Damn you, Tommy Freeman

YOU don’t like to admit it. No-one does.

But you enjoy it the same as everyone else. It’s not an edifying pastime.You don’t feel clean beforehand, you don’t feel clean during a bout of it, and you certainly feel pretty grubby afterwards.

Ninety-nine percent of non-Dubliners enjoy disliking Dublin. The other one percent, of course, are lying.

Every now and then, however, an event like last Sunday’s Leinster football final occurs to bring the national secret out into the open. The world beyond Newland’s Cross/the M50/Mullingar — or wherever else it is that Dublin ends these days — can then let their secret prejudice run free.

When Mark Vaughan, Alan Brogan and some other Dublin footballers were getting in the faces of some Laois footballers last Sunday there was some predictable tut-tutting. This furore, which is lamentably without a name (Triumphalistgate? Provocationgate? Bad mannersgate?) brought to mind an encounter a pal once had with a taxi driver in Cork.

Once the cabbie had established his passenger was (A) going to the train station and (B) heading to Dublin, there was a predictable shiver of distaste. “You couldn’t pay me to live up there,” said the driver.

“I like it, I have to say,” said the pal.

“You do?” (this in a tone as if previous speaker had confessed to cooking small children, etc). The driver shuddered again.

“I heard they’re only one step up from . . . animals above there.”

It’s convenient that some of the Dublin players conformed to a stereotype you have about inhabitants of the county as a whole, but unfortunately for proponents of such a theory, the Ulster football final last Sunday resounded with a few echoes of its Leinster counterpart.

Tommy Freeman, the star Monaghan forward, celebrated his goal against Tyrone with what would have to be described as a certain abandon, pointing out some fine points of geometry, no doubt, to one of the Tyrone defenders after his shot hit the back of the net.

Hence our headline. The bould Tommy’s reaction undercuts the rush to judgement on the Dubs’ bad manners at some crucial stages in the Leinster final. Those saying ‘typical Dublin’ would logically have to say ‘typical Monaghan’. As if logic had anything to do with it, says you.

The carry-on of Vaughan, Brogan and Bonner didn’t endear them to anyone outside the super-dense crush-load up on the Hill (sorry, we just had to use that term after seeing a documentary about overcrowding on the Bombay train system during the week; yes, it means exactly what you think). Freeman’s behaviour in Clones didn’t cover him in glory either. Still, autre temps, autre moeurs. Times change. Perhaps we should get used to it.

One question worth asking afterwards, however, is why several forwards, to be precise, found it necessary to react like that in the first place. Informal canvassing of intercounty players suggests a level of verbal aggression now taken for granted. It might be invisible to the naked eye, but clearly it’s quite audible to the naked ear.

Not all forwards react like that. For what it’s worth, celebrations in hurling — take the Waterford forwards, for instance — seem to focus more on the crowd than opponents once goals are scored. Of course, after seeing Mark, Alan and Tommy, we might see some far more in-your-face celebrations this Sunday.

Let’s just hope those who do the celebrating have their face masks on.

* On a far more serious note, our deepest condolences to Kilkenny hurling goalkeeper James McGarry on his tragic loss yesterday.

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