Kerry eyes are on Sam but behind Dubs rivalry is an enduring friendship
KERRY went close, but now Dublin are a dip in the Styx away from invincibility. Dublin could become the first team ever to win five inarow.
We have a young team. Dublin are the hottest favourites in years. This is city versus country but somewhere in among the do-or-die is an enduring friendship which will be suspended for about 75 minutes tomorrow in the holy ground of Croke Park, where there is no truce.
Here we are then on the eve of battle after a week when sleep came only in fits and starts.
The tension has been building and building. I’m waking up in the middle of the night worrying about Kerry. The women who pray have worn away their fingerprints from counting rosaries on special Knock beads. We speak of little else.
Most of us agree we will die happy if Kerry win.
I have instructed my advisers to put a ‘for sale’ sign on John B’s if Dublin win. I will be leaving my beloved Listowel forever.
The plan is to buy a small shack on the edge of a lagoon on a desert island. There I will spend the rest of my days, incommunicado, and living off turtles and periwinkles.
Then again, if Dublin do win we will have a bonanza in our pub, what with all the Dubs coming down to Kerry to tell us about the five in a row.
They will give me an unmerciful slagging at Listowel Races, which kicks off on the Sunday after the All Ireland. The worst part is I can’t bar them as we are good friends but there’s only so much a body can take.
The Listowel Races was the place where the friendships started off back in the seventies. Jimmy Keaveney, the smartest Dublin player of all time, had been coming to the races every year since the early sixties.
Even when Dublin won the All Ireland, he would skip the city celebrations and make his way to Listowel Races.
Last year Jimmy was unable to do his pilgrimage, but we hear he is making a comeback. Jimmy is the kind of a man you would love to see walking into the pub. He fills up the place with his admirers and acolytes.
That man should be on appear
ance money. Keaveney brought the Dublin players to Listowel after several fraught All Ireland finals and it was there in the bar under the New Stand, enemies became friends.
I wrote my first piece for the Irish Independent here 18 years ago on the day Kerry played Dublin in Thurles. I’m still writing about Kerry and
Dublin.
Here’s a line or two from that piece: “Back in ’75, though, we Kerry boys thought all Dubs were chancers who lived on chips and Swiss rolls. Many Dubs thought Kerrymen were muck savages who ate nothing only spuds, half-cooked mackerel and the odd lost holidaymaker.”
Tony Hanahoe was the Dublin captain in 1975. Tony is a solicitor. He is a deep thinker and a leader. Hanahoe was the Stephen Cluxton of his day.
Tim Kennelly was a farmer’s son from just outside Listowel. I was Tim’s domestique on our local team, the Listowel Emmets. We were close. Tim was tough and brave.
Tim and Tony walloped each other around Croke Park for a good few years, without so much as a word of complaint from either man. There was no diving, only get up and get on with it.
Tim told me there was nothing he liked better than “baten the Dublinness out of Hanahoe”, but then he said: “I can’t understand it, Billy. The harder we hit him, the better he gets.”
Poor Tim died suddenly. I met Hanahoe when he came out of the car outside the church in Listowel. He was crying. These two sworn enemies became the best of friends.
I’ll be calling back to see Tim later on today. Half the town is praying at his grave for Kerry. Tony, I will tell Tim you are asking for him.
The supporters took their lead from the players. The respect Hanahoe and Kennelly had for each other carries on. Dublin respect Kerry and we respect them as a footballers.
Here’s a word of warning. The extremists on the internet do not reflect the values of Tim and Tony.
Never judge a county by the internet posts. Many of the sheep-worriers are unwell and their instability is there for inspection. You would have to feel for them.
They are but a small percentage of the whole. They are fake fans.
And while we will have at each other in Croke Park tomorrow, the madness of the game will give way to the shared pint, when passions play out into the shallows of calmer recollection.
It is important then to renew our vows and keep the spirit of Hanahoe and Kennelly in our hearts no matter what happens on the pitch.
Football is our way of life here in Kerry. Moms pat their tummies when babies kick in the womb and say: “There’s a footballer.”
Old men who wore the green and gold have the sacred vestment known as the Kerry jersey draped across their coffin. From the cradle to the grave.
Dublin only had that in places and parts back in the seventies. The Dub love took time to develop.
Dublin of the seventies and eighties gave birth to Baby Blue. The team of today are Dublin in the rare new times. They have made a town out of city.
Now most of Dublin care as much aswedo.
There’s no better place to be than in Croke Park when Kerry beat Dublin. The players of today have had little to do with each other off the field. But the friendships will come in time.
We love the teams we love but never forget all of us are all the same under the jersey.
The madness of the game will give way to the shared pint, when passions play out into the shallows of calmer recollection