Late League final drama a fitting finale

When most of us look back on yesterday’s drama at Croke Park, it will be the image of Dean Rock’s 75th-minute free cannoning off the Kerry post that will emerge from the fug of time and stand out in our mind’s eye as the last act on a stage that delivered an absurd amount of drama.

The reality is different.

Paddy Neilan didn’t blow the final whistle there and then. The Roscommon referee waited another second or two so there was still time for Ronan Shanahan to gather up the ball and for Eoghan O’Gara to floor the Austin Stacks defender with the kind of swinging forearm that would make a wrestler wince.