Sombre mood as capital punishment may lie ahead
Can you hear me, Twink? Your boys are going to take a hell of a beating.
Unless, that is, one of you can galvanise the mood in the capital in the next 24 hours.
Because these are desperately sad times on its mean, bunting-free streets. A once proud, cocksure people unable to celebrate their arrival in an All-Ireland final after 16 long years.
Everywhere you go, foreboding hangs solemnly in the air, badly disguised as indifference.
You only had to look around Carrigstown during the week to know something had gone very wrong. A normally enterprising lad like Zumo Bishop, fretting about everyday things like the brother burying a young one in a shallow grave up the Dublin mountains, instead of organising the hats, scarves and headbands.
A stark sign of the times. From Cabinteely to Clanbrassil Street, Raheny to Ringsend, the same forced normalcy is playing out. Plans are made as if work is going ahead Monday. Taximen are drawing down the match only after every possible angle on the immigration question has been teased out. There’s hardly been a Mass said for Paul Flynn’s hamstring. Broken men no longer dare to dream.
Then there’s the extreme behaviour — a man stooped by disappointment, eyes dead, nurses a coffee in a Moore Street café and, wait for it, opens the Herald from the front.
One former Boy in Blue tried to explain the lethargy to me. “We’ve become psychologically tuned not to build ourselves up only to be slapped down like bold kids. Years of hurt have trained us.”
But years of heavy beatings never knocked a feather out of the Dubs before, never threatened to hobble their trademark strut.
It’s hard to put a finger on what has emasculated them since. Certainly Dublin have been hit harder than most counties by the disappearance of the genuine moustache from our games. But they should have overcome by now the retirement of that one-time symbol of city slicker virility.
Others lay the blame firmly at RTÉ’s door. When Up For The Match was cemented in the schedule in 1999, the more inclusive Here For The Match title was never even considered. Dubs need not apply and haven’t.
Of course the cognoscenti are crediting Pat Gilroy for pooping the party. “Managing the hype” they are calling it. The All-Ireland media day was held in June. The lads are scattered off Twitter. The talk is of “bonus territory.”
“With us it’s a new experience and people in Dublin are happy that we’ve got to a final.”
Bad, crazy talk. Losers’ talk. Was Charlie Redmond happy to be in a final in ‘95? No. Charlie was so agitated at being in a final, he got himself sent off in it, then refused to take a blind bit of notice. That’s the kind of single-minded disregard the Dubs need to call on now.
But Bernard Brogan made a further hames of things during the week, assuring us Dublin “would be 10 times better” than when Kerry shamed them two years ago. Apologetic, negative talk. And you know what they say about 10 times nothing.
Pillar Caffrey, of course, had the right idea once, even if the dice eventually didn’t fall his way. As the infamous Blue Book’s mission statement read; “We want to display some typical ‘Dublin Arrogance’. We want to produce the performance to substantiate this arrogance.”
There were some small things wrong with the Blue Book, like it telling defenders they had to make two blocks in every game but failing to explain what to do if their man went for glory a third time.
But the book would have won it for them in 2007, only for Declan O’Sullivan. And ultimately, I suppose, no matter how you play it, most games of football will be won if O’Sullivan or Colm Cooper decide they should be won. Declan even decided to win it in 2008 as well but Pascal McConnell decided against it.
To beat fellas like these, Dublin will need to pack heavy with what Armagh and Tyrone brought into September; a sense of destiny and the belief of their people at their backs.
Let them know this isn’t Cork or Mayo they are dealing with and some of Kerry’s own insecurities may surface.
But the Dubs going in low-key is like Kilkenny shaping up for a final by talking trash. It ain’t their style. It’s no style at all.
Kerry by seven.
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