Cooper’s coolness on great rivalry says it all
IT’S only 25 years since Meath’s four game dance with Dublin in the first round of the Leinster Championship, and exactly this month as it happens, but all of us who were on the field at that time have been put in our place by Jonny Cooper. And it is not such a bad place to be at all. The teak tough and bravest of brave Dublin defender has placed the men of 1991 back in time with the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fir Bolgs, and all of those allegedly hearty gentlemen found deep in this country’s mythology. Yep, we’re folklore. We’re so far back in football history that all of the happenings and deeds on the field in those four games played over five weeks, including Kevin Foley’s concluding goal that stretched the length of the field, have only been passed down to the present generation by word of mouth.
It’s like it never really happened, right?
‘The rivalry is folklore,’ explained Cooper, ‘and I wasn’t around in 2010 when Meath beat Dublin.’ Johnny was in the United States on a J1 student visa that summer.
But, hey, who’s complaining? Being remembered in any shape or form is a good thing. And, besides, Cooper was two years of age when those four games were being played out, and from where he is standing right now there is not even the faintest smell of a rivalry between Meath and Dublin. Dublin own Leinster. Meath, like everyone else around the place, are probably closer to complete irrelevance than they have ever been in their extremely proud history. That’s not being harsh on the Meath football team that will share top billing with the reigning champions in Croke Park tomorrow evening. It’s the bloody awful truth. That’s why Cooper can appear so matter of fact, and perilously close to nonchalant in the days counting down to a game against Meath.
There’s more than a touch of arrogance about the man, too. But, to me, that’s what makes him extra special in today’s game.
Nobody symbolises Dublin’s place as the No.1 team in the country better than him, and his self-confidence and open-ended disregard for nearly all opponents is a rarity in the GAA in these times that are wall-to-wall with political correctness, general niceties, fakery and flattery.
SO, where do Meath even start tomorrow? Mick O’Dowd has built the best team he could possibly have built for this game, and his four years of hard and largely unrewarding work should not be dismissed out of hand. That’s not what I am doing here this morning. Meath’s Micko has done as much as any man in the county could have done in this period of time.
But Meath are smaller than Dublin (shorter and physically inferior), they are not even half as accomplished as a unit, and they possess no legitimate ‘genius’ in their forward division — while their opponents have Bernard Brogan and Ciarán Kilkenny and three other candidates for such a title on any given day.
The bigger question is who’s going to lead Meath on this occasion. Graham Reilly is an eight-year veteran of the team and, on occasions, fills that role with his powerful direct running. At the back, team captain Donal Keoghan, four years in the making as a Meath footballer, can also fill that role.
There are no other true leaders in green and gold, while Dublin have Stephen Cluxton, Cooper and Philly McMahon, Cian O’Sullivan and James McCarthy, Michael Darragh Macauley whether he starts or is dropped into a game, Kilkenny, Paul Flynn, and Brogan.
Again, advantage Dublin, in a serious way.
Defend as though their lives depend upon it and Meath will be overrun. Run at Dublin with abandon — run for their lives — and they might be ripped apart on the counter attack.
Neither do Meath have the luxury of belting high balls into a Dublin full-back line that looked under some pressure when Laois’ Donie Kingston offered himself as a target man in the quarter-final.
There’s no giant, or barrel of a man, on this Meath team.
We are indeed at a point in time in Meath and Dublin history where a once great rivalry has clearly evaporated. No rivalry, and no level of genuine respect remains.
In their own quarter-final two weeks ago, Meath defeated Louth by four points in Parnell Park — Dublin’s training ground, which was not a very subtle message from the Leinster Council confirming Meath’s place in the province’s pecking order.
The real trouble in Leinster, however, is that Meath, as in the past, are the only team who can ever possibly rival the champions.
‘If there’s one team in Leinster that can beat Dublin, it’s Meath,’ stated Graham Reilly last weekend and confirming that in the Royal County, and deep within Mick O’Dowd’s dressing room, a belief is still being fed that when they take the dance-floor with Dublin everyone watching gasps with anticipation.
Johnny Cooper and Graham Reilly are world’s apart in their view of tomorrow’s game. Folklore vs a blood-curdling rivalry?
The scoreboard will soon let us know.