Tommy Martin: Will pundits' draft of history leave Dublin's talent out in the cold?
Robert McDaid of Dublin scores past Raymond Galligan of Cavan during the semi-final win last Saturday. Picture: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
If journalism is the first draft of history, then TV pundits sketch the early impression of how a sporting team is viewed by posterity.
The initial reaction to triumph or defeat comes in the heightened moments after the deed has been done, when eyes and ears are attuned for praise or damnation.
The impact of a studio panel with real authority can inform the views held by multitudes in the days that follow the exploits on the field, colouring conversations from the proverbial water cooler right up to, on occasion, the benches of parliament.
It’s why Irish soccer reporters, after filing their copy upon the final whistle of a match involving the national team, used to rush to a nearby TV screen to see if their verdicts were in line with those of Dunphy, Giles and Brady, and therefore with the likely mood of the nation, or at least the most impressionable part of it.
So when Dublin hammered Cavan in Saturday’s All-Ireland semi-final with the expected ease, it matters that the post-match discussion focused little on the latest exhibition of a great team’s enduring excellence.
In both the immediate post-match coverage and the subsequent considered verdict on , cursory appreciation of the victors was swiftly succeeded by the real question of the day:
How do you solve a problem like Dublin?
And there could be no argument with the editorial decision in this regard. When the five-in-a-row champions have completed their run to another final with an average winning margin of 17 points and the semi-final losers are being congratulated on their pluck for keeping the deficit to 15, then eyeballing the elephant in the room is the only option.
Nor were others mistaken in dedicating airtime and column inches to the same topic in the days that followed.
GAA discourse soon became a veritable Speakers’ Corner on the subject of Dublin’s dominance, as divergent voices clamoured to be heard across the modern media’s spaghetti junction of formats and outlets.
It felt a little bit like when Caroline Aherne’s spoof BBC chat show host Mrs Merton would exclaim “Ooh, let’s have a heated debate!” and clap her hands excitedly. Perhaps that’s because it’s something that people feel strongly about but for which a convenient solution seems out of reach.
Proposals about splitting Dublin and amalgamating others were once again trotted out, but these seem so unpalatable to so many that the cure might be worse than the disease.
The grisly subject of the central financing given to Dublin GAA was frequently raised, usually accompanied by the disclaimer that “I don’t want to get too much into that,” an acknowledgement that doing maths live on air is a dangerous game.
Most felt that money clearly has something to do with it, but then it always does.
Rural depopulation, urban alienation, balanced regional development and the possibilities of remote working came up too, evidence that this is an issue of such labyrinthine complexity that really, 10 minutes before the Mayo highlights isn’t going to get us too far.
The one thing that everybody seemed in agreement about was that there is a problem.
Well almost everyone. There remains a flat-earther rump who maintain that Dublin’s prolonged success is the result of either a big whack of happy providence or a superior appetite for hard graft to that of their layabout country cousins.
The latter camp strike a similar note to Norman Tebbit, the Tory politician of the 1980s whose answer to mass unemployment was that those on the dole should get on their bikes and find a job.
The former take a more sunshine and rainbows stance, asking us to stop worrying and learn to love the Dubs. Bernard Brogan, fresh from the inter-county front, led the way on Twitter. “Dublin financial debate is masking the conversation about how good these Dublin players are,” he tweeted as the dust settled on Saturday. “Once in a generation players in full flow!”
The once-in-a-generation brigade ignore the fact that the current team has about four generations of once-in-a-generation players in it, creating the impression that it will be in full flow for generations to come.
But there is a kernel of poignant truth contained within Brogan’s cheerleading whoops. The urgency of the debate about what might be done to stop Dublin leaves little room anymore for appreciation of them.
Where once the pundits purred over the influence of Stephen Cluxton, the searing runs of Jack McCaffrey or the explosiveness of Con O’Callaghan, all that feels old hat now.
Admiration for this Dublin team is now perfunctory, something to be gotten out of the way before engaging with the real gristle of the bigger picture.
If you are of a mind to, you can rewatch a Dublin game and strip it of context in order to just enjoy the exhibition. Focus, say, on Brian Fenton, a player whose complete mastery of his own ambidextrous tools and the shifting currents of the wider game puts one in mind of LeBron James in basketball or vintage Roger Federer or Zinedine Zidane at his most imperiously languid.
Yet it would feel delusional to focus on fineries in the midst of the anxieties gripping Gaelic football public about the direction of the inter-county game.
The same thing happened in soccer to Manchester City, whose Premier League title wins under Pep Guardiola were greeted with probing commentary about the club’s ownership and financing as much as admiration for their sublime football.
History’s verdict on City seems likely to be a cool one, the warmth of feeling due a great team withheld in the face of unease at the greater project behind it.
In a twist on the idea of history being written by the victors, one wonders if this week’s latest draft on the all-conquering Dublin football team will become the definitive version — one that puts their natural advantages and the bludgeoning power of their money in the opening paragraphs and those full-flow generational talents somewhere in the footnotes.
