Losing to Armagh was awful... this was worse
Defeat with the club and missing out on Croker magnifies pain
OGIE MORAN is one of life’s true gentlemen, but he is no grief counsellor. Last Sunday, I was in the process of trying to numb the pain from the day before when he joined me and did his best to provide some perspective.
‘Yerra, it could be worse,’ he mused, ‘there are Kerry lads out there who have lost five All-Ireland finals you know.’
And, then, to show that as a man who won eight of the 10 All-Ireland finals he played in was not oblivious to the misfortune of others, he started naming them.
Mick O’Connell, Mick O’Dwyer, the Gooch…. and as he reeled them off, he caught my eye.
‘What are you looking at me for,’ he said, querying my pained expression.
‘Ah blast it Ogie, not only am I on that list but I am on one of my own… I’ve lost six.’
‘Grand,’ he says ‘I’ll get this round so….’
Sure, if you didn’t laugh you would have to cry.
And the truth is this week it wouldn’t have taken much to move me to tears.
I suppose there is a perception when players who have enjoyed successful careers, suffer big defeats that those setbacks are sugared by the residue of success which has gone before.
Nonsense. It does not work like that. When you are winning, you are never in the business of counting. And when you lose big, there is nothing in your medal cabinet that dilutes the despair.
I lost five All-Ireland finals with Kerry and another with An Ghaeltacht, but I am not sure if I ever felt as bad after losing a game of ball as I have this week.
I always thought I would never feel worse than after losing the 2002 All-Ireland final to Armagh, but I may be wrong.
That was the year that my father passed away mid-Championship, but the football was almost cathartic in coming to terms with it.
We were in it as a family, Páidí was managing us and Darragh, in what was his best ever season in my opinion, was our captain, and as a team I don’t think we ever played better football.
And then we ended with nothing, and the days that came after that were grim.
Losing to Caltra two years later in the club final was rough, but it was easier to make peace with because we had spent the day chasing their tails.
But that loss to Moy last weekend feels rawer and deeper.
It is hard to make sense of that, but there are a few things at play.
I guess, and I have written this before, that I never truly appreciated what the club meant as I have over the last year since I left my inter-county bubble.
And when we won the county intermediate championship, I stayed on message insisting that we were on ‘bonus territory’ but the reality is that our eyes were fixed on the main prize.
Our community sensed that too, it never felt more alive. I received texts from the United States and, even, Australia from neighbours who were planning to come home if we had made it to Croke Park.
It becomes so much bigger than a foot- ball game, it becomes a celebration of who you are and where you are from, and those lucky folk from Knocknagree, Multyfarnham, Moy and Michael Glavey’s all experienced that yesterday.
What is special about club football is that the grade you play at never determines the importance.
And then there are the players. This was my first time where, along with Conall Ó Cruadlaoich, I had to think of others as much as myself and that only serves to magnify the sense of devastation when you lose.
The manner of it hardly helped too; three points up heading into injury time… I don’t even want to go there. And then there are selfish reasons, too. I was desperate to get back to Croke Park with my own and scratch that itch from 2004.
It was something I had not thought about at the start of the year, but when it became a possibility I was as giddy as a teenager at the prospect.
But the beauty is that there is always another day; there is always a horse saddled to get back up on.
I remember as low as I felt in 2002, that year’s team holiday was the best I was ever on as a Kerry player. We went to South Africa for two weeks, but it had nothing to do with the venue and everything to do with the company. Losing can bring you even closer as a group, provide an even deeper bond which might just explain why every year this Mayo team seem to bounce back stronger every time. You are desperate to make amends, you want to find the extra inch and make it all right again. We will be just fine as a club. Not every year, most likely not even very generation, will be offered a pathway to Croke Park but there will no shortage of other mountains to conquer. There is always a horse to get up on. Well, unless you are 38, and you fear it can no longer take the weight. Maybe that is the reason why this time it feels like hell.