FIT FOR A DUB
The Leinster Council have robbed Carlow supporters of a day to remember in Cullen Park in order to fill their pockets
IT TOOK Turlough O’Brien to put a smile on football’s pofaced visage last Sunday night. On an evening when Colm ‘Gooch’ Cooper made his eagerly awaited debut playing back up to Ciaran Whelan on RTE’s Sunday Game, it was the Carlow manager who stole the show.
Invited on as a special guest on the strength of leading his county to an unexpected win over Wexford — their first Leinster Championship win in seven years — he reminded us that managing a football team does not demand that you are duty-bound to wear the sombre mask of an undertaker.
He was brimful of good sense and wit, with a killer line when quizzed by Des Cahill as to who his fancy was to win the All-Ireland.
‘Dublin,’ he replied with the timing of a stand–up, ‘through the back door.’
Don’t confuse him for a man with a fried brain after being over exposed to the rays of a rare sunny day, because he is deadly serious about Carlow football and it is showing.
When he inherited the county team in 2014, they had finished rock bottom of Division 4 and had gone out of the Championship to two double digit defeats.
They were by any measure the worst team in the land.
They have been a top half Division 4 team for the past three years and this spring came within a point of promotion.
They have played eight games this year and have won five.
That might not be a citation that will ever see O’Brien (right) having to hire a monkey suit for one of those end of season manager of the year award gigs, but there have been less worthy recipients. More importantly, it should command respect for Carlow football. That is not there, though. They head up the road to Portlaoise this Saturday night to take on Dublin in a game which they cannot even host, not to mind win. The reality is that the decision by the Leinster Council will have no impact on the result. If they used jumpers for goalposts and played it in the car park of the Mount Wolseley in Tullow, Dublin would still win this any way they choose. But it’s the lack of intuition shown by a Leinster Council who have overseen a football championship that has withered away to the point of irrelevance which truly jars. This represented an opportunity to feed a little romance into a competition that has become so emotionally repressed that it generates as much heat on the dance floor as a church dance in the 1930’s. They duck behind an accountant’s ledger and proclaim that it would not be possible to play the game in Netwatch Cullen Park as there is not enough stand seats to facilitate Dublin’s 3,000 sea- son ticket holders, which is why the game has to go up the road to O’Moore Park. And, if that rings a bell with you it should; Laois were denied home advantage last year on the basis that there was inadequate seating capacity for their meeting with the All-Ireland champions, which was instead moved to Nowlan Park.
However, one year on and with not an extra seat added to the capacity in Portloaise, that is no longer an issue. Funny that.
The irony here is that one the thing that can at least help arrest the decline of the Leinster Championship is the same thing that is killing it; the Dubs.
That is not through any fault of their own; they have gone so far out the gap that if the mood grabs them they could easily win the next 10 Leinster championships in a row to go with the 11 that they have won in the last 12 years.
Their dominance is one of the reasons why the provincial championships are fast running out of time, yet the one thing they still bring to Leinster is the star dust which can dazzle.
The impact of Dublin descending on Cullen Park — a ground that usually hosts the likes of London, Waterford and Limerick who all played there this spring — would be a sight to behold and would serve as a long overdue reminder that Leinster treats all its constituent parts equally.
The obvious comparison to cite is Sutton United in the FA Cup this season, who snubbed the prospect of bigger gate receipts on offer by moving their game against Arsenal to Crystal Palace’s Selhurst Park.
It was motivated partly by the desire to make life as uncomfortable as possible for the Premiership giants by making them play on their artificial pitch, but it was also admirably done to ensure that the occasion would be framed forever in the minds and hearts of their own community.
And with the money they pocketed they went and repaired the hole in the roof of the roof of the club bar. Carlow are our Sutton; Netwatch Cullen Park our Gander Green Lane.
There are no holes in the roof that need fixing, but it is the kind of homely place — there was a charming story last winter of a club-game being delayed when the floodlights failed after the generator ran dry of juice and the county chairman sped off to a local petrol station for emergency supplies — that would send a warm glow through an ice-cold Championship, if Dublin came calling for a day.
It would give O’Brien home comforts to make the best possible fist of a daunting challenge, and a sellout crowd in the 11,000 capacity stadium would have been left feeling lucky to have been there to experience it.
A day for the ages, but instead Leinster put more value in the few euros more that they can squeeze from an occasion that will be utterly mundane.
And if that conjures up an uncomfortable image of relatives at the end of the bed rifling through the pockets of a dying patient, it is only with reason.
If they used jumpers for goalposts, Dublin would still win