SHANE McGRATH SAYS FOOTBALL HAS ONLY ONE HOPE IN 2017
CONTRARY to the evidence of recent years, Connacht football finals can produce moments of exquisite intensity. One of the most dramatic came in 2001 and the pairing of Roscommon with Mayo in Hyde Park. The Hyde was packed tight, so tight you wouldn’t turn a sweet in your mouth, as they say of Clones in high summer.
Roscommon hadn’t won Connacht in a decade, and their wait looked like continuing when Mayo scored a late goal to go two points ahead. Then they blazed through Mayo’s wilted defence with the ball eventually reaching Gerry Lohan. He stabbed in a goal and the Hyde went haywire.
So did a few Mayo people, angry at the six minutes of injury time played. Your correspondent was among those who rose in anger – until the elderly Roscommon man sitting behind delivered a short, firm clip with the handle of his flag to the head of the complainer.
‘You’re in my town now, **** ,’ he said, before hobbling away to join the celebrations.
It didn’t constitute hooliganism; it wasn’t even a moment of violence, more a reprimand from one generation to the next, the old-timer taking issue with what he saw as an absence of graciousness.
Allowing for that, it is not recommended as a means of settling disagreement between competing sets of supporters. But in 30 years of attendance at Championship matches as a supporter and a reporter, it is the only occasion on which the handle of a rival’s flag has been used as a tool of instruction.
The old man was as happy he had softened the cough of a disgruntled interloper as with his side’s victory. This surprising brush with a Roscommon ultra did not prove the lasting memory of the day.
Instead, the jubilation of the home supporters remains a vivid recollection. The old ground became a shifting, pressing mass of primrose and blue. The importance of Gaelic games to a people was palpable that July Sunday.
Winning and losing are the point of sport, but they are most enjoyable when settled by meaningful rivalries. That has been one of the main difficulties with the provincial football championships over the past decade: the dominance of Dublin and, to varying extents, Mayo and Kerry, have made them predictable and as a result uninteresting.
Supporters in Leinster have dwindling interest in seeing their men battle through the early rounds before the inevitable mincing by Dublin in Croke Park.
However, the risk ahead of the new season now six days away, is that Dublin’s pervasive brilliance could reduce the rest of the country to the beaten state in which it has left Leinster.
Talk of Dublin dominance was shown to be premature more than once since their first All-Ireland in this generation, in 2011. Their enormous population pool, the financial resources they unarguably enjoy as a result of both sponsorship and decisions made centrally by the GAA, and the brilliance of this group of players fed talk of blue rule.
There were forces militating against it in the past. The last vestiges of Cork power, the Donegal surge directed by Jim McGuinness and Mayo’s return to relevance under James Horan were among them – and so was the continuing strength in Kerry.
Now, Cork are gone, Donegal are diminished and Mayo were the team who got closest to the champions in 2016.
Their valiant efforts over two tense contests last autumn were sourced in good football but also in the ability to match Dublin’s athleticism.
They do not, though, have the ability to summon scores the way the champions do. Kerry just might. In their semi-final against Dublin, they were betrayed by their bodies. They simply could not provide the physical resistance that Mayo could; the latter could not call upon the spread of footballers Kerry can, however.
And if the past two decades have handed down one lesson, it is that athletes can be made, but footballers cannot.
As a result, it is Kerry who could be best positioned to challenge the notion that a blue age is upon us at last.
They have lost some experience and could lose more before the Championship starts, but they have a relatively rich pick.
Three All-Ireland-winning minor teams will nourish future planning, and the first of those sides should offer Éamonn Fitzmaurice choices during the National League. Shane Enright, David Moran, James O’Donoghue and Paul Geaney form a young, proven backbone.
Mayo will not let themselves be absorbed into the pack, and Tyrone could emerge to expand that leading group into a quartet of teams. They were highly fancied last year but appear even lighter in attack than Mayo do.
Should Dublin win a fifth consecutive League title by April, then the predictions of domination will grow louder. It will be harder to refute them, too.
Their greatness is now established and should be acknowledged. But as an old man with a flag and an intolerance of whining Mayo men could have explained in the Hyde all those years ago, football needs rivalry.
Without it, the game grows dull and will soon start to suffer.