GUESS WHO just got back today? Them wild eyed boys that’d been away.
Sometime after five o’clock and Phil Lynott’s classic song is in full volume in Croke Park and drifting out across a city in dreamland. Will Dublin ever win an All-Ireland football title in more perfect fashion? Back from the dead against Kerry and a winning point into the Hill: it does not get any better.
The 13th chapter in the Dublin versus Kerry All-Ireland football final saga left a stadium filled with 82,000 people dazed.
Kerry football people believed they had seen everything that these September days had to offer. Until yesterday. It finished 1-12 to 1-11 but the last 10 minutes were so crazy and wonderful that the Dublin half couldn’t quite believe they had won it and the Kerry half found it hard to believe they had lost it.
Nobody who witnessed Stephen Cluxton’s slow march up from his place in the Dublin goalmouth to take the last free of this All-Ireland final will forget it.
Full-time had elapsed and Croke Park was trembling, but the Dublin goalkeeper, famed for his cool temperament, might have been ambling through St Stephen’s Green.
By then, the world had turned on its head anyway after Dublin’s Kevin McManamon came barrelling through to bang a goal that resurrected the Metropolitans’ hopes and brought Hill 16 back to full voice.
The old ground was shaking as the match went freewheeling through a last five minutes when just getting hold of the ball was the vital thing. Plans, tactics, reputations meant nothing now: it was all about heart and neither side wanted for that.
Then Dublin somehow had a free and time was ticking down and the fate of the whole summer rested on this one moment.
Sixteen years had passed since Dublin had last won the All-Ireland. They hadn’t beaten Kerry in any September since 1976. Ireland was a different country then.
All of that changed when Cluxton sent that free sailing into the euphoric blue masses on Hill 16. Time and events moved faster than those watching could register in those few seconds.
“It’s coming to me,” said Dublin’s Bernard Brogan, whose father had played in that 1976 match.
“I couldn’t believe it after the game. I didn’t know where I was and I had to ask someone who scored the last point. The emotion took over and I couldn’t understand what had happened. It is an unbelievable feeling.”
That was how it felt. Kerry fans drifted off, stunned and gracious. “It’s a tough one to take,” said Kerry’s manager Jack O’Connor, as the city began a celebration that would last all night. “Fifteen minutes ago, we thought we had it won. But that’s life. Who said life is fair?”
If there is one certainty about Gaelic games, it is that Kerry will be back. But so are the pale blue boys. The reception for the 2011 All-Ireland champions takes place in Merrion Square at 7pm this evening. Spread the word around.
