’No matter what happened out there, we were going to get the result’

UNTIL yesterday, Corduff in Co. Monaghan was best known in GAA circles — if at all — as the birthplace of the five McEnaney brothers, among them Seamus and Pat.

In years to come, it will always be associated with Dublin’s capture of Sam Maguire in 2011.

To explain.

Back in November 2009, this unassuming fork in the road was the venue for what threatened to be a routine and thankless assignment for some of the players on the fringe of Pat Gilroy’s squad — but it became something more. Much more.

Only three months had passed since the county’s All-Ireland ambitions had been mocked by an irrepressible Kerry in the quarter-final but Corduff would prove to be the trip that lanced the boil, the weekend that completed the healing process.

“We addressed the Kerry game in November 2009 in a very strong way,” said Gilroy when asked to recall that 17-point defeat to the Kingdom. “We dealt with it and it stayed there. I’m glad now we can really put it behind us but we did deal with it in Corduff in 2009.

“There was a development squad game where a lot of the guys came up as well. We played Monaghan under the lights in the rain. A lot of it was dealt with there and then. And that was the best place for it.”

Gilroy’s response was short and to the point when asked what needed to change. Defence, he replied and how fitting that Kerry’s 14-point haul yesterday was the same as the tally they were held to in defeat by Armagh in 2002 and Tyrone six years later.

Who says Ulster wasn’t represented in the capital yesterday? Yet, there were other lessons that had to be learned along the way, too. Painful lessons. Lessons any living being without a masochistic streak would choose to avoid, had they the chance, like the last one against Cork in the league final back in April.

Gilroy had been asked after that epic collapse if his side possessed some sort of mental block, a chip ingrained in their psyche, which held them back from the game’s great garlands and the reply had been understandably chippy.

“There’s only so much pain humans can take and we’ve been through ... I mean I’ve only been here a short time in comparison to some of these fellas but, as a supporter, we’ve been through terrible days here and there’s only so much of that you can keep taking.

“Today, no matter what happened out there, we were going to get the result, to be honest. That’s the attitude we had all week.

“We weren’t just happy getting to a final. We wanted to push on and win it.”

And yet, the omens pointed towards more heartache with half-a-dozen minutes to go.

To yet more days in the classroom that is Croke Park being educated in the realities of what it takes to cross that finishing line with your necks out in front.

The Hill was a sea of silence by then and the stadium PA about to make the customary ‘stewards to end of match positions’ when Kevin McManamon exploded through the Kerry defence to inject life into the veins of a game that was almost drained of colour.

“We felt that maybe running at Kerry in the last 20 minutes might yield some dividends and we had some guys on the bench that could do that. Kevin was obviously one of those. Even when there was only three minutes left I felt that we would create the goal chances with the guys we had on the pitch. We always felt, irrespective of the score, that we were going to finish this game out and we would see if we came out the wrong side of it.”