SHADES OF MICKO IN GENTLE JIM
Gavin and Kerry legend have plenty in common, like hiding their belief under a lot of soft talk
If Jim Gavin ever wonders what he will sound like in a couple of decades, he could do worse than watch Micko. They ran a repeat of that documentary this week and there was a part of me thinking there must be some mischievous folk up in Donnybrook who decided it would be fun to toy with the emotions of Kerry people in All-Ireland final week.
Kerry for the repeats and Dublin for the live show…
Anyhow, we fell for it hook, line and sinker, but it’s funny how the second time you watch something, you see it differently.
The first time, it felt like nostalgia, a comfort blanket. This time, it felt a lot more contemporary.
The more I saw of Micko and Kerry, the more I felt like I was looking at Jim and Dublin.
Micko has a throwaway line in it when he is recalling what it was like when his team were in their prime.
‘We used to go out and we expected to win every match, every time,’ he recalled.
You could construe that as arrogance, but undiluted belief is what it really is.
Back in his own time, when he was sickening Cork, Dublin and a list of other unfortunates, with soft words, Micko would never say that publicly.
Gavin mouths words of caution whether he is facing Wicklow or Tyrone, but he and his team are thinking just like Micko and Kerry did almost half a century ago.
Every time they go out they expect to win. They believe it. We believe it. And Tyrone will be in a whole pile of bother if at some stage this afternoon they start believing it, too. It is the most surreal of All-Ireland finals. I know we are not in it, but that sad fact has never insulated me from people bothering me for tickets. This week there hasn’t been a whisper.
No one really wants to talk about it, because the assumption is that this thing is done and dusted before a ball has been kicked.
It is not a good thing for our game that all intrigue is drained from it, but I am sure that if you took a time machine back to 1982 the same sense of fatalism was pervasive across the football nation – outside Kerry, of course. We know what happened then. The starting point for football getting the competitive final it needs – perhaps more than this year’s championship deserves – is that Tyrone really believe that this is a game they can win.
I don’t mean that they just mouth that belief. I mean that at some stage today, say after half time when Dublin tend to pummel their opposition mercilessly, they show it by clinging to the certainty that this is a game they can win.
If they don’t, they will be buried before they even know it.
Last week, on these pages, I suggested five things Tyrone must get right to have a shot at winning today, from kick-outs, to match-ups to game-plans and to their bench. None of those things will matter if they allow themselves to be mentally bullied by a team whose certainty that they are going to win is absolute.
My belief is that Tyrone will not allow that to happen because, quite simply, if they lose like they did 12 months ago, where they did not raise a Red Hand in anger, they are pretty much finished as a group that can win an All-Ireland.
And I don’t believe Mickey Harte will let that happen. I expect them to not only be more ambitious, but to unleash a contained fury which will seek to test Dublin’s control and their decisionmaking. It will have to be contained and controlled because, physically, it is impossible to sustain that kind of rage for 70-odd minutes against a team this strong. Sometimes you just need to win phases of games.
I think that they will have squeezed a lot more value from the final quarter in the Super 8s clash against Dublin last month than some critics assume. During that period, they dialled up the heat on Stephen Cluxton and turned a sixpoint deficit into a two-point game at one stage.
People suggested that Dublin were always in control, but Gavin demands perfection. The champions did not bend in those final minutes out of complacency. It was from the pressure they faced.
I am not sure if we are going to see a tactical curve ball being
Tyrone will try to unleash a contained fury which will test Dublin’s control
pitched by Mickey Harte today, but then I don’t think they need to.
They need to trust themselves enough to either win or turnover enough ball that they can stay in the game. They must trust themselves enough to keep their shape in attack to ensure that they have the option of hitting their inside line quickly, because they’ll need a goal, likely two, to have a shot.