When the footballers of Kildare run out at Croke Park tomorrow to face Laois in the Leinster Final, their supporters will look on with pride - but also with a desperate hope, verging on dread, writes John Moran
For perhaps only Matt Talbot could have appreciated the depth of suffering that generations of Kildare supporters have undergone in the 75 years since the county last won the All-Ireland football championship. In every year since then, hopes have been raised and then dashed in one long Lilywhite lament.
Of course, as a Dublin supporter, I shouldn't know these things, but I have a little secret - I'm a bit on the Kildare side myself; a latent Lilywhite, if you like. You see, when I was just three years old my saintly Kildare parents decided that the only hope for me to escape a life of disappointment as a Kildare supporter lay in a move to Dublin. So they decided to make a Jack of their little Johnny.
This proved no easy task, however, since by the age of three I could name the entire Kildare team that won the Leinster Championship that year. Indeed I was on the Canal End cheering on the Shortgrass County on that occasion. The leading scorer on the day was the great Ballykelly star and gentleman Seamie Harrison, who sadly passed away in May.
And it was hard to convert totally to being a Dub when there were those long balmy summer holidays in the sweetest little town in Ireland. Though its name frightens small boys and girls who don't live there, Monster Heaven is a rural idyll where I spent those halcyon days doing all the country stuff - saving the hay, going to the well, roaming the fields, enjoying the big day out with all the family on the Bog - and all the while hearing the gentlefolk bemoan their long history of epic disappointments since Kildare became the first county to win the Sam Maguire Cup, when the great Olympic high jumper, Larry Stanley, captained the team back in '28.
So watching the annual torment of his exiled parents and remembering the laments of his relations, little Johnny grew up with the distinct impression that life just wasn't fair on the old aristocrats of the GAA, that the men in white had been dumped by Lady Luck and that the teams of every other county in Ireland were full of ruffians and gougers, especially Laois.
But oh, how quickly we forget. As the years rolled by any memories of supporting Kildare faded into distant memory as I became coloured by the influences of daily Dublin life. Within 10 years I was a card-carrying supporter of the boys in blue. And on sunny September days from the 1970s on I was as fanatical as anyone worshipping on the Hill as it rang to the heavens during those bountiful years of success, savouring in particular the triumphs over Kerry and Meath.
Yet, isn't it true what they say? You can take the boy out of the bog but you can't take the bog out of the boy. Like all immigrants, there were times when I was being pulled in two directions. (Luckily I'm a Gemini and can handle duality.) A few years ago Dublin were playing Kildare in Croke Park and after much agonising I decided that just this once, for old time sake, I'd venture onto the Canal End among the serried ranks resplendent in white. It wasn't long, alas, before the atmosphere turned purgatorial. After early Kildare promise, Dublin forwards were firing over point after point - and defeat, though not yet delivered, was in the post.
As I looked across the silent sea of white, I noticed a huge man standing beside me who became increasingly agitated until finally the poor devil could take no more and blurted out an anguished cri de coeur: "C'mon the flour-bags!" (A Kildare team once forgot their kit, I am told, and wore flour sacks as jerseys.) The fan's plaintive plea, alas, came to nothing - and neither did the communal murmuring of the fans, which I took to be entreaties to St Jude.
Yes, there was the great odyssey to the final in 1998 in which Kildare did what had never been done before, beating the previous three All-Ireland champions on the way. And yes, there was the semi-final in 2000. Both of these great occasions ended, though, with sad processions of hushed columns heading back towards the Curragh.
Yet still they follow, those loyal legions of the Lilywhite faithful - each and every one in possession of a faith greater than that of the Taliban - with an absolute belief in the second coming of Sam Maguire. When they eventually succeed, there will be someone in the corner of a Dublin field that will raise a mighty cheer - and there'll be happy days indeed in Monster Heaven.