DUBS RISING UP TO A HIGH WATERMARK

The continual improvement that Gavin has wrought on his watch has brought this team to the brink of greatness

Stephen Cluxton has redefined the role of goalkeeper

WHEN Philly McMahon decided to try and do something for his local community, it came via a conversation with Ger McLoughlin who was involved with a community organisation called the Ballymun-Whitehall Partnership. The Dublin defender wanted to draw on his own knowledge of running personal fitness courses to target young people in that part of the northside cityscape.

The criteria involved those aged 18-24 who had been on social welfare for longer than a year. With the help of the Department of Social Protection, who had rubberstamped the programme, a list of over 500 people was sourced and each and every one of them sent an invite. From the 50 responses, 30 were interviewed to fill the 20 places available.

The name of the course? ‘Philly McMahon’s Kaizen Evolution’. The title had a special significance for the multiple All-Ireland winner who grew up in the Ballymun flats and saw too many of his peers suffer from the lack of opportunity in a socially deprived area of the city.

As he detailed in his award-winning memoir, ‘Kaizen’ is Japanese for ‘continual improvement’, a philosophy that struck a chord with the player. It might as well be the philosophy of this Dublin team.

Only three previous times in the history of the game has a county won four football All-Irelands in a row: Wexford 1915-18, Kerry 192932 and 1978-81. The continual improvement that Jim Gavin has wrought on his watch bring this team to the brink of something special.

Victory would represent a staggering trophy collection of 16 of the 18 pieces of serious silverware on offer since he took charge for the 2013 season. Apart from the speed bump of the 2014 All-Ireland semifinal defeat by Donegal, and the 2017 National League final defeat by Kerry after Dean Rock’s attempt at an equaliser hit the post, it has been a clean sweep. Remarkable.

Throw in some of the other milestones: after a 36-game unbeaten streak in League and Championship shattered all-known records until that League final against Kerry, Dublin have put together another eye-watering run. It’s now 27 Championship games unbeaten.

Then there’s the influence of Stephen Cluxton.

He has redefined the role of goalkeeper and custom-fitted it for the 21st century and he stands on the brink of yet another personal set of milestones. This game represents his 98th Championship appearance, pushing the all-time record out even further. Until he came along, no player had captained his county to three senior All-Irelands. He now is within touching distance of his fifth as captain, his fourth in a row in the same position of leadership, and his sixth in total.

A full eleven of the squad who have featured this year have eyes on a sixth Celtic Cross, an illustration of the wealth of experience within the ranks.

Suddenly the high watermark of eight medals secured by the elite of Kerry’s Golden Years crew – Páidí Ó Sé, Pat Spillane, Mikey Sheehy, Ger Power and Denis ‘Ogie’ Moran – doesn’t look like a freakish collection, never to be matched.

Down south, they will watch this one with interest, particularly on a day when Dublin’s senior exploits have taken the sting out of the county’s own bid for a five-in-a-row at minor level.

That Tyrone only have one survivor from 2008 who has the experience of final day banked – Colm Cavanagh – is part of the reason why the Tyrone’s odds are more in keeping with a Grand National runner than a team packed with Ulster title winners and classy operators like Mattie Donnelly and Peter Harte.

In Dublin mode, it has been much commented upon how the colour seeps out of the players. How it fits with management policy to present them in the monochrome terms of an old black and white photograph. But that’s only within the strict surrounds of the county set-up on official duty.

Like a bunch of soldiers on leave, when the shield of match-day is lifted, the players give a flavour of the exuberant range of personalities within the squad.

Kevin McManamon singing Van Morrison’s ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ at the public homecoming. Dean Rock hammering out ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’ by The Proclaimers. Jack McCaffrey hamming it up at the winning banquet with the live RTÉ cameras rolling, like a naughty schoolkid pulling faces behind the teacher’s back. Unfortunately, the way the game has evolved has robbed Gaelic football of much of its on-field personality as well.

London manager Ciaran Deely wrote an evocative and thought-provoking blog post on the final, taking in his travels to Cuba and to China when Jim McGuinness was in situ, and his insight as London manager into how Tyrone needed to approach the Dublin dilemma.

Retain a double sweeper in Colm Cavanagh and Frank Burns or press up on Cluxton to disrupt the kickout and limit the champions frequency of primary possession? Drop back into zonal defensive formation or go man-to-man?

A bit of everything, he suggested. And he’s right. Flexibility, and introducing an element of unstructured chaos to the game, is key to Tyrone’s chances. That element of chaos that Mayo brought in last year’s final was instructive, to the extent that John Small walked on a double yellow after a rash challenge on Colm Boyle. But for Donal Vaughan’s moment of madness, retaliating and also seeing red, the game was Mayo’s to lose.

This would be Mickey Harte’s crowning glory if Tyrone pull it off.

He needs to learn the lesson of Galway’s folly and man-mark Ciarán Kilkenny, à la Mayo and Lee Keegan. Brian Fenton is also too central to Dublin’s play to be let freely continue his path to Footballer of the Year. In turn, Small will renew hostilities with Peter Harte.

If Tyrone retreat into a familiar defensive shell, as they did in last year’s one-sided semi-final and for over an hour in the Super 8s contest in Omagh, it only plays into the hands of a superbly drilled Dublin side.

As an illuminating statistical analysis by Eamon Donoghue revealed in the build-up, no Dublin footballer has taken a shot from play from the opposition 45 metre line or outside of it in their seven matches to this point.

This fits the reimagining of Gaelic football as a computer algorithm, posited here, earlier in the week. Gavin has spent recent seasons deciphering the defensive code of counter-attacking set-ups like Tyrone and developing his own system of play to counteract. The way Dublin play now is like a finely-engineered software programme where the variables are all controlled.

The only problem is that the Championship – as a whole – has left supporters strangely unsatisfied. They don’t want cold, structured defensive set-ups or cold, structured attacking patterns defined by long bouts of handpassing and keep ball; what they want is the primal battle that goes with man-on-man contests, the hits, the high-fielding, the kicking of the ball that used to be integral to any contest – Gaelic football in its raw, uncompromising beauty.

Croke Park though, is unlikely to be a place for dewy-eyed nostalgia.

Expect a very modern final, hard as it might sit with the neutral.

And another footnote in the history books for Dublin.