Getting the timing right
It wasn’t hard to beckon him to my side: he hadn’t taken his eye off me all day.
“Pat,” I said, “they’re cruel bad.”
Pat looked sheepish, but, in fairness, he does sheepish well. His reply stunned me: “I know, Noel, but I can’t get them to stir themselves at all. What will I do? What can I do? I wanted to put McManamon on 15 minutes ago, but you wouldn’t let me.”
I was going to walk — Nancy did — but I said I’d have one final go.
“Not your own lads, Pat,” I roared, “though they’re only middling too. Kerry, I mean. They’re like a scrawny cat that’d drag himself into your yard. If you don’t put them out of their misery soon, they’ll get cocky in themselves, and before you know it, they’ll be conkers-deep in your best bowl, and eating and drinking you out of house and home — if you give Kerry another inch, they’ll take a mile.”
I saw Jack watching the conversation. He dropped his head, and shook it: he hasn’t looked me in the eye since, not even the following Tuesday when he spent nine hours in my front room, but he would never hold it against me. All is fair.
Jack knew too: Jack knows scrawny cats when he sees them.
“Now, off with you Pat,” I continued, “and when you see me gathering up my stuff to go, put on McManamon. And leave him on until the end, no matter what.”
I was jogging past Quinn’s when I heard the first roar. I didn’t need to hear any more. If you lay down the law with a stray cat, he soon gets the message.
This Dublin team could be one of the greatest we have ever seen.
How many other teams could win the All-Ireland playing for six or seven minutes? That takes real belief in your own ability.
To prove their greatness, they now need to win one without playing at all — the way Kerry tried to win it this year. It can be done, but Gilroy will need to study the Crossmaglen Rangers model to perfect it.
Sparing performances are the only way to guarantee longevity. They also promote a wholly rational fear among your opponents.
I’m almost certain Kernan takes it as a compliment when I introduce him as “the man who knows that sometimes the less you do, the more you achieve.”
I am minded to recall Cross’s victory over Ballina Stephenites in the 1999 club final: the only way Crossmaglen could have done less that day was not to come out at all.*
“Our sweetest one yet,” Kernan told me afterwards, and I know how he felt.
Next year, I’ll be looking for signs of mediocrity in Dublin. If I see them raising a gallop in the league, I’ll point my car in the direction of Marino.
Retaining Leinster would be a big error: best to let Kildare have it, if they want it that badly, but for as long as I know Kildare — and that’s a long time, almost as long as they know me — they are fatally committed to the triple imposters of unyielding team work, applied effort, and supreme fitness.
Maybe Dublin could give Wexford the twist.
I have no idea what way the draw works next year — people who truly know their football never bother with such trifling matters — but I see no reason why Dublin can’t plough on with all the grace and certainty of a bumper car with a broken tracking rod. A point to spare here, a draw there, a bit of extra-time, give Donegal or some other poor unfortunates a bit of rope, and just pull it all together on whatever Sunday they decide to play next year’s final.
Pat’s job will be to hold them back. Every team has its cohort of players pushing for morning training sessions, body fat analysis, and video feedback. I’d give that cohort none of that: instead, I’d give them road.
Their misplaced enthusiasm cannot be permitted to drag this fine team down.
The All-Ireland is a marathon, not a sprint.
A slow marathon, with cagey, wily, cranky, scrawny cats all blowing hard to throw off the opposition.
“I’m bunched, I’ll leave it to the rest of you,” they groan four miles from home, and you’d be a silly man to buy the dummy.
They wobble across the road and talk about hearing voices in their head.
They roll their eyes and send dribble running down their chin and onto their singlet: don’t let them fool you.
A marathon — decided in the last mile and a half. Seven minutes, tops. Save your breath. Dry your eyes. Time your run.
In the land of the crouching tiger and the hidden dragon, the scrawny cat can be king. Dublin must do unto scrawny cats what scrawny cats would do unto them, if they were given a glimpse of the bowl.
That said — and because that’s said — it’s hard to look beyond Kerry in 2012.
* A tactic we actually deployed in Ballybore on one occasion. Faugh an Bealachs were awarded the final on that very technicality. But the guilt consumed them, as we had anticipated, and eventually they objected to the decision of the board: the re-fixture went ahead the following week, when we had them nicely destabilised.
Accordingly, and unsurprisingly, we played them off the field for a full five minutes, and left it at that.
Of all the wins I have enjoyed over the years, few match those ones where you take an early four-point lead, and hold on to win by 0-4 to 0-3. I actually prefer that to 0-4 to 0-2, or 0-4 to 0-1, or, God help us, 0-4 to 0-0.
If I saw a team winning by 0-4 to 0-0, I’d ask why they didn’t go on to win by 0-6 or 0-7 to 0-0.
The scoreline of 0-4 to 0-3 reveals the capacity to weather the fiercest of storms.
