What Dublin did next ... and what the chasing pack need most
One of the most complete footballing performances of the past 12 months came from Crossmaglen Rangers in this year’s All Ireland club final replay against Garrycastle.
Having disappointed for much of the drawn game and thrown away three or four gilt edged opportunities at the death, their best player on St Patrick’s Day, Tony Kernan had every right to be fed up. It was his throwaway comment in the post match interview that revealed much about why there was never going to be much doubt about the replay.
In any sport, perennial favourites with little to prove, such as Crossmaglen, can become super-sensitive to how they are perceived and they often look for a cause to latch on to. They need to be playing as if they always have a point to prove. They need to feel humiliated or slighted in some way and whether that slight is perceived or real, its value to the team can never be underestimated.
While they mightn’t have said it ahead of their clash with Garrycastle, Crossmaglen players and management would have been uneasy with all the plaudits being heaped upon them. Despite their relative youth, they were a much admired team with very little to prove, with no real hostility towards the opposition and, crucially, with no underlying motivating factor, no ‘big why’, to help them on their way. After the first day, there was no shortage of motivation and what followed, when they got another chance to express themselves, was art.
The Anglo American poet, WH Auden claimed all art is born of humiliation. There was a time not so long ago that last year’s champions, Dublin could’ve written the script on ritual humiliation. It may have taken over two years to actualise, but last year’s final victory had its genesis in the infamous startled earwigs’ humiliation of 2009. Somebody once said that much of Pat Gilroy’’s career has been about quietly proving people wrong and there is a neat symmetry in the fact that his inter-county management career to date has been book-ended by season-defining performances in Croke Park against Kerry. Slowly, surely and as quietly as can be expected from a Dublin team, they have proved many doubters wrong. It must be satisfying.
What Dublin did next was always going to be interesting. Hunger, that strangest of commodities in the inter-county game, can’t exist in isolation. The signs were there during a fraught league campaign that Dublin are understandably wrestling with issues of motivation and hunger. The last two Dublin teams to defend their titles, in 1996 and 1984, have little or nothing to offer or to inform the current outfit. This is one they are going to have to figure out for themselves and the ‘big why’ might emerge mid-season when they get their gut-check against possibly Wexford on July 1st or failing that, against Kildare on July 22nd. The hope from Pat Gilroy’s perspective is they get to do whatever adjustments are necessary with the safety net underneath and not after July, as in Cork’s case last year, when they were at their most vulnerable and repressed woes such as injuries and lack of motivation came spilling out.
Cork, of all the contenders, have least to prove. They have ticked all the boxes in the last five seasons apart from beating Kerry in Croke Park and I doubt that would come between them and their sanity were they to reclaim Sam without having done so again this year. The frontier achievement for Cork this year would be to add some guile to their graft and to make the most of their obvious superiority over the opposition in so many positions on the field.
Kerry, for all their experience in Croke Park, are behaving like they doubt it’s still their prairie home. Their last two knockout games on the hallowed ground have seen them suckered into doing stuff they normally don’t do. They can only knock so much mileage out of the pain of last year’s final defeat and, unfortunately for them, there is no fast forward button on Championship 2012. Redemption and retribution can be elusive and you usually only get one or the other — as Kerry found out in 2004, 2006 and 2009. You get the sense that should they reach September 23, they would show up ready to play to the death this time but an awful lot is going to have to fall into place for them during a summer that may get more complicated after their anticipated trip to Cork on June 10.
Of the other contenders in the peloton, Kildare need to prove that only bad luck has prevented them becoming a top team. Tyrone will be spurred on by the need to show us the signs of renewal and regeneration are real. Donegal need to show us that they can come out to play after a season in their shells. Meath have so much to prove to their supporters that the burden of atonement appears unbearable and Mayo, having beaten all the top teams in Croke Park at some stage in league or championship; have more reasons than most to prove that they’re not as far away as some would have us believe.
No shortage of motivation, then, for all the top teams and no doubt we’ll have to wait for the last Monday morning in September before we hear of the hidden motivations that inspired ultimate victory. Where will the chip on the shoulder come from and who will be getting the pat on the back come September 23? Much like the Crossmaglen team that mesmerised us in March, it could well be that the team with the biggest chip on the shoulder ends up getting the reward when the days grow short. Of course, the aim of every championship is to unearth the team with the most talent. Right now that team is Cork but there is a hell of a long way to go from May to September.
