Brilliant, tough and resilient, Gavin’s Greats are a side for the ages
THIS was greatness slicked with sweat, scented with desperation – but it was greatness nonetheless.
The Dublin of this age are now among the elect. They will be recalled as one of football’s great teams, and there is no good reason to suppose that they are done with winning yet.
There are fresh glories waiting to be claimed, other teams to fall beneath their relentless gallop.
But they will not win another AllIreland in tenser, tighter, more desperate conditions than this one.
And that adds to their lustre, too. True champions are shaped by contrasting conditions, and while they have had days when they won with ease, this was a saltier triumph.
Nastiness flared, too, between two teams who now know each other so well, and who are so evenly matched, that they rub off each other like sharp-edged pieces of flint.
Apart from the bookings and the black, yellow and red cards, there was pushing and shoving and mouthing and shaping. Mayo defenders did their damndest to distract Dean Rock as he lined up his free-kick.
When he converted it and David Clarke prepared to re-start play for Mayo, Ciarán Kilkenny wrapped his arms around Lee Keegan and the pair fell to the ground. He was deservedly shown a black card, but it didn’t matter by then. The job was done. Dublin found a way. The path was not particularly pretty – and any remaining credence people give to Jim Gavin’s flourishes about upholding the noble traditions of Dublin football will have been ground into the grass by the concluding stages here – but they deserve the acclaim now coming their way.
They are a tremendous team, and they proved it in the defining passages of a contest that, with 10 minutes remaining, looked to
have slipped away from them.
Salvation was secured in a Wagnerian conclusion, thunderous and dramatic and spiteful and edgy. And in that highly strung climate, Dublin found match-winners.
One was Diarmuid Connolly. In the warm-up, he was the one Dublin player not wearing a jersey and with a pair of tracksuit bottoms pulled around him.
He was wearing a tight-fitting, sleeveless vest, and he rather had the bearing of a man who was ready to spend the afternoon sitting on the lawn with the radio giving tinny updates on the news from Croke Park.
When the time came, though, he delivered – and he owed Gavin this display. Connolly, despite the silly righteous anger of his manager, deserved to be suspended for pushing a linesman in Dublin’s opening championship match. After he played only a couple of minutes in the facile semi-final win against Tyrone, his chances of featuring in the final looked bleak.
But with Dublin’s forward line under Mayo’s boots in the first half, Connolly was one part of the two-man rescue mission dispatched by Gavin.
And he played well, decisively well. He kicked a point but he eclipsed that with a swishing pass to Dean Rock that should have brought a goal, but the attacker chose, wisely as it transpired, to fist over a point.
There was a wild swing with his left boot that went wide when the teams were tied in injury time, and it prodded loose the recollection of Connolly kicking possession away at a crucial stage in the drawn match last year.
Dublin survived his error this time, and Connolly finished the day comfortably in credit.
So did McManamon, who kicked a point, too, but who was just as effective thanks to snaking runs that tested the legs of tiring Mayo defenders.
James McCarthy was Dublin’s other notable performer. He is a marvellous amalgam of athletisay cism and cleverness, a truly brilliant footballer who overcame a shaky first half to exert great influence in the second.
Grit is, perhaps, the most important feature of this iteration of the boys in blue – and it is not to douse them with watery praise to as much.
For years, Dublin could produce stylists and glamorous stars. But, starting with the re-engineering of the team under Pat Gilroy in 2010, Dublin became tougher and, when they need to be, they are meaner than a half-starved dog.
Champions do what they must. So it is with Dublin.
Once again, the football championship delivered a final that the weeks and months preceding it scarcely deserved.
We spend June, July and a good portion of August wringing our hands and wondering where the game goes next.
The agonising is often justified, but those days of Leinster landslides, grimacing Ulster mediocrity or mismatches elsewhere may as well belong to another century when the two best teams in the country are flung together like this.
Familiarity has fostered little in the way of friendship between the two groups, but it was heartening at the final whistle to see handshakes exchanged and Dublin players take time from their jubilation to offer some words to their opponents.
They could have been whispering Urdu into the ears of heartbroken Mayo men and they wouldn’t have noticed, because they were marooned again in the loneliest place in Ireland.
There is nowhere colder than the centre of the field in Croke Park on final day, while the captain of the rival team walks up the steps of the Hogan Stand. Yellow streamers landed around and on top of Mayomen stooped in agony.
Stephen Cluxton spoke words that are becoming as familiar and routine as the start of the ploughing championship, and nothing but ache filled the heads of the vanquished.
Some players and mentors held their children while Dublin celebrated, and there was a sharpness to Mayo disappointment that seemed new.
They have lived through tough days here, but this was as painful as any loss the county has dealt
‘The job was done, they found a path, even if it wasn’t pretty’ ‘Grit is most important feature of this Dublin team’
‘No county looks closer to the champions than Mayo do’
with since losing to Meath in a replay in 1996.
Mayo looked close to glory with the match entering the deciding stage. It appeared as if they could, would, finally do it.
But Dublin roped them and dragged them back, and then they expertly worked their way to a winning position, and thereafter did everything necessary to preserve it.
Where Mayo goes next is, in a way, as obvious as where Dublin do: they come back and they relive it.
No county looks closer to the champions and none will by January, than Mayo do. Retirement may not claim players in the numbers one supposes. When they are this tantalisingly near, men will not want to walk away.
And if they do return, Dublin will be waiting. There is nothing surer than that.
Four in a row looks a strong possibility this morning. That in its way tells us something about the football championship and why we do fret about it in the dog days of May and June.
That is not Dublin’s doing – despite what their critics say. Funding does not explain the class of Connolly or the coolness of Dean Rock. No, Dublin are a tough, resilient and, most importantly, brilliant team.
They are a side for the ages, and let the nonsense about their place in history be stilled for once and for all.
Gavin’s side bear comparison with any team from the county that went before them.
They got a hold of greatness, and they wouldn’t let go.