LOCKERROOM:The men in green and gold could unpick their chains of torpor and stun city boys again, writes TOM HUMPHRIES

HARRY HOUDINI had a crippling fear of being undercut by cheap imitators and patented a lot of tricks and devices which he never got to perfect or to perform. The point for Houdini was neither did anybody else.

Once such manoeuvre involved the patenting of a watertight chest which would stand on four legs and into which Mr Houdini would be locked and chained. This chest would be lowered into a larger chest which would be locked and which would be filled with water.

Houdini would be dry and shackled within the first chest but surrounded on all sides by water. The trick would be to present himself on stage minutes later bone dry in the same clothes he had been wearing when entering the first chest.

There would be no evidence of tampering or of damage to either chest.

That trick is pretty much what Kerry will attempt to do this afternoon in Croke Park. And if they pull it off there are those who will point out that Tyrone did precisely the same thing with the same fall guys a year ago. That’s the magical beauty of the championship.

On the one hand each matinee performance presents itself to the audience as two teams going hell for leather to escape the chains of the failure before they suffocate. On the other, each game is layered and textured and nuanced in ways we scarcely understand.

Kerry go to Croke Park looking as vulnerable as any Kerry team have looked to Dublin since perhaps the 1955-All Ireland final. At least that’s what the audience thinks and that’s what we pencil jockeys are saying. At least that’s how it would be if Houdini’s patented chest was just an ordinary chest and Houdini was just an ordinary fella. That’s how it would be if it weren’t for history and tradition and magic.

If Kerry beat Dublin today they will present themselves in the last four of the All-Ireland series as usual with no signs of struggle and with the applause of the wondrous populace ringing in their ears. Ta da! They may as well have sawn themselves in half into the bargain such has been the hysteria regarding their constrained performances through the qualifiers.

But a win, a dismantlement, say, of Dublin’s full-back line and Kerry will be into an All-Ireland semi-final against Meath or Mayo and we will stroke our chins and say, oh, Kerry are Kerry.

Who knows if Kerry have that escapologist kick in them today but one thing is sure they will have enjoyed the theatrically diverting sight of the sky darkening with vultures this past week and had a little fun from parsing the sober ante-mortem words of the pundits.

Kerry need to ratchet things up a few degrees to spook Dublin but this is Croke Park and a full house. This is what Kerry do. Always have done. Being told they can’t do it, that it is an impossibility, will have made them keen.

That’s what makes this afternoon the entertainment that it is. You look at Kildare yesterday , survey the astonishing work done by Kieran McGeeney since that slapdown by Mick O’Dwyer a year ago and you consider how confidently Dublin handled the same Kildare team with just 14 men. You weigh that against Kerry’s torrid summer and you say there can only be one outcome. Houdini dies in the box.

But our games ain’t like that. Darragh Ó Sé has a great belief in the green and gold jersey being worth three to four points. So you factor that in. Against Dublin you certainly factor it in. You consider Gooch, Tommy Walsh, Declan O’Sullivan or whoever ends up at full forward will be a step up on anything Denis Bastick has been asked to deal with. You remember what Declan did to Bryan Cullen last time they played championship, you consider this is precisely the stage of the summer Kerry have made an art out of negotiating and Dublin have made a habit of falling at.

Suddenly you are biting your nails and wanting to take your money back. Suddenly it’s a game that might go to the last 10 minutes, the last five. And you recall Clucko going walkabout against Kerry the last time and the Kerry fellas letting him come on and on till he had stranded himself. That’s the fascination. That’s the beauty of this afternoon, that’s what makes it the quintessential Irish sporting occasion.

For all the talk which we Dubs enjoy about swagger and confidence and the boys in blue being an expression of our garrulous city, today is just another skirmish in our long and seemingly hopeless war for self-determination. A war which began in 1955 with the first real and pure city team to reach an All-Ireland final, the first Dublin side to take the imagination of the city by the lapels.

Dublin were beaten that day and apart from those crazy afternoons in 1976 and 1977 have been beaten by Kerry every time since. That’s a crazy, illogical record when you think about it. This city with its resources and traditions and confidence has had to submit two well-nigh perfect football performances to see off a county whose mystical attachment to excellence in football is almost unexplainable to an outsider.

If Kerry with one bound end up in the All-Ireland semi-final today we won’t ask questions. Dublin will have been patiently picking the locks and breaking the chains one by one while Kerry, who always retain the ability to land there dry and smiling, submit a performance that defies explanation.

That’s football. That’s the mystique of this quiet rural county that the big city boys can’t get the measure of.

We were in Beijing this time last year when Tyrone dismantled Dublin, slipped from the waters of the qualifiers and straight into an All-Ireland semi-final, to be reassessed as the real deal and not the played-out rep company they had pretended to be for the previous three rounds.

The texts from various friends in Croke Park kept coming and coming that night, little epistles of gathering despair and hopelessness, the sadness turning to wonder at Tyrone’s performance and how the Northerners had become in a few short years an even spookier prospect to play against than Kerry are.

I remember lying awake for the longest time trying to figure out what makes a Kerry or Kilkenny. What apart from the dry and all too easily transposable “structures” makes Tyrone suddenly invincible? The Chinese skies had no answer. Croke Park this afternoon might.