The present, the past, and the future merge

They don’t know it yet, but it’s their last time together.

They’re a team for the trip back home, but they’ll never play another game together, the All-Ireland minor champions.

The entire experience came together for a few weeks the summer they were finishing school and thinking of what happens after that.

Now, it’s September and it’s finished. Whatever happens at U20 or senior level, the group is gone.

The best part of All-Ireland final day comes well before the big show itself, during that interregnum when the minor winners are jogging around Croke Park and picking out relations in the crowd. It’s almost a better sight in a day like yesterday, when the minor winners aren’t represented in the senior game, as players can find individual family members in the stands that much easier.

If they’re so minded, they can also see their future nearby.

This is also the part of the afternoon when the anniversary team, the side which won the senior title 25 years ago, is introduced to the crowd.

Yesterday, Kerry won the minor title and Derry, the 1993 All-Ireland senior champions, were brought out in their matching suits to wave at the Hogan Stand.

Jogging around the perimeter are kids with playing futures ahead of them, boots to buy, gym programmes to follow; lined up by the tunnel are a couple of dozen middle-aged men who haven’t bought new boots for a couple of decades in a few cases.

Some of the names from the anniversary team can still cause a ripple a quarter of a century on, though.

When Gladstone made speeches as an old man in the House of Commons, it was said new members trembled and fluttered like small birds when a hawk takes to the air. If you keep your eyes open, you can catch the

same reaction in parts of the crowd, depending on who’s introduced. A nudge. A nod. Acknowledgement.

Big names or small, do the anniversary men ever glance over at the kids with their years ahead of them, and wonder is there anything to share with the teenagers?

Are any of those kids looking at the balding heads and spreading waistlines, wondering if that’s the future?

They may not be the teams you first thought of when it comes to yesterday, but something similar lies in the future for Dublin and Tyrone.

And every team.

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