GAELIC GAMES/All-Ireland Club FC final/Nemo Rangers (Cork) v St Vincent's (Dublin): THE FASCINATION of the AIB club championship is distilled in this afternoon's football final: the most successful club in the competition's history against opponents whose history goes back as far but with not much in between.
How do you weigh up the effect of experience here? Repeatedly teams with negative experiences have been shown to have got good at losing but those with a history of winning stand a better chance.
Where do Nemo stand in this? Already this decade the club that tops the roll of honour has - unprecedentedly - lost two finals and one semi-final. But significantly they also won a seventh Andy Merrigan Cup five years ago and bring half of those players to Croke Park this afternoon.
The Cork champions have progressed steadily rather than spectacularly but Vincent's have picked up momentum, their unexpected progress adding self-belief and acumen by increments.
The Dublin club's profile is not unusual in the winners' enclosure. Teams picking up steam along the way and hitting St Patrick's Day running stand a good chance of closing the deal. Judged on the semi-finals Vincent's would be favourites. Their defeat of Crossmaglen Rangers showed tactical shrewdness and devastating opportunism.
Nemo were impressive in swatting aside Ballina but the Mayo champions were poor and with Ronan McGarrity less than match-fit, their expected challenge at centrefield never materialised, while the early loss of full back Ger Cafferkey unsettled the defence as James Masters ran riot.
There were many positives in the defeat of Crossmaglen. Michael O'Shea and Hugh Coghlan dominated the middle and the quick, dropping ball-variation introduced to harness the wind in Navan enabled Pat Gilroy to cause havoc at full forward.
St Vincent's manager Mickey Whelan will have taken a long look at Nemo and might not fancy that approach given Derek Kavanagh's presence at full back and the complementary work of Niall Geary and Darragh Breen in the corners.
For all Ballina's difficulty, Nemo still did a good job at centrefield, where Peter Morgan and Maurice McCarthy controlled the sector.
The Vincent's full-back line excelled in the semi-final, blocking Crossmaglen's chief source of deliverance, Oisín McConville, and will need to replicate that form given the presence of Masters and the speedier Cork attack.
Many would agree that if Vincent's play as well as in the first half of the semi-final they should win. But Nemo have been steadier and they have the pace and the right sort of experience to edge farther ahead in the roll of honour.
