In Boston they say that a baseball season never ends so much as a new one begins. After the curtain fell on another season for Cork’s footballers on Sunday – with so little drama on the sport’s brightest stage – it’s that evergreen attitude we on Leeside must adopt.
When Kilkenny won their fourth All-Ireland SHC on the trot, their supporters – acting in politeness rather than real instinct, I suspect – vaulted the pitch side barriers at Croke Park and invaded the pitch en masse to celebrate as they always have – with their players.
The stadium officials, of course, had attempted beforehand to encourage fans to stay off the surface so they could carry out the ambitious plan of a Champions League-style trophy presentation in the centre of the field. When their hope was brazenly trampled into Bono’s freshly-laid grass in Drumcondra, the big screen (the largest outdoor telly in Europe) screamed the ominous but instantly-classic message in large white letters to the long-suffering stewarding staff: Go to Plan B.
They might have well have flashed it up a few more times during Sunday’s game as both Cork’s team and the red half of the attendance were compelled to change tack quickly, despite an encouraging start. Beforehand the bandwagon creaked under the weight of the Rebel County’s new-found football support, who boasted a cockiness and confidence that sounds as natural as Shandon bells in the Rebel County. Now as it became clear Sam was not in fact returning, the refrain became: ‘ah sure it’s only football’.
It’s what pollsters who gauge feeling in the run-up to elections might call ‘soft opinion’. We were certainly all for the proposal of an All-Ireland title. But if it doesn’t look likely we’ll insulate ourselves in a layer of cruel humour and nonchalant sporting snobbery. But it is only football, after all.
A great Bostonian, one John F Kennedy, of course, fought a dual war (exactly like Cork GAA does) in battling Communism in an overt Cold War as well as a clandestine, back-door diplomatic chess game to ensure the Cuban missile crisis didn’t bring a violent end to the world in the early 1960s. In short, because of Kennedy, we on Leeside can again say ‘there’s always next year’.
But I’m not sure how many have the stomach for another season right now after what was an All-Ireland Sunday knotted in disappointment; we can handle defeat (even to Kerry)– but the manner of the capitulation is a dull ache that will throb for the winter.
In these straightened times, a more frugal approach on the pitch would have seen us reclaim Sam after 19 long summers in exile. Charlie Haughey – the Kingdom’s favourite Charvet-shirted prince – once warned us that we were living beyond our means. He could have said the same to the Cork forwards who offered their neighbours the ultimate bail out with a bankrupt policy of hitting wide after wide throughout the game. Waste not, want not.
Late on the Monday night after a similar defeat in an All-Ireland final in recent years, I saw, as I made my way home, one of the county’s stars (I won’t say if it was hurling or football, so don’t ask) in a darkened city centre doorway, being consoled expertly by a sympathetic female admirer. A police squad car rolled alongside kerbside, the Garda (probably a Kerryman if we’re honest) furtively rolled down the window and leant out into the September night to address the humbled and now-preoccupied hero. “Imagine if ye won the f******* thing?” he said to the startled couple, before freewheeling off down Washington St. Imagine indeed. Read the rest of this entry »
The same way you know it’s a general election night when Brian Farrell wears a carnation in his lapel, so too the rich sound of the Artane Band heralds a landmark day in Croke Park for many of us.
Robert Kennedy is 31 years dead this week. 
We’ve read the omens, asked an expert bookmaker, quizzed a fortune teller (she knew we were calling) and, acting as a control in the experiment, interrogated a recently-castrated, bemused Yorkshire Terrier called Jasper under a hot lamp deep in the bowels of the Irish Examiner building.