It wouldn’t be All-Ireland final day without…
You tried every possible avenue during the week; the lad at work from the club in Mayo; the cousin’s wife’s brother-in-law who once cleaned JBM’s gutters. You dropped back a lawnmower you had since 2006, on the off chance. You put a small appeal out via Joe Duffy, having rung him in the first place about the Edge’s hat. And yet, here you are inside in the Gresham at half one, with two decent Cusacks in the back pocket, trying to find a home for the Canal End you panic-bought last night.
It’ll be all over Twitter these days, so if you’ve the phone out you mightn’t have to wait for the nudge in the ribs. He leans in, behind a programme. Top-secret stuff. So-and-so isn’t starting. Injured a fortnight ago at the training camp. Something went wrong when they dropped them off a helicopter onto a bed of nails on the 21. Your man has punctured lungs and kidneys, although he came on in a club game the night after. You turn back to him, five minutes later, when so-and-so buckleaps out the tunnel and into the team photo. But he has turned to the lad the other side, and is leaning in behind the programme.
It might even be your neighbouring informer who tells you about this one too; though you won’t see any docket. He got Clare to beat Cork in the final back in March, the same evening Tipp and Kilkenny bate the pair of them. He knew coming home Tipp and Kilkenny were at nothing, though he wasn’t at either match. Doubled it with Murray for Wimbledon and Ferguson to retire. The only pity was he didn’t put more than a ton on it. You don’t look at him again until Cork are gone six up.
*Pronounced ‘unrale’ at recent finals.
“There’s always the few apes,” your new informant/tipster friend roars, at the first sign of a stray yahoo during the minute’s silence. The same craic on the train coming up yesterday, you confide. “That’s why I always sit the far end from the dining car,” rejoins your man, breaking news of another strategic triumph. You leave it, because by now you’re roaring too, over the final strains of the anthem, a roar the likes of which you haven’t dispatched this long time, possibly not since that blasted lawnmower went over your foot in 2007.
If you’re stuck at home; there may be no more authentic way to acquaint yourself with the frenetic rhythms of a final than by listening to Cyril Farrell; before, after or during. It mightn’t always be easy to keep track of it. Dispensing punditry as if he’s constantly being hooked, sentences will be started, forgotten and abandoned. Bear for work, nuts to a monkey, whip, hip, lovely wristy flicks; all of it is now embedded in the soundtrack of a September Sunday. And if it’s any kind of contest at all, Cyril will turn to Michael Lyster at half-time and finish his first sentence of the day; “We’re in a game now, Michael.”
We won’t hear about this until the banquet – the night it all turned around for them. At a challenge in Tullamore when JBM/Davy went ape. And then so and so said his piece and your man said his piece. And, in the end, once the air was cleared and a few home truths had been shared, they decided they better head up to Birr where the game was on. And, do you know what, they never looked back.
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