BRAINS HEART COURAGE
Only Dublin’s stellar cast of wizards stand between Mayo and the biggest prize of all at the end of their yellow brick road
The biggest lie peddled this week is that the leaking of Mayo’s AllIreland victory parade, penned in tentatively for Castlebar tomorrow evening, was done with mischievous intent. The theory goes that it’s the Dublin media providing more ammunition for manager Jim Gavin who will busy himself in the final hours before throw-in plastering his dressing room wall with black and white evidence of Mayo’s presumptive victory.
Yeah, because you just know beneath that ice-cool exterior there is a tablethumping monster waiting to jump out. We don’t think so.
No, the reason that the itinerary of the planned celebrations was published was to tease the national curiosity as to what Mayo will look like if the Westerners finally end their 66-year wait for an All-Ireland title.
As it happens, the document might just be the most ambitious and unrealistic ever published because, if it happens, the madness will not be shoe-horned into order by a timetable.
This will be Electric Picnic, Rag Week, Puck Fair and Mardi Gras all wrapped up into one hedonistic package.
This will stress test human livers, A&E capacities, and, above all, the fading influence of the Catholic Church. If this festival of debauchery does not beget a new curse to replace the old one, there is not a parish priest worthy of the collar left in this country.
Outside of Dublin, the national keening is for a Mayo win because the hook is that it will provide a heart-warming story that we can all buy into.
But if you are looking at today’s final through the eyes of an event junkie, you are not seeing its true appeal.
If Mayo win, the story is less about a 66-year famine – for a large swathe of those years they did not get close enough to the table to feel the hunger pangs – and far more about the validation of this extraordinary group of players.
The temptation for Cillian O’Connor, should he climb the steps of the Hogan Stand to take hold of the Sam Maguire this evening, will be to dedicate this triumph to all those who went before and failed.
Of course, it is nice to be nice but it won’t change the fact that this Mayo team succeeded because they are strong where their predecessors were weak – in body and, most definitely, in mind. They have walked the yellow brick road to AllIreland glory, displaying brains, heart and courage – attributes too often absent among their predecessors in the green and red.
But how will the rest of the country feel if it is Stephen Cluxton who eyeballs us once more from high up on the podium?
This final offers something more than a great story to celebrate; it also offers us a great team.
Dublin could be the first team to win a third All-Ireland in a row for 31 years and yet there is no sense of national anticipation, never mind appreciation, of that coming to pass. There are all kinds of reasons for that but they say more about us than them. There is the begrudgery that is part of our DNA, the green-eyed monster that colour coordinates so perfectly with our national uniform. Where Dublin stand now in our affection, Kerry and the Kilkenny hurling team have stood in the past. This is different, though. There is also an element of foreboding rooted in the fears which Sean Cavanagh articulated recently when he predicted that Dublin could win eight out of the next 10 All-Ireland titles. And the widely-held view is that while the likes of Kerry and Kilkenny were vulnerable to sport’s cyclical whims, Dublin’s dominance has been strategically delivered by central funding and is insulated, in GAA terms, by infinite resources.
That’s only a half-truth, because while the GAA’s investment in Dublin has fast-tracked the county’s dominance, the reality is that if Dublin did not receive those funds the county’s governance, ambition and their commercial appeal would have gotten them there eventually.
More importantly, it is grossly unfair to view this Dublin team as the product of a strategic report and put their sustained excellence down to deep pockets.
They are what they are; a great flesh and bone football team, who are in the brink of winning a fifth title in seven years.
And they have been winning the right way, playing with verve and a fluency that is easy on the eye and brutally hard on those charged with stopping them.
They may be on the way to becoming the best team to ever play this game, and with a bench that reads like an all-time fantasy sevens team have already sealed their place as the greatest panel of all time.
They have buried the notion that you can beat them by burying yourself in the bunker of the blanket defence, as Tyrone attempted to do with their the skeletal game-plan last month.
If you try to play ball with them, you run the risk of being torched for showing such conviction.
The beauty is that Mayo will likely try to go toe-to-toe with Dublin today and we will get a final to savour.
And when it’s over, no matter who is up or down on the scoreline, we will have an epic tale or a great team to celebrate.
We know what the majority of the nation is pining for today, but if we can’t celebrate greatness then there truly is nothing left in the game to cheer.