Dubs’ greatness is set in stone
Mayo knew waiting and hoping wouldn’t unseat this fabulous generation but in a year of utter change...
HOPES of that meaningful Christmas we’ve been promised will rely on more surprising outcomes than this one. Children will tear open presents on Friday morning fizzing with anticipation, not knowing what is inside the wrapping and it is in the uncertainty that a good deal of the joy resides.
The Christmas All-Ireland was a more predictable occasion altogether.
For 45 minutes Mayo were brilliant, dragging Dublin into precisely the sort of uncomfortable challenge to which the champions are unaccustomed.
From the fourth quarter onwards, Dublin dominated the encounter and eased towards victory with the confident certainty of a shopper who is leaving the car park and heading for home as panic blazes behind them.
What has changed in Gaelic football, then? Dublin are still champions, their greatness taking on a further unprecedented shape.
And everyone else still lags behind them.
Dublin lost a legendary manager and his replacement used the players at his disposal just as cleverly. Dessie Farrell did a job on the sideline that did justice to the startling legacy left by Jim Gavin.
‘THE TUNNEL SPAT WAS AN EXAMPLE OF TWO TEAMS THAT CARE’
There was no panic, but his deployment of replacements was judicious. Colm Basquel and Brian Howard gave them vital energy, especially in the middle third.
Just as Mayo began to wilt, Basquel and Howard provided zip that damaged a retreating opposition. Paul Mannion came on and kicked two important points. From the second water break to the end, Dublin scored five points; Mayo managed one in response.
Ciarán Kilkenny and Brian Fenton, the two most high-profile victims of Mayo’s frenzied efforts for three quarters of an hour, galloped into the contest and wielded significant influences in that period, too.
Dublin were badly rattled by Mayo, but they righted themselves and won the championship.
So in that respect, not a great deal has changed in the year that has been violently upended in most other aspects.
The order of those chasing the champions could have, though.
This game was nothing like last year’s semi-final, when Dublin obliterated Mayo in 12 minutes after the resumption. Mayo are a muchchanged side from then, and a much better one. They are younger, and the rawness in the group was painfully apparent on occasions here.
But they are fast, skilful and ferociously dedicated to every engagement for possession. There is no reason to suppose they can’t get back to this stage of the competition.
And they will be ravenous in their hunger to do so. Forget the soft talk about long waits and what football means in Mayo. The county’s greatest strength is that in James Horan, they have a manager who also happens to be among the least sentimental Mayo people alive.
His work is about tangible improvements, about fortifying his talented young squad with the skills and the knowledge to come to Croke Park , and bring the greatest team that has ever played the game to a place of acute discomfort.
They need to do better for longer, but Horan will trust that they can.
He will, one suspects, be happy to leave the blather about curses and romance to others.
Dublin don’t dabble much in those corners of life, either. They are sometimes accused of being joyless, but that is, perhaps, to mistake a frightening focus for a lack of passion.
The half-time tunnel spat was a concentrated example of two sides who cared, but so was Dublin’s unflinching determination to stay true to their game even as Mayo swamped them.
That Mayo had to do everything right was one of the most cited pieces of pre-match wisdom.
That is to mistake footballers for robots, of course. All teams and their players make mistakes. Dublin made a sack-load of them in the first half, for instance. It wasn’t the mistakes that made this game buzz, it was the reaction they prompted. Fail again. Fail better.
Dublin hadn’t scored for 12 minutes and seemed to be slipping towards real discomfort when Con O’Callaghan got his goal, their second of the game.
They kicked three bad wides, two of them from pivotal players in Kilkenny and Fenton. They turned over ball. And every time they replied.
The beauty of much of this contest was that Mayo did, too.
They did precisely what the more conservative pundits warned they must not: they pushed up hard on Dublin when attacking, trying to maximise every opportunity they got in the Dublin half.
That meant they left space behind them and Dublin compensated for their general lassitude with two goals, should have another from a John Small shot that was a point, and could have had one from an O’Callaghan drive.
But Mayo, and Horan, understand that waiting and hoping doesn’t beat Dublin. That invites on the blue wave, and then it crashes over your team and sweeps them to a place of embarrassment and hopelessness.
And Mayo, to their immense credit, will not play that way. There is pride in it, too; the manager trusted his team to match Dublin, and for a very long time they did.
Yet there was never once the feeling that Mayo had taken control, or that Dublin were discommoded to a decisive extent. The strong suspicion was that Dublin would be able
to absorb the cost of their mistakes, but Mayo would not.
And that’s what happened.
They coped with Mayo going after their kick-outs and winning them consistently, while keeping possession on David Clarke’s maligned restarts. They managed, too, even as Cillian O’Connor kicked points off the glut of frees they belched up under baking Mayo pressure.
Where this all ends was, one imagines, a subject being traded with great heat and very little light on social media last night.
To their detractors, Dublin are killing the game. To their supporters, they are a force for good that are shamefully unacknowledged.
To those of us desiring a more considered take, the extremes are offputting. Dublin’s advantages are clear and in places problematic, but it is true, too, that this is a fabulous generation.
Mayo will be back for them, and Kerry will, too. Donegal can come again. The familiar foes will gather, and Dublin will prepare.
Christmas week is imminent. The country is turned inside out with stress and sickness and uncertainty. The year has been, in some heartwrenching ways, a disaster.
Dublin thunder on, spreading joy and raising hackles.
That much, at least, stays the same.