounts, Donegal’s defensive setup in Carrick-on-Shannon made their previous incarnations look like the Harlem Globetrotters, and this will most likely be key to Donegal on Sunday. The longer they can defend and keep the score down the more likely they’ll be to win it.

Mayo, by contrast, will want to reverse last year’s game and get an early lead because if Monaghan proved nothing else, they proved the System is badly suited to chasing down leads. Aidan O’Shea gets a certain amount of stick for running into tackles; on Sunday this will be a feature, not a bug.

And there are the intangibles too. What will the weather be like? What will the ref be like? What happens if someone’s sent off? If someone’s sent off, will it be a Colm Coyle or a Liam McHale? These are things on which destiny can hinge. But all things being equal, Mayo look good for avenging the 2012 All-Ireland, and competing in their third semi-final in a row. Run on, you true-hearted boys. Run on.

The Championship: Still Crazy After All These Years

Drop the Provincial Championships, they said. Be grand, they said. Not fair on the lower division teams, they said. We’ll do away with history and tradition and pride and this ineffable thing called “glory,” all for something we saw on the telly. Be grand, they said.

One of the many gifts of the Championship that it is both the same and completely different, year after year. Every Championship starts with some unhappy counties getting their ears boxed in late May or early June, and the why-oh-why columns in the papers. Then the summer progresses and the hay is brought home and that year’s Championship takes on its shape until you suddenly realise that heatwaves and holidays are all well and good, but in Ireland, it’s the Championship that makes the summer.

There are twelve teams left in the 2013 Championship now, a Championship that we were told was pretty much exclusive to the teams in Division 1 of the League. Of those twelve teams, six are from Division 1, two from Division 2, three from Division 3 and the team that came dead last in Division 4 is still sitting in the light.

The three Division 3 teams are the most interesting. It’s unlikely that either Cavan, Meath or Monaghan will win their first All-Ireland in fifty-one years, fourteen years or ever, but they could stop some big dog from winning it, and that’s a pretty sweet feeling too.

If anything, Monaghan are the most disadvantaged, because while they beat Donegal yesterday in Clones, Monaghan did not destroy them. The curse of the back door is that the underdog’s win is cheapened by the favourite’s second chance. If Donegal can get by Laois – and it’s by no means a given – their momentum is back, while Monaghan may psychologically settle for their first Anglo-Celt Cup in twenty-five years. Human nature is like that.

One thing that is certain, however, is that the aura of invincibility is now gone from the Champions. Donegal may regroup - Jimmy McGuinness may be able to talk them into seeing this as all part of a Great Plan, but the rest of the country will have noted the weaknesses for later exploitation. Back-to-back All-Irelands have only been won twice in twenty-seven years, and there’s a reason for that. Once it gets to the elimination games, the Championship is a high-wire act lined with landmines. Not only is one slip fatal, but you can do nothing wrong and stil get blown to hell. It’s a lot like Life in that respect.

Next weekend sees four games of lip-smacking appeal. Cavan will be overwhelming favourites against London but they must guard against complacency. Mayo were able to beat London with their D game, but Mayo’s D game is better than Cavan’s. Everyone in Cavan thinks they’re going back to Croke Park. That way misery lies, and the London fairytale gets one more chapter.

Donegal will play Laois, where the great puzzle is if Donegal can get over the shock in six days to play a team who are a little like Monaghan – old soldiers who have been in the trenches for a long time, looking for one last day out.

Meath play Tyrone in an intriguing game. Meath’s glory days are a decade and more ago, but the way the wired it up to Dublin in the Leinster final, playing to their tradition and not giving a damn, woke up echoes of Meath teams past. Tyrone remain a mystery. God only knows what’ll happen in this one.

And then, Galway play Cork. The first thing to note is that this is a fixture nightmare. The Cork hurlers are scheduled to play Kilkenny and the Galway hurlers will play Clare in Thurles on the same day that Galway and Cork are scheduled to meet in football, a double-header with Meath and Tyrone.

Could there be a triple-header in Thurles? Could Semple stadium hold it? Could you move the two hurling games and the Cork and Galway football to Croker, and Meath and Tyrone for a novel day out in Thurles? Could Meath and Tyrone be played in Clones? Questions, questions, that the GAA will have to sort out quickly.

As for the game itself, it’s a chin-scratcher. The sound of rent garments was general in Galway city and county after Mayo hammered the heron-chokers in Salthill back in May. Huffing and puffing against Tipperary and Waterford did little to dispel that impression.

And then Galway go out and paste Armagh, and are now strengthened by the addition of Conor Counihan to their cause. That’s a terribly cruel thing to write but Counihan’s team selection seems mysterious in the extreme, and there’s a case to be made that if Cork had got their selection right they would have hammered Kerry in Killarney.

No less astute an observer than Dara Ó Cinnéide remarked in the Examiner before St Patrick’s Day that, while the country concentrated on Dublin and Donegal, Cork were ideally placed to come up on the rail and surprise them when they weren’t looking. That’s still the case, but only if Cork pick the right team. If they do, Galway come to the end of the line, but will have a lot to build on for next year. If not, Galway march on and Connacht will have two representatives alive come Bank Holiday Monday.

And what of the provincial champions, watching next weekend’s tussles and wondering what will be in store when they next pull on their boots? Monaghan in the North, still savouring the sweet taste of victory. Mayo in the west, playing at their peak but always aware that for them, the Championship only lasts seventy minutes on the third Sunday in September. In the east, a Dublin team that are like a young man on his first provisional driving license – fantastic with the foot down on the open road, not so hot when he has to put it in reverse and park the thing. And down south, Kerry. Always Kerry. Watching, waiting, and making plans. They’re in the mix too.

London in the Connacht Final is a Cause for National Celebration

London’s remarkable achievement in reaching this year’s Connacht Final means that the game on July 21st is now bigger than football. It’s no longer a sporting contest – it’s a unique occasion for the nation to stop and take stock, to celebrate what we did, make reparation for what we failed to do, and to look proudly to the future.

These opportunities don’t come along often in Recession Ireland, and we should make the most of them.

Firstly, the Connacht Council should get on the phone to the London Board first thing this morning and find a stadium to host the Connacht Final. They have three weeks, which is loads of time to cut a deal with one of the twenty stadia in London that have capacities of more than 10,000.

The tennis courts at Wimbledon or Queen’s club could be a bit delicate for football and we’re in the wrong time of year for the 30,000 capacity Lord’s Cricket Ground or the 23,000 Surrey Oval. Wembley or Twickenham are a bit on the big side but a stadium like White Hart Lane (36,000), Upton Park (35,000), Selhurst Park (26,000) or maybe even Loftus Road (19,000) should be considered.

This wouldn’t be cheap, of course, but in this year of The Gathering it would be interesting to see if the Government is willing to put its money where its mouth is and underwrite the operation.

Why go to the trouble? Because we, the nation, owe the Irish in London. We owe them big-style down the years and now that a unique opportunity has arisen, where an English team is playing a high-profile match in the most Irish of entities, the All-Ireland Championship, that gives us an opportunity to celebrate, remember and look forward.

This is a chance for a second Polo Grounds, and if it’s not grabbed it will be gone. But it’ll be bigger than the Polo Grounds in its way, because the Irish were always welcome in America. They were not always welcome in England – no blacks, no Irishmen, no dogs, as the signs often said.

And what was it like to be an emigrant? Well, it wasn’t great. Dónall Mac Amhlaigh wrote a poignant memoir of his time as a navvy in England in the 1950s, Dialann Deoraí, and he records a hard life with a surprising and noble absence of bitterness. Some Irish got on well in England – no sign of the famine on Graham Norton, and more power to him – but some found it a struggle.

And why wouldn’t they? All through their time in school the Irish of that forgotten ‘fifties generation were told that all Ireland’s woes were the fault of the English, the godless, heathen English. To suddenly find themselves in that same godless place, in a cold room in a terraced house that was as alien to them as pitching a tent on the moon – what on earth were they to do?

A lot became insular, and drank to ease the pain, as it was the only thing they knew how to do. They didn’t mix, because mixing would be an occasion of sin and this was, after all, a godless country. And they loyally sent money home, money that in part helped build the GAA and that very few of them ever saw again.

The Irish are emigrating again as the recession stalks the land, but it’s not the same. The world has gotten smaller. We know what the world is like since we were children, because we’ve seen it on the television.

But that lost generation of the 1950s hadn’t a clue. In this era of victims and survivors and compensation, who ever thinks of the innocent Irish who were turned from their own country and had to find a living in one that they had been taught to always think of as the enemy?

The country had its arm twisted during the Queen’s visit to believe that we’ve all moved on. Well, now let’s see Ireland’s greatest cultural association do its bit for the maturity of the nation.

Let emissaries go to London and spread the word that Gaelic games are coming to the city of Charles Dickens and Samuel Johnson, of Christopher Wren and Issac Newton, of David Beckham and Bobby Moore. Proclaim it through the host that it is the Irish nation’s shame that the emigrants where were nearest to us were furthest away, but that we now make reparation, and celebrate our brothers and sisters in England just as we do those in the United States, in Canada, in Australia and elsewhere.

This is bigger than football. Colm O’Rourke and Pat Spillane were sniggering on the Sunday Game yesterday about the prospect of London being in the Connacht Final. They don’t get it. They never get it. The GAA was never just about sports. It is about Ireland first, and the celebration of Irishness, that one strange thing that makes all Irish people so very different from anywhere else.

If the Gathering is anything other than the shakedown or an exercise in Paddy-whackery, the 2013 Connacht Final is an opportunity, Heaven-sent, for Ireland to send a cultural message in the other direction, to make the Gathering a two-way street. For once, let’s try to see the big picture. Up Mayo.

A Kerry Perspective on Mayo v Roscommon

Every week, a retired Kerry footballer gives his considered insight on the past week in Gaelic football for one of the national papers. With the help of a friend currently domiciled in Hong Kong, An Spailpín Fánach has sensationally intercepted this week’s copy and can print it here this morning. Now, read on:

Look, everyone knows about Roscommon’s football tradition. Kerry people certainly do, as it was Kerry who met them so often when they got to the All-Ireland Final. There’s nothing you can tell us about the pride Roscommon men take in the primrose and blue.

I remember Páidí telling me once that, when Kerry went down 1-2 after five minutes to Roscommon in the 1980 All-Ireland Final, he turned to John O’Keeffe and said “Chrisht, they must have a red-haired woman inside in the dressing room.” Páidí believed in what we call the piseog, and the bean rua was among his greatest fears.

Thankfully we didn’t meet any mná rua when we travelled up in the car from Kerry to Castlebar. It wasn’t the best day of the summer but look, Championship is Championship and it’s always good to get out and get to a game. Besides, Mayo are now one of the top, top teams in the country and you can never see enough of the real contenders.

We got to Castlebar at about half-past two, got a handy place to park there on Linenhall Street, and then in to Mick Byrne’s for six or seven pints before the match. Up the hill then and through the cinema, where they had Man of Steel on as the matinee. But the real men of steel were inside in McHale Park, wearing the green and red.

I’ve always had time for Mayo. They play the game the right way. People remember those finals where we were just lucky enough to get over the line, but they forget we’ve lost to Mayo too. We haven’t forgotten it though. When Páidí lead us back to the Munster title in 1996, the very next thing we did was lose by six points to Mayo in the All-Ireland semi-final.

I remember John Maughan coming in to the dressing room afterwards, to remind us about him managing Clare in 1992 as well. I meet John doing the media work now and we often laugh about what happened next. Well. I do, anyway.

Mayo were in a different league to Roscommon on Sunday. That’s no shame on Roscommon, any more than it shames Clare anytime Kerry go up to Ennis and bury them. I remember Páidí telling me about coming home on the bus from the Milltown Massacre in 1979 and Pat Spillane turning to him and saying “Banner County? Wisha, another bating like this and they’ll have to change the name to the Bodhrán County. Bodhrán – do you get it? Because of the beating? Do you not – “ Páidí just hit Pat a box and went back to sleep. I’m surprised O’Rourke doesn’t try that on the telly. It’s not like he’s a stranger to it, after all.

But look, Mayo are a different team to the one we beat in 2011, 2006, 2005, 2004 and 1997. Those teams were all the same, but this one is different. And I think I’ve spotted two reasons for that difference.

The first is Donie Buckley. Donie is a Kerryman and one of the greatest coaches in the country. Donie specialises in defensive coaching, which is unusual for a Kerryman as in Kerry we didn’t even know how to tackle until we played Tyrone in 2005, a point Jack O’Connor made on the first page of his book. Donie must have read about it in a book or something. Anyway, he’s got the hang of it now and he’s making a real difference in Mayo.

The second reason are the O’Sheas. Aidan and Séamus are in midfield of course, and there’s another brother, Conor, on the bench, ready to come in. The O’Sheas’ father, Jim, is from Kilorglin.

Kilorglin, County Kerry.

But for all that, Mayo still have some questions hanging over their heads. This is something we discussed in the car on the way home – we had to roar at each other now, as we all had our heads stuck out the windows, trying to sober up before the wives took out the breathalysers again – but we made some progress in our understanding.

The two things Mayo are lacking are goals and a killer instinct. You could say the two travel together – if you want to be big, you need to run up the big score on minnows. You can’t be feeling sorry for them or empathic for them or anything.

Look at the Gooch – isn’t he beautiful? But it’s not just that he’s beautiful, he has the killer instinct. Five more minutes, five more points, he told the boys against Waterford. That’s the attitude you want, and that’s what we’ll see in the Munster Final against Cork.  Do Mayo have that same killer instinct? We’ll have to wait ‘til later in the summer to see.

Addressing Inequality in the Football Championship

The Championship has never been equal. The hurling is the more unequal of the two major codes in Gaelic Games, with three counties holding 75% of the All-Irelands, but that doesn’t seem to get the same why-oh-why coverage about inequality.

Maybe football gets more coverage because it’s played more widely or because, football being a simpler game than hurling, people always think every county has some sort of a mullocker’s chance at football. Mullocking will never save you hurling against Kilkenny, but playing Kerry on your patch on a horrible day – well, men can dream, can’t they?

Maybe that’s why the current inequality seems so traumatic. Even though the Championship is built on counties, and counties have never been equal, in either population or football tradition, there was always that chance of dogs having their days. Now even that is gone. The other reason has to do with the state of the modern Championship, of course. We’re four weeks in now and nothing’s happened. Nobody’s lost. They’re all still there, waiting.

So what to do, with this inequality built into the system? People write in newspapers or post on message boards about new Championship formats, some of them quite byzantine in their complexity, but none of them address the basic inequality, that some counties are bigger than others and always will be.

To find out if inequality is an issue, the GAA has to ask itself what is the Championship really for. Is it to achieve the highest standards in athleticism, or is it partly that, but more so a pageant of county’s pride and heritage, where the flying of the colours is more important than winning or losing?

If it’s the former, what will that entail? Do we do away with county boundaries? Do we amalgamate counties, redraw provinces, introduce a transfer system, go professional? Will Irish children support teams in the future the same way they support English soccer teams now and in your youths, through dumb luck with no local connection, no pride of place? Is there any turning from this road, or is it an inevitable evolution?

Your correspondent hopes not. Your correspondent, dreadful old Tory that he is, misses the nobility and the honour of the old Championship, when it was all about representing home, hearth and heart in one ball of white summer heat.

All that is gone now. Now, not only are the historical haves and have-nots with us, but the gap is now greater than just population and tradition. The gap has increased exponentially by the new professionalism that exists in the game, where scientifically devised methods of training have created a new breed of footballer playing a new type of game.

Workrate is the buzzword in football now. Workrate is what you have to up when there’s some buck in a suit standing at your shoulder in the office with a clipboard ticking off how many times us visit Facebook or the GAA Board or, God save us, An Spailpín Fánach, that well-known blog on contemporary Irish life, when you should be filling your spreadsheets or writing your few yards of code. Football is meant to be about glory, drama, fun – all those things that work is not.

How did it come to this? An arms race, at the start. County A starts spending X pounds a year on the county team, with dieticians and GPS trackers and psychologists and what have you. County B has to catch up, so they sign up for all that and throw in cryogenic chambers and bonding sessions in upscale resorts and motivational speeches from retired rugby players. And then County C have someone fly home from ‘Merica on his private jet with a slideshow and a bag of used bills and a plan to set up the old homestead on the map, yes sir, you see if I don’t. And then County A realises it’s fallen behind again and – well, you get the picture.

That creates one level of division. What really stretches it is that this new level of training has created a football that isn’t really recognisable as football any more. None of the great teams of the past could live with a modern All-Ireland contender. If a modern team played Eugene McGee’s Offaly of the 1980s, the modern team would eat Offaly without salt.

Spit and sinew was the underdog’s only chance against the big gun. Now, it’s the big gun’s chief weapon. Offaly’s skill level would couldn’t for nothing against the modern team’s workrate, and there weren’t many soft boys on that Offaly team. It’d be like fifteen frogs being fed into a combine harvester. Whirr, splat.

The rules have failed to evolve with the greater physicality of the men playing the game at the highest level. And it’s only through the rules that change can come, and some of balance can return between physicality and the more finesse type skills of the game.

Perhaps there should be rule differences between county games and club games? There is already a time difference – why not introduce a few more differences? Limit handpasses, redefine the tackle, be less naïve about tactical fouling. Identify the true skills of the game and reward them. It’s not that hard to do if people put their minds to it.

This isn’t about punishing good teams to level a playing pitch. The greater team must always beat the lesser, but that greatness must be because they are greater at football, and not because they are better at pumping iron or at eating more boiled chicken for breakfast.

FOCAL SCOIR: Second Captains let themselves down badly on their podcast of last Tuesday week by having a crack at Leitrim’s potential place in the last twelve of the country. “Leitrim playing into the middle of July having not played a county from Ireland … [compared to Tyrone], who have just engaged in a war with the best team in the country and now have to win three Qualifiers to get to the same position. I mean, it’s just utterly ridiculous.”

Your faithful narrator doesn’t get how beating New York and London makes Leitrim children of a lesser god. How is that a lesser achievement than Kerry also being in the last twelve having beaten Waterford and Tipperary by a combined total of 6-39? Either county can only dance with the girls in the hall.

Leitrim aren’t even in the Connacht Final, but if they do make it it’ll mean the world to them. A provincial final appearance means less than nothing to Kerry. The Second Captains should pick on someone their own size.

Mayo Championship Preview 2013

One of those red digital display countdown clocks, like the ones you see in the movies, has been running in every Mayo head since about half-eight or nine o’clock on the third Sunday of September last year. The five stages of grief having been squeezed into three hours by virtue of long and bitter practice, thoughts then turned to Championship 2013, and Revenge. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Those clocks are down to single digits now, as Mayo’s early outing at the seaside against Galway approaches. Since the draw was made in October last year, Sunday has been a green-and-red letter day. Win in Salthill, and the Mayo bandwagon is back on the road. Lose, and James Horan needs to be smuggled out of the county until things calm down a bit.

Problem is, those countdown clocks are calibrated incorrectly. A countdown to Salthill made sense before Christmas but as the League rolled on, things changed. A measure of a team’s success is its ability to adapt; if Horan can adapt to changed surroundings in time to have Mayo punch their weight come August, it’s been another great year already. If not; well, it’s not like we haven’t cried into our beer before.

What’s changed since Christmas? Injuries are what have changed since Christmas.

James Horan spent the first year of his time as Mayo senior manager trying out players and combinations. By Year 2 he had found the men with whom he was prepared to fight or die, and that year was about bedding them in. And Year 3 would be about forging those men into burnished steel in the white heat of the greatest glory of the Irish summer, the Championship.

But that plan is pretty much dependent on the players being there in the first place. If they’re not, Horan has to wing it until they are.

Mayo football never wanted for rumours, but we are certain that Michael Conroy is gone until August at least. A big loss. If Alan Dillon and Andy Moran are back, they can’t be match fit, and no-one will really know how much Andy Moran’s lion heart will be able to rule his wounded body until he plays.

That’s three hostages to fortune on Sunday out of the six forwards the rules allow. Barry Moran’s continued absence sees further question marks over midfield, so Horan is going to the game in Salthill with three lines disrupted. Those who dream of the return of Richie Feeney or Tom Cunniffe could make the case for four.

And that’s a hell of a lot of uncertainty for a team to be away-from-home favourites against a traditional rival who always have it in them to turn Mayo over, and to sometimes go so far as to give Mayo a comprehensive hiding. The price of Mayo as 8/15 favourites at Salthill on Sunday is mean in the extreme.

In an ideal world, of course, Mayo turn up in Salthill, burn Galway down and cast their ashes to the wind that howls around that cold ground. Galway are a team that cannot be beaten too often or too badly by the County Mayo. We do it, not out of spite, but of love for our western neighbours that, like the triumphal Romans of old, they will always know that they are mortals, not gods.

Unfortunately, that’s not always possible and on occasion it’s been Galway that have done the beating. There is a strange quiet in the land of the heron chokers this week, a remarkable trait among a lippy tribe. What are they up to? Are they thinking of May 25, 1998, a day that will live in infamy in the county Mayo?

Perhaps they are. It’d be like them, God knows. But this is 2013 and, should the unthinkable happen, Mayo must remember that there is a back door this year, and they should be neither ashamed nor unmotivated to use it.

Mayo’s qualifier record is shocking, but it doesn’t have to be. If Mayo take the pipe in Salthill it’s six weeks until their next competitive game. That’s a lot of time to repair those who need repairing and to remind the younger members of the panel that if you want a place on the team you have to go out and grab it. It won’t come to you by right.

It would be lovely if Horan threw caution to the wind and told someone like Evan Regan that his hour is come, and if Regan were then to go out and do as Cillian O’Connor did before him. Chances are that Horan will pick Enda Varley or Alan Freeman instead. Both are fine men, but neither particularly daring as a selection. Who knows? The most important thing to remember is that the countdown clock doesn’t reach 00:00:00 on Sunday the third Sunday in May but on the fourth Sunday in September. All Mayo have to do until then is survive.

Survival on the high road of the Championship would be ideal, as Mayo have done in the past two years of the Horan era. But if the journey is to be through the mountainy land of the Qualifiers, so be it. So long as a full-strength Mayo are in Croke Park in August how they get there doesn’t matter. Because, gentle reader, take this as gospel: there isn’t one county in the country who’ll look forward to playing them then. Up Mayo.