GAA /All-Ireland SFC Quarter-final: The 2003 championship has been reduced to a five-card trick: the four aces and the irresistible joker of the pack. After a tumultuous day at Croke Park, Kerry duly waltzed into the semi-finals along with Ulster's big two.
Galway, the remaining seeds, were taken to the brink, however, by a county that specialises in August outdoor theatre. Donegal simply will not go away. Just as they did against Dublin last year, they engaged Galway in a tough and rolling thriller of a game that pulled and teased the imagination until its last breathless seconds.
Punch drunk and trailing by four points with 20 minutes left, Donegal took a deep breath and somehow produced another inspirational revival that in spirit and dash bore uncanny echoes of last year's epic in the sunshine against Dublin.
Galway, curious and out of sorts for vast periods of the afternoon came within a hair's breadth of losing and winning the game in an unforgettable injury-time period. After a slow burning campaign in Connacht, they found themselves in a late, late scrap for survival in the great ballroom of romance on the Jones's Road. First Joe Bergin dashed forward and flicked a shot against the crossbar.
Seconds later big Kevin Walsh, a man that is the living soul of Galway football, stepped into the sunlight and sent sailing a booming, true shot that left the score at 0-14 to 1-11 and left the 56,296 people in the crowd on their knees.
"We are lucky to be alive, lucky to be alive," marvelled John O'Mahony afterwards. "And we are delighted to still be playing football."
It was a strange afternoon for the gilded sons of the maroon county. As happened last year, they came from the west after a long lay-off and struggled to tap into the illustrious source of talent that has rendered them one of the most potent forces of modern times. For the first 15 minutes, they were little more than an audience as Donegal wove beautiful, spellbinding patterns around them and raced into a 0-7 to 0-2 lead.
The Galway fans blinked on in stunned silence, struggling to recognise their heroes. Slowly, they creaked into life and gave a moody and compelling performance. At times they were imperious.
Paul Clancy floated a couple of beautiful points, Declan Meehan electrified the left wing, Joe Bergin orbited above the rest. They looked right. Yet at other times Galway just were not there. They turned reason on its head to lead by a point at half-time, opened the throttle for a short time and then went into retreat again for an 18-minute period that was all Donegal.
"I'm well aware of that," reasoned O'Mahony when reminded of that long dry spell. "That's it. I can't defend that. It wouldn't be my wish, it wouldn't be the wish of the players. But give credit to Donegal. During the week I said we had no more or no less than a 50/50 chance of winning this game and I was laughed at."
It is easy to see why O'Mahony would have been troubled at the prospect of encountering this eccentric and fascinating Donegal team. They, too, are prone to sudden and inexplicable changes of personality. After their gorgeous opening period, Donegal went cold, blasting wides and compromising an excellent defensive afternoon with a moment of madness at the back that Galway punished with a clinical Michael Meehan goal on 25 minutes.
At their best they looked like bottled lightning. At their worst, they looked like they might never score again. With the mercurial Brendan Devenney hobbling through the action, Aidy Sweeney weathered a bleak personal spell with a brave curling point that was like a clarion call for the Donegal revival. Unlikely heroes answered the call - big John Haran, the silken Christy Toye and the tall and honest Paul McGonigle. So immersed was one of the Donegal defenders in his role that when the drama ended, he believed his team had lost. "Then the boys in the dressing room tell me it was a draw. And there was me wishing the Galway lads good luck in the semi-final." The day was that mad.
Brian McEniff's claims that he is still fronting a patchwork job will fall on deaf ears after this. Here, he came within seconds of a very fine hour. "I was disappointed that when the opportunity presented itself to kill the game in injury-time we didn't take it," he murmured later. The replay takes Galway back to Connacht on Sunday.
After that drama, life returned to normal. Kerry sauntered into Croke Park and ran ribbons through Roscommon's hopes of an upset. Scary is the only word for their forwards. In the bright sunshine, the Kerrymen actually sparkled. The O'Sullivan boys, Gooch Cooper, the lethal marksman Cinnéide: the rest of us could but gape at their riches.
They led the Ros' by 1-15 to 0-8 with 20 minutes to go with All Star replacements like Johnny Crowley preening themselves in the shadows. With their stern muscular defence and that heavenly forward set, they were literally unstoppable.
Roscommon, though, have made a summer by crawling out of tight spots. Tom Carr's team illustrated their tremendous character by cutting loose when it would have been easier to lie down and die. Shane Curran lifted the crowd like a manic philharmonic conductor. Séamus O'Neill banged off Kerry shoulders and, from somewhere deep within, Roscommon found belief.
Three times in the last quarter of the game, they fired goals past Declan O'Sullivan, each one as brash and clear as a symbol crash. It was pure Roscommon; rebellious and adventurous on their way to the gallows.
Kerry never panicked; with each goal, they calmly chose another shimmering forward to snipe another point and always held a six-point cushion. They controlled the game from Declan O'Sullivan's third minute goal and it ended 1-21 to 3-10. The only gripe was the assault on Declan O'Keeffe's rigging, so to speak. Almanac's were consulted and it was found that three goal raids on the Kingdom are rare - 1978, '83 and '91 being the most recent anomalies. "Well, tis unusual. Our defence was very porous," sighed Páidí Ó Sé.
Porous: An unusual word for an another unusual day in the championship. So five left and counting.
