Despite the fact every September offers fresh, cautionary lessons about reading too much into one game, there is nothing funnier than the way people over-react to what happens in an All-Ireland final. This time last year, some of us, ahem, even in this parish, were giddy at the prospect of the start of a great Cork dynasty. Today, we are wondering if that same squad has another title in them. In Dublin, of course, everything tends to be bigger, including the hysteria and the complete loss of perspective. Witness the following quote from David Hickey, current selector, former member of the 1970s team, and famed campaigner for the ending of the U.S. blockade against Cuba.
"We had a great team, but I do believe this team are going to become the reference point for Dublin football," said Hickey the day after the All-Ireland final. "We are now eclipsed as far as I am concerned. This group are better, in every sense. As a football team they are more talented footballers. They are a bigger panel. And I don't want to say this as a denigration of my own guys. I have never seen a Dublin team fight to the last minute with the belief that they would get the break if they kept going at it...This team is actually very similar to the 1975 All-Ireland final, where a young Kerry team beat an old Dublin team and then went on to dominate for the next decade."
We can forgive Hickey his passion because of his involvement with the squad but we can't forgive him his exaggeration. Dublin backed into an All-Ireland last Sunday with a few players who wouldn't have made the final trial for the county team back in the 1970s. Why? Because they aren't actually that good at kicking a football, a small detail which used to be a fairly major requirement. Yes, we know the game is faster and more athletic now but that speed and power has meant skills are no longer totally necessary. Whatever else this team is, they are not more talented footballers than Heffo's Heroes.
Comparing their achievement to the events of 36 years ago is dangerous too. That Kerry team was a one-off, in the same way that the current Kilkenny phenomenon is unique, the product of a fortunate and unlikely ever to be repeated set of circumstances. Down in Tipperary this past couple of weeks, there has been plenty of caterwauling about players over-reacting to their 2010 victory and basking a little too long in the adulation they received. Imagine how disciplined and grounded the average Dublin player will have to be to avoid making the same mistake over the next few months.
Can they stay hungry amid the hype? Can they retain the desire that had them training twice a day like lunatics? We wouldn't bet on it, especially since it took them so long to manage this feat that a little over-indulgence will be inevitable.
Thankfully, the loss of perspective and the ability to say ridiculous things in the aftermath of the game isn't the sole preserve of the victors. The losers have the right to put their feet in their mouths too and Jack O'Connor appeared quite happy to do so.
"I'm caught between a rock and a hard place when talking about the referee," said O'Connor before deciding to go for both locations. "If you say anything about referees, you're portrayed as a whinger. But I'll make a general comment that it appeared to us on the line that it was much harder for our fellas to get frees than it was the other way around. The likes of Declan [O'Sullivan] and Darran [O'Sullivan] at times got a lot of abuse going through when attacking. They found it hard to get frees. There was a couple that went against us, the most obvious being for handling the ball on the ground. That was a mistake as the replay told."
The first thing we tell children when they take up a sport is that sometimes the referees will make mistakes but that you must accept this because those mistakes even out in the end. Obviously, O'Connor forgot all of the refereeing errors that fell in favor of his players down the years. For starters, he might want to consult the Gooch's extensive back catalogue of easy free-getting. Why couldn't O'Connor just accept the referee's foibles with good grace, grant Dublin their hour in the sun and move on? Well, perhaps because, like every other manager, he isn't exactly objective in his analysis.
"The lads were tired and when you're tired, you make errors," said O'Connor in another Monday quote. "If we were a cynical team, someone would have pulled your man down on the way through for the goal but that's not in our DNA. They got the break and we didn't have the defensive cover. It's well known that this Dublin team are the best conditioned in the country and probably in the history of the GAA. I thought at the very least a draw was what we deserved but deserve has nothing to do with it. You don't get what you deserve in life."
Like the myth that a Dublin victory will lead tens of thousands of kids to beat down the doors of the capital's GAA clubs, O'Connor has breathed life into the old saw that Kerry are just about total football, and never committed an intentional foul in their lives. In Cork, several people read the line beginning "If we were a cynical team..." and got no farther. They had to be rushed to hospital, suffering from convulsions of laughter. One man hasn't spoken since he opened Tuesday's paper, except to mouth the words "Kerry" and "cynical" before collapsing in a heap.
Doctors can't find any medication to bring him back to his senses but family members are currently at his bedside, reading passages from Tadhg Kennelly's autobiography in a last-ditch effort at a miracle cure.
