TV View: ‘You don’t prove the critics wrong in a drawn final’

Croke Park on the third (or fourth) Sunday of September. Mayo. We have been here before. We have been here over and over again since 1989. 

Is this the day Irish sport’s most notorious famine finally ends, all curses are banished and Mayo take their place among the sporting nations of the earth? Or will Dublin bate Mayo, to paraphrase the Saw Doctors, and the formbook be validated?

The latter for three reasons, Pat Spillane predicts. Dublin’s bench, Dublin’s scoring power and the improbability of Mayo sustaining a performance for 70 minutes and beyond. Logic says Dublin, agrees Colm O’Rourke, who adds dryly that he doesn’t believe David will beat Goliath at all.