Croke Park, Sunday, September 23rd
3pm
Showers hanging around and a strong wind - hobgoblin at its worst - from the Hill end. Larry Stanley (Kildare, 1919) joins the parade of surviving captains of All-Ireland winning sides. The crowd salutes a misty legend from the plains. Next the Team of The Century. Three fine women and twelve men. The women are said to be 'stand-ins': if so, they're wonderfully high voltage stand-ins. SOS. Kerry have left something in the team bus.
3.15
T teams out. Dublin looking imprudently relaxed,, Kerry chewing at the leash. The immediately pre-match antics are briskly conducted. A hwlp. Dublin win the toss and opt to play with the wind.
Minutes.
Kearns moves, as anticipated, to mid-field from the throw-in. Spillane, his marker, follows him.
1 1/2
Liston outfields Hargan and - in that endearingly sober way of his - collects a point for Kerry. Kerry look sharp in attack. The Kieran Duff-Tommy Duff combat giving off blue flashes. Mid-field exchanges - with six players regularly there, plus other foragers - already resembling The Fair of Muff.
6
Ger Power - he's hot today - fouled. Kennedy points the free for Kerry.
8 A Kerry movement - albeit sketchy - sends Kennedy through for a point. A goal looked on offer or, at least a temptation. They're taking time to settle, someone murmurs. Indeed. The game is scrappy to the point of near-disintegration. The wind's a factor, the pulling and clawing more of a factor. The ref has diluted the Personal Foul rule in the interests of fluid play. But fluid play is being made impossible by his leniency. Where does that leave you?
Concentrate. Anything to report? Hargan is floundering in The Born ber 's slipstream, and the Kennedy-Power thrust on Kerry's right must have Heffo liverish in the Dublin dug-out. The Kerry backs are imposing their will on the Dublin forwards: well past ten minutes into the game before Dublin's first wide, from Conroy.
13 Rock takes a Dublin point from a 'fifty'.
Gerry Hargan's recollections of this afternoon are not going to be pleasant, he knows it by now, and he's growing fretful. Jack O'Shea fouled, and Kennedy misses the free. Kearns puts wide for Dublin. And there's the bold Liston starting to pop up at middfield - where The Fair of Muff thrives unabated. Expect The Three-Card-Trick Man at any moment.
15 Pat Spillane takes a point followwing a good Kerry mini-movement. Let's gallop everything to half-time, that's what the whole ground is asking for. (The second half has to be better.) The tally.
22nd minute: Rock for Dublin from a free. 25th: Pat Spillane - unplayable today snatches another point. 27th: a sweet Conroy point for Dublin - Conroy's not the worst of them. 30th: a Kerry movement - one that threatens to be more than sketch - leads to a foul on Egan. Kennedy points the free. 34th: Pat Spillane collects an artist's point from out on the left. At half-time: Kerry 0-7; Dublin 0-3.
The verdict so far? As a spectacle, you wouldn't wish this on the neighhbour's child. Nor - in all conscience could you encourage anyone to play such a version - ours - of football. It's constipated, bronchitic, rheumatic. Pat Spillane's irrepressible skills and Mick Holden's uninhibited sense of play are seductive - but the general picture is unconscionably drab. Can the second half be as bad? It can. Cerrtainly, it can. And will - I greatly fear.
Three minutes after the resumption - Kerry now using the wind to advantage - a honeyed cross-field pass from Kennedy finds Liston browsing unmarked - and that makes it eight points for Kerry. 6th minute: Kennedy points a 'fifty'. 9-3. Kerry look on the train for home - with the plunder. An elegant Conroy centre is taken one-handed in front of goal by the subdued (until now) Rock. And Rock sinks it - with customary zest. Only three points in it.
A match, a match, my pay-check for a match. Drumm and the wilting Mullins stir themselves to rouse the squad - but the spurt is wanly tentaative, the shadow of a shadow. Kerry won't have it. Their backs won't yield - Walsh and Tom Spillane authoritative - and their forwards keep coming back, threatful, if never quite swaying into the old Kerry dance. They get the crucial next score, insist on getting it: an Ogie Moran point in the 15th minute - after dour, even desperate, Dublin resistance. That point is Kerry stating the position. They're not going home without the cup.
Twenty minutes to go but it's decided. Kennedy and Rock swop points from frees, and Rock grabs another from play. Kerry respond at once: Pat Spillane - explosively lannguid - takes the point of the match from far out, a score to make assurrance double sure. Jacko almost follows it with a goal but his left foot won't oblige from close range, and O'Leary - reduced to prayer - sees it rip over the bar. Rock points a Dublin '50'. Just on the half-hour another Kennedy cross-field pass, a scented billet-doux of a pass, finds Liston again innoocently browsing - and grateful as ever. The last point of the match is slung over.
Waiting now for the final whistle.
God help us. The Dubs look exhausted. The whistle. We're all exhausted. Is Gaelic football over and done with? Looks like it to me. Passing Barry's Hotel and nothing to remember really from all that mollocking. All right, Pat Spillane, Holden's urchin freedom, those wing-to-wing delicacies of Kennnedy's - but it's not enough. The third bad match in a row, semi-finals and final. The thirty-third in a row. Do something - or do away with it. Euthanasia. Homicide, if needs be. And surrender to hurling.
No matter. There was Larry Stanley.
And Mick Higgins, also among those revenant captains, Mick who gladdened the days of my youth. And those fine women in The Team of The Century, alleged stand-ins, who were quite inncapable of representing anybody but themselves. Were they a sign? I hope so, I hope and pray. The game of Gaelic football - as never before - is in need of the sign propitious, the redemptive and transforming hand.