Michael Moynihan: The building blocks of Dublin's demise
Dejected Dublin duo Ciarán Kilkenny and Brian Fenton following defeat by Mayo
Because the Dublin footballers were for many years seen as the Gaelic games equivalent of the Black Riders from the Lord of the Rings, their current losing streak is now taken as evidence that their iron grip on the Gaelic football world has weakened and a new age of freedom is about to dawn.
(It’s a curiosity that in the world of Gaelic football counties such as Kerry and Mayo are seen as the harbingers of light and goodness as a result; something for another day, perhaps.)
Anyway, Dublin, the Decline and Fall continues apace: tyrants willing to be dethroned, in the words of one of the city’s greatest. Serial losses to bleed into the psyche of the team until the sheen of invincibility is well and truly rubbed away, leaving only mortals.
Well, your columnist is here to tell you that this is not so. The end of Dublin’s dominance has not yet come, and this is why. It has nothing to do with the retirement of several players or the improvement in other teams, and everything to do with the lack of symbolism.
Allow me to explain. For Dublin to truly decline on the Gaelic football field we need a symbolic parallel away from that field, and to my mind that has not occurred yet.
An example: Cork’s hurling fortunes declined sharply at the end of the seventies, having contested and won three All-Ireland hurling finals in a row. The county had to wait until 1984 for its next title and lost consecutive finals before that.
This was a natural cycle in the lifetime of a particular team, with several players retiring after lengthy, successful careers and their replacements taking time to bed in, while other counties came to the fore to enjoy their time in the sun.
However, perhaps we overlooked the symbolism inherent in - for instance - the sudden retirement of Jack Lynch in 1979, the year in which Cork’s hurling fortunes were derailed for several years. Lynch was one of the greatest hurlers of all time, figuring at midfield on the team of the millennium/century/aeon by unanimous acclamation.
When Cork were winning those three All-Irelands in a row he was also Taoiseach, seated prominently in the Hogan Stand as his county men ascended the steps in September. Jack with the hat and pipe shaking hands with the Cork captain before the latter lifted Liam MacCarthy? All was right with the world and would be right forever.
When Lynch retired there was clearly no correlation with Cork’s decline: a Galway team that was building towards its own breakthrough victory beat them in the 1979 All-Ireland semi-final on their merits.
But as a narrative device it’s hard to beat. The skilled politician finds himself outflanked in the committee room the very same year his county finds itself outflanked on the playing field. The threads weave together naturally.
Even allowing for Dublin’s dominance of the national conversation, I can’t put my finger on a parallel here, though. The departure from public life of a significant Dublin-associated figure would be perfect, but Bertie Ahern stepped down as Taoiseach 14 years ago. Is any iconic building in Dublin being demolished? Are any notorious music venues about to be replaced by hotels?
Surely there’s some sign of the impending apocalypse for the capital somewhere, a development that will . ..
Wait a second: ‘LEGO to open first Irish store in Dublin this summer.’
*Scraps previous 600 words, slides a fresh page into typewriter and begins: ‘Dublin’s decline as a Gaelic football power looks inevitable in hindsight, coinciding as it did with the explosion in sticky-block building as a pastime in the capital . . .’
A couple of weeks ago here I was - not complaining, but explaining the issues I have with the Olympic movement, which I like to describe as an abattoir specialising in producing principle-mincemeat.
A couple of people said they felt I was being a bit unfair and I responded by saying time would prove me right. This was no great perspicacity on my part, because Olympic horror shows are like buses, though only if buses are PED-stuffed models of malfeasance (not a metaphor that works too well, admittedly).
Anyway, as sure as the sun rises in the east we had another classic with the Kamila Valieva case. The 15-year-old Russian skater was at the centre of a doping scandal last week, and when she eventually finished fourth in her discipline there was disquiet at the cold reception she got from her coach Eteri Tutberidze immediately afterwards.
Constituent elements of this mess: per long-standing tradition, Tutberidze is usually called a “controversial coach” for her training methods. I’ll leave it at that.
Valieva is not representing Russia, because of course Russia is not at the Olympics, having been banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency: Russians compete under the Russian Olympic Committee banner but are referred to as neutral athletes, though they can have Russian flag colours in their uniform . ..
Still awake? My favourite part of this was the comment from Thomas Bach on how Valieva was treated by her entourage: “When I saw how she was received . . . with what appeared to be a tremendous coldness, it was chilling to see this, rather than giving her comfort, rather than to try to help her.
“All of this does not give me much confidence in this closest entourage of Kamila, neither with regard to what happened in the past, nor as far as it concerns the future.”
Bach is the President of the IOC. The man in charge. And, to me, the embodiment of the Olympic ‘movement’.
It may already be too late but a helping hand is always welcome. If you are a devotee of Twitter you may have seen historian Siobhan Doyle tweeting urgently over the weekend for GAA artefacts relating to Longford.
She’s writing a book about the GAA - its history in 100 objects - and clearly came up against a speed bump in said Leinster county. No doubt by the time this appears she’ll be buried beneath a heap of Longford-related objets d’art of all kinds, but if not move to her Twitter feed (@thekickart).
Of course, an imp on my shoulder suggests that people should be empowered to nominate items that embody counties, particularly counties they don’t like.
No-one can say I’m not willing to help.
Late with this one, but Dennis Smith passed away last month. He wrote , a book about his experiences as a New York firefighter in 1972 which eventually sold three million copies.
Thanks to the magnificent library service of Ireland I was able to borrow this book last week, and it was as good as when I read it many years ago at home. Smith’s account of firefighting in the ravaged New York of the seventies is still electrifying.
A terrific read from a man who got a book contract on the strength of a letter to the New York Review of Books arguing about WB Yeats with Joyce Carol Oates.
