Finals joy a welcome relief

COUNTY finals are nearly always feelgood affairs – providing, of course, that you don’t end up on the wrong side of them. There’s something about the outpouring of emotion, the pent up desire and relief, all coming together in one focal point, which just puts a smile on your face.

It doesn’t even matter if you’ve got no connection to the club in question, joy has a way of rubbing off on you. It’s infectious. More so even than All Ireland finals or Munster finals, county finals and district finals capture something about community, about people, about this country. There’s been something cathartic about the return of sport in the last couple of months, giving us a sense of normalcy that had been yanked out from under us by the pandemic. The games have given us drama and excitement. They’ve given us something to talk about, something to look forward to.

It’s in finals, though, that we see the fullest expression of ourselves. The pictures of teams celebrating and jumping for joy this last week or so have been life affirming and also a welcome relief at the mid point of a most trying year for all of us. To be honest, it’s a relief even from the very basic point of view that for a lot of the year it looked like we wouldn’t even reach this point. When the games started it was with a degree of, justified, trepidation.

The return of sport has been a success. It’s proven that we can live with this thing, provided we take adequate precautions. For the most part we have and if there’s one wrinkle on all of this joy and emotion is that it might cause us to lose the run of ourselves, even momentarily. The scenes after the Tyrone county final last weekend really aren’t to be encouraged. Otherwise joy can quickly turn to tragedy as Arlene Foster, of all people, had to remind us this week.