The Longshot: Derailing the Dubs something Kerry are no longer used to doing

A COUPLE of years back I was at a wedding in Listowel, just after the 2018 All-Ireland football final, which saw Dublin beat Tyrone to set up a tilt at immortality the following year for Jim Gavin’s men.

I was talking to an older gentleman from Offaly who was a bit hard of hearing, and I said I was thinking of throwing my hat in for the vacant Faithful job, so that I could fire them up to stop a five-in-a-row again.

For some reason he heard this as me telling him I was actually taking over the Offaly footballers, something he quickly congratulated me on. He was delighted. I tried to disavow him of this notion straight away, but he was having none of it and called over his wife to introduce her to their new bainisteoir. I tried to explain to her I wasn’t, but she just threw her eyes up to heaven and led him away.

Throughout the meal I could see him nudging people and pointing me out, the Kerry supremo who could guide the Midlanders back to the promised land. 

Later on, I passed him telling the news to the groom, who I only knew slightly, so I stepped in to clear it all up, but when I tried to, I noticed he was by now very tipsy, and though confused by my denials, he wasn’t convinced.

Expecting total strangers to not take the things you tell them seriously is something I have learned to temper since. Although there is a blatant mistruth coming up in a few paragraphs, so see if you can spot it.

It all ended badly anyway, my non-attempt to scupper Dublin, and instead of parking up after the ‘Drive for Five’, they accelerated past being ‘In the Mix for Six’ and lifted another Sam in front of empty stands in Croker during covid. We at least avoided ‘Seacht and Awe’. ‘They’re Bate for Eight’. ‘Nineninenine: How Do We Resuscitate the Football Championship?’ and ‘The Amble Towards Double Figures’.

The five-in-a-row by Dublin in 2019 leapfrogged all other achievements in the history of inter-county GAA. The players involved will be remembered for the next 100 years.

But six? It felt a bit much.

Dublin dominance, even under new management, started to look like it might stretch into perpetuity. More success might have scuttled talk of a once-in-a-generation group of footballers and how those sort of eras come and go.

While ‘envy’ was an acceptable word to throw at the county’s detractors then, it is probably no harm they have won nothing these past two years. It makes the players seem more human (is Cluxton a human?) and puts a pin in talk of splitting Dublin in two (why not four?) or reviewing the funds that are necessary to support grassroots GAA in the capital because of its massive population.

Every four years since 2011, Kerry have met Dublin in an All-Ireland final. All lost by the men from the southwest, except the one they drew when almost derailing the fifth win on the trot in 2019.

Win, and Dublin will be on 31 titles, just seven behind Kerry, and closing.

Of course, the bitter Kerryman will point out that 14 of these wins came before the 1950s, when the Dublin county team was an amalgamation of exiles from other counties who happened to live in the capital.

Kevin Heffernan, their great football innovator, believed the 1955 side he was full-forward in (beaten by Kerry in the decider that year) was the first true Dublin team.

Their winning speeches before then were given in incomprehensible culchie accents and had to be dubbed for the wireless, so locals in the capital could understand them. This led to the nickname ‘the Dubs’.

Then, there are those who argue that their eight wins in the last 12 years came after a serious injection of cash for the Dublin senior football set-up, akin to that the Limerick hurlers have received from JP. Let’s leave that and their playing all their big games at home for another day.

But let us deal with ‘Yerra’.

Most counties, Cork especially, hold this as a psychological feint by Kerry people. Yet as someone who has spent plenty of time over the county bounds, I’ve never understood it as such. Most Kerry people are fatalistic going into tight games. My father was perhaps one of the most optimistic Kerry fans I have ever encountered before a match began, yet he rarely still occupied his seat towards the end of a close game.

My first Dublin-Kerry tussle was their first re-encounter in 16 years when they met in a quarter-final in Semple in 2001. The day of ‘the point’. I am seated directly behind Maurice when he swerves the sideline over the bar in Thurles, beside my best friend, a Dub, who I proceed to harangue on high for expecting their Vinny Murphy-inspired comeback to suffice.

He suffers beside me for the replay and several other Kerry wins over Dublin after this (2004, 2007 — when a Stephen Cluxton mistake costs Dublin the game — and 2009), until the tide turns.

Then came 2011. The same man says he is emigrating to Australia. After a frantic search for tickets on the day, I give him mine 30 minutes before throw-in. Dublin haven’t been in a final in 16 years.

“Here you go, you might not be in these parts again.” (He never left and now lives in Clontarf and has been to deciders in the double figures since, including replays). Cluxton nails a late free, and Dublin win a game that seems lost. I fly to Rome the day after, glad to have left the country.

2013 is a semi-final meeting. I am sitting next to my father for the first time in a long while at a Kerry game. I am supremely calm, which is a worry, and this rubs off on my Dad, who takes up my usual “going loopy” baton, and aided by a Kenmare woman, an aunt to a fine Cork player, each of them drive themselves distracted during a very close match that sees Dublin ease themselves to a seven-point win in one of the greatest contests of football you’ll ever see.

The two sides don’t meet in 2014, but the Kerry panel do turn up at my wedding at the Woodlands in Adare (scene of the Limerick victory dinner last Sunday) following an epic replay encounter with Mayo at the Gaelic Grounds. The most memorable moment is when my aunt, who is from Kerry, asks Mikey Sheehy if he is with the band.

On a rainy Hill the next year my glasses fog up for most of the final as Dublin get their quest for five-in-a-row underway. I find a ticket for my no longer long-suffering best friend that day too in the Gresham Hotel an hour before throw-in. As is my rule by then, I head to the airport the next day, to drown my sorrows in Madrid.

Dublin meet Kerry in the semis in 2016. I watch the final in a communal room in Marymount Hospice with my dad, who dies three days later.

Kerry are so far ahead at half time it seems the football gods are giving him a decent send-off. But they crumble after the break. The next day my dad barely knows who I am, never mind who won the match.

Mayo, as is their want, hand Dublin the three-in-a-row (take a bow Donal Vaughan) in 2017.

Kerry limp out of the 2018 championship in the Super Eights; I’m limping on crutches in Naples when this happens, but that’s another story.

2019 is still a bit too raw for me to recount. I was boarding a severely delayed flight home from Malaga when Dean Rock misses a late free in the first game, but I was in Croker for the replay to see the Dubs complete their magnificent achievement (Damn you, Eoin Murchan!)

As I write this, I still don’t have a ticket for Sunday. Or the day off (thanks for keeping me in suspense, lads). A ‘Lower Davin’ appeared to be floating my way on Wednesday morning but it evaporated as I tried to snatch it.

I had to work for the semi-final last year, so maybe it’s a good omen. A two-in-a-row? A re-emergence by the Dubs? No one has a clue really, do they? May the slightly better team win, as they nearly always do.

Down Under and out but plenty of positives

AND so that’s that for the Irish ladies Down Under.

Any regrets will not be with underperforming at least.

Their first half against Canada showed they can hold their own against very good teams, even if the Olympic champions looked well below par before he break.

Nigeria’s shock win over Australia yesterday certainly means this lived up to ‘Group of Death’ billing. The Africans were the outsiders in the group but can qualify if they secure a draw (11/4) with us on Monday.

We are 13/5 to win the game, while Nigeria are just 10/11 to win the group, having opened at 25/1!

After their 5-0 win over Zambia, Spain have been installed as joint favourites alongside the US, who could only manage a draw with the Netherlands yesterday.

Final round of rugby

THE final round of an abridged Rugby Championship in the Southern Hemisphere is upon us this weekend with the Aussies hosting New Zealand and Argentina travelling to Johannesburg A last-minute try by Juan Martin Gonzalez gave Argentina a shock victory over Australia in the second round and the Pumas have beaten Australia in successive tests for the first time, both planned by former Wallabies coach Michael Cheika. Argentina won 48-17 in San Juan last August before Dave Rennie was fired as coach and replaced by Eddie Jones.

Jones now faces the prospect of taking his side to France for the World Cup without a win unless they can rebound in either of their two Bledisloe Cup matches against the All Blacks or a warm-up against France next month.

The home side are 15/2 to win tomorrow morning and considering they should have won the same fixture last year if the referee hadn’t so cruelly denied them a kick to touch, I think those are good odds.

Good value on Pumas

SOUTH Africa will know tomorrow afternoon if they are still in with a chance of winning the Rugby Championship.

They need Australia to win and then ensure they overcome the Pumas by enough points to prevail. It seems unlikely enough but as this tournament is very much a warm-up for the World Cup in the autumn, teams will be trying out different players and firming up different positions.

In their opening test in Pretoria, the Springboks took massive strides on the attack and ran the Aussies ragged.

That is unlikely to happen against the more practical Pumas under Cheika.

That the South Americans are 9/1 again offers good value in what might even be a dead rubber.

The Bet

Will Stephen Cluxton be mopping the floors of the Croke Park dressing room with Flash mixed in with tears of despair or joy? Can Clifford win it on his own? Will Dessie really leave Ciaran Kilkenny on the bench? If you think these Dublin greats can win one more then 7/4 on James McCarthy to be player of the year (he’s somehow never won it — although neither has Kilkenny!) is a better shout than evens on them to lift Sam.