Is football’s empire being redrawn?
At the start of this year, the prospect of Cork-Dublin getting it on in the championship would not have set pulses racing from Swatragh to Rossclare.
Dublin were licking their wounds after another conclusive championship exit, while Cork had yet again come up short against Kerry – far shorter, indeed, than the four-point scoreline suggests.
There was a bit of enthusiasm for Cork’s chances of outright victory in 2010. But only a bit. Cork could win it alright, some said – especially if Kerry were taken out of it by somebody else: not exactly what you’d call a ringing endorsement.
Someone else did take Kerry out of it. And Dublin look like they might be reborn. And while Cork’s form has been dismal enough of late, they are still the most experienced side left in the competition, and, though they may bristle at the suggestion that green and gold haunts them in any way, the removal of Kerry from the race does give them a timely fillip.
There is a real sense now, too, of a changing of the guard in Gaelic football, a shifting of the sands. We’re in a new world now.
These seminal moments arrive in the most unexpected of times: they creep up on you when least expected. For them to be truly dramatic, they must come virtually unannounced.
It happened in Thurles in 1995 when Clare beat Limerick, and again a year later in Croke Park when Wexford emerged from their own shadow to claim Leinster. It is on days like those that a real frisson of excitement runs through the GAA community: perhaps the best example of all was in 1991 when Down won the All-Ireland playing magnificent football.
Circumstances have thus conspired to add deep significance to this game, and, yet, we believe something else, something beyond the immediate context, has found its way into mix to transform it into what could be termed a clash of real glamour and importance.
It is the tale of two cities, the (sort of) light-hearted disputed claims to the status of the country’s capital, and the sense that in a society where towns can’t really go to war at a whim, a showdown like this is an appropriate surrogate.
The folk memory of the 1983 replay is also a contributing factor, . It’s far enough back for many of us to get genuinely nostalgic about.
In those days, Dublin rarely ventured beyond the M50: primarily because the M50 wasn’t there, but you get my drift. And if they did travel, it was to Longford or maybe Wexford Park for an opening round of the championship – or, in the dog days of winter, to Ballinascreen or Ballina for a league match.
The draw with Cork therefore forced an unseasonal, almost unprecedented, trip out of the metropolitan comfort zone.
There was talking of stamping passports and stocking up on local currency. They travelled more in hope than confidence that they’d vault the language barrier.
So down they went. And home they came with the spoils. The craic was ninety. Muckser didn’t see the match at all when he fell in with a crowd of women down from Roscrea for a hen party, and The Chief climbed out the window of the B&B only to land on the sleeping family dog.
In short, the sort of escapades everyone else gets up to when their county is playing in Dublin. It might not even be a classic, but it will be significant. Two crucial Sundays now loom. We’re in familiar territory: the map is being redrawn in front of our eyes.
The country is gone back to B&Bs, and hen parties from Roscrea haven’t the bobs for New York anymore and will be fetching up all around the, er, capital Saturday night.
