Pat Spillane delivers in spades (and not just on the field of play)

There was the predictable montage, the backing track, the bantering with Seán Cavanagh and Ciarán Whelan, and an emotional story of his late father

FINAL CURTAIN: RTÉ Sunday Game analyst Pat Spillane before his final broadcast, with his Sunday Game colleagues, from left, presenter Joanne Cantwell, analysts Sean Cavanagh and Ciaran Whelan before the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Final match between Kerry and Galway at Croke Park in Dublin. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

And now the end is near

And so I face my final curtain… 

As it turns out it’s Piaf rather than Sinatra that RTÉ choose as the backing track for the inevitable montage tribute to the departing hero but no matter. It was always going to be one or the other. Pat Spillane did it his way and he regretted  rien, as they say in Templenoe, home of the man known to the postal authorities as “Pat Bollocks, Kerry”.

The small matter of the All Ireland final can wait. The afternoon is also about the great man’s last bow. 

“Is a new Kerry era about to begin?” Joanne Cantwell wonders. “Another is coming to an end after 30 years.” 

Cue footage of Spillane down the decades. The Seven Ages of Pat, as it were.

Kicking a point against Dublin from under the Hogan Stand. The double-handed goal against Tyrone in 1986. The Superstars sunburnt Pat in the Bahamas with Jimmy Magee. Then the Sunday Game Spillane, denouncing puke football and citing Wilde (better to be talked about etc) and quoting the Bible and deploring “spoofers and bluffers” and blustering about swiping right on Tinder. No regrets about any of it, naturally.

Ciarán Whelan has come to praise Pat, not to bury him. He has also come bearing gifts, specifically a signed five in a row Dublin jersey “for the man who has everything” – everything except an All Ireland five in a row himself, ho ho. 

Seán Cavanagh brings thanks from the sons and daughters of Ulster for all the motivational fuel Pat has given them over the years. “I think there’s a compliment in there somewhere,” he adds.

Pat seems taken aback. Is that…is that a tear he appears to be wiping away? He is certainly moved, sufficiently so to praise “that brilliant Dublin team” and to nominate Peter Canavan as the overarching superstar of his time in punditry. (I didn’t quite get whether this was with Kerry players included or Kerry players excluded. Perhaps Pat - or Joanne or Seán or Ciarán - might enlighten me.) Okay, he decides, enough praise. “Thanks very much, lads. That’s lovely. Now let’s get to analyse the match.” 

Kerry after a bit of a struggle seems to be the consensus, with Seán pointing out that they’ve become “different, tougher” since Jack O’Connor returned. Pat adds that they should be a new team since getting the Dublin monkey off their back. Either way he wants to be “raving about a match like we got in the hurling”.

Over to Darragh Maloney and Kevin McStay. They make a fine, well balanced pair. Darragh brings oodles of enthusiasm to the commentary position yet not so much as to be in love with the sound of his own voice. He bubbles but doesn’t babble. Kevin is suitably studious and scholarly, dry but also droll, not to mention sharp enough to see that the first free of the game is awarded for hand to ground ball.

What unfolds is an immensely satisfying encounter, one of the very best football deciders, perhaps not a copper-bottomed raveworthy epic but unquestionably an engaging affair between two teams who go out to win by playing football as opposed to boring the other crowd into submission.

Galway are sharp and economical in the first half, the favourites more wasteful by far. Pat deems their shooting to be “unKerrylike”; a graver accusation could not exist. He is even moved to furnish the damning statistics: Galway eight points from 11 chances, Kerry seven points from 18.  O tempora o mores! All changes on the turnaround. David Clifford does what David Clifford does and he does it on the biggest stage of the lot, not that anyone had ever doubted otherwise. At one juncture Darragh observes that “he’s the only Kerry attacker in the Galway half”.

Kevin: “That’s all you need, isn’t it?” Darragh: “Fair point.” Four fair points in the closing stages clinch the silverware. If Pat had been slightly emotional earlier he lets himself go now, understandably in the circumstances. He talks of his father, a Kerry selector in 1964 who died on the Tuesday after the All Ireland final. He talks about himself and his brothers. He talks about the current generation of Spillanes and the 21 All Ireland medals in the family.

Quick, where’s my hanky? But hang on - just before the nation is entirely overcome he regains his mojo and is soon ranting afresh about "bluffers and spoofers and snake oil merchants”. Aha, that’s more like it. That’s our man alright. Phew.

Joanne, signing off, thanks him for taking punditry to new levels. “Go raibh míle,” Pat responds. 

And that’s it. The final curtain. The circus is over. Time for a new act.