Banner legends collide as Dubs face defining moment

It’s a diversion, nothing more.

But set against the background noise of the past week, with the murmurs that the GAA should just hand over the Liam MacCarthy Cup to Eoin Larkin now and be done with it getting louder by the day, it’s a diversion to look forward to.

Clare versus Dublin in Cusack Park next Saturday. So what if it’s not a fixture that’ll decide where the silverware ends up in September? Some matches should be appreciated for what they are, not dismissed for what they’re not. This is such a match.

It’s an open-looking contest, meaning there’s every chance it could turn out to be a cracker. It’s an opportunity for both counties to get back on the horse following their respective provincial disappointments. And at its most superficial level it’s a tale of two managers. Yes, the TV cameras will spend more time on the on-field action than they will on cutting to shots of Davy Fitz and Anthony Daly brooding on the sideline. But not much more time.

True, at a less superficial level this isn’t about the pair of them at all, as both men will be quick to point out. It’s about the teams, not about the managers. But media folk love handy hooks on which to hang their coverage, and next Saturday’s hook is as handy and inviting as they come.

Two Clare men, colleagues on the All Ireland-winning sides of 1995 and ’97. Now managers and adversaries, with one of them making a strange sort of homecoming to Cusack Park to boot.

If they were team-mates they were never soulmates. But they both knew bad days in the early part of their careers in saffron and blue and they’ve both known bad days as inter-county managers. Davy in the 2008 All-Ireland final and last year’s Munster final, Daly as recently as nine evenings ago in O’Moore Park. One of these days they may even have an interesting tete-a-tete on the subject of Awful Second Halves I Have Known. You can almost hear it now.

“Jesus, Davy, I thought the final whistle would never come against Kilkenny last week.”

“Tell you what, Dalo. I’ll see your second half in Portlaoise and raise you last summer against Tipp in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.”

“Hmm. Okay, I’m out.”

If one of them is under more pressure than the other this week it’s Daly, who for the remainder of his adopted county’s interest in the 2012 championship is almost certainly 70 minutes away from his last game as Dublin boss. He could have been forgiven for invoking WB Yeats last weekend. Was it for this? The four years he’s spent with Dublin? All the late nights and early mornings, all the cross-country trips to the capital and back, all the plotting and planning and coaching and endless attention to detail? All for the sake of 0-9 against Kilkenny?

Dublin couldn’t have been expected to match the All-Ireland champions for touch and control in the rain; being realistic about it, that will take another generation to achieve. But what could have been, and was, expected of them was that they’d go about compensating in other ways, primarily through controlled aggression, hunger and competitiveness.

In the event it looked as though they’d put themselves under so much pressure to perform that they forgot to be competitive in the first place. The wides, on an afternoon when every free shot from 50 metres out had to be smacked between the uprights, were terrible. Even the frees they conceded were infuriating: soft, silly, blatant.

It was a dismal afternoon for Daly, for Dublin and for hurling itself. Have some sympathy for Daly. Were he managing a Munster county he’d be facing dangerous enemies on all sides. Managing a team in Leinster, he’s had to face the Terminator for four years in a row in the championship. That has to be soul-destroying.

He did catch one break, mind. Being drawn away to Cork would’ve put the tin hat on a wretched weekend. Getting Clare, even in Cusack Park, has furnished Dublin with beatable opponents.

In helping serve up the most vibrant contest in what has been a highly enjoyable Munster championship, and being two missed placed balls away from at worst drawing with Waterford, Clare did what Dublin so abjectly failed to do: they performed.

Winning next Saturday, however, will entail punching their weight for a second time in succession, a big ask for a young team.

Yet of one thing we can be sure. Davy will have them motivated up to the eyeballs.

As for Dublin, next Saturday their motivation must come from within.