No freesias for all like Páidí's day but Kerry animals are still manly

TV VIEW:AFTER RECALLING his favourite memory from his days playing against Kerry, Jimmy Barry Murphy was asked by Marian Finucane yesterday for his less treasured recollections from brushes with the Kingdom. If he started, he said, he'd miss the final, which was still three hours away, drawing a chuckle from the man on the other line, Pat Spillane.

Pat was already at Croke Park, telling Marian he likes to get there early to survey the scene and reminisce about triumphs past. No doubt he was limbering up, too, for panel duty, putting his tongue through a few stretching exercises so it’d be all set to go.

Joe Brolly arrived a bit later, sporting a broken hand, leading to fears that Pat would appear on our screens with a bloodied nose. He was, though, intact when we finally laid eyes on him. Joe revealed nothing about his injury apart from the fact the other fella “came off worse”. It wasn’t Pat, though, and that was the main thing.

Dinny Allen came off worse when he had a difference of opinion with Páidí Ó Sé in the 1975 Munster final. Páidí did not take kindly to Dinny’s elbow being lodged in his face and, so, decked him with a left hook. Like the elbow and the fist the referee went flying, landing on his bottom as he rushed to separate the pair, both of whom appeared on Saturday night’s Up for the Match to reminisce fondly about the incident.

While impressed by the absence of hard feelings, Des Cahill and Gráinne Seoige suggested that if the punch-up had taken place in 2009 the country would have ground to a halt. And true enough, there’d be pandemonium, Liveline would devote a week to the uproar and the Ceann Comhairle might even give the go-ahead for an all-party debate on the affair, the conclusion, perhaps, that Dinny and Páidí should be packed off on a slowboat to China. Or, worse, put on a water taxi in Venice.

But that was then. All’s changed in 2009, not least the pre-final show at Croke Park. Michael Lyster was hugely impressed, applauding the colourful and musical display on the pitch below him. He asked his panel, in all innocence, if they were enjoying it too.

“I could do without that beating of the drum, endlessly,” said Colm O’Rourke, reaching for his aspirin, while Joe waved his cast in the air, in a slightly menacing way. “I think we could be doing without that stuff, it’s like Butlin’s holiday camp,” he said.

Pat wasn’t happy either, which drew a heavy sigh from Michael, who realised it was like asking Statler and Waldorf and their mate if they were enjoying the show.

But what about the game? Pat?

“Remember Donald Rumsfeld talking about the American invasion of Iraq? He was talking about known knowns and unknown unknowns and the big unknown unknown is Cork and their mental state – so the unknown unknown is if Kerry get a run at them will they, like Dublin in the quarter-finals, collapse.”

Michael, reaching for Colm’s aspirin, called for an ad break.

When they returned they focused on Kerry’s unpredictability, Pat concluding they were “a bit like Nama”: if things go according to plan then Kerry blossom, but if they don’t, well, then we’re talking a serious state of banjaxdom. They’d survived against Sligo, that unconverted penalty saving them, but if it had gone in then your aunty would be your uncle and Kerry would have been out. That was the gist of it, anyway.

Time for a marginally surreal interlude. We saw Pat lovingly tending to a flower bed positioned in the middle of his lawn, caressing each petal with his fingertips, before Corkman Tony Davis ploughed through this floral extravaganza on a ride-on lawnmower bedecked in red flags.

Michael and Pat chuckled, but Colm, Joe and ourselves just looked at each other in an intensely puzzled kind of way. Even if you were a pacifist you’d pine for a bit of Páidí v Dinny, rather than competing Kerry and Cork men choosing to sabotage each other’s freesias.

Perhaps with this scene in mind Joe riled Pat by asking: “Kerry are thoroughbreds but are they manly enough?”

Pat reassured him that, win or lose, Kerry men would remain manly, although he conceded, quoting Páidí, they might have an animalistic tendency too.

Colm agreed. “Kerry are like a horse,” he said, before concluding they’re like “the old dog for the hard road”, tipping them to win.

Joe did too. “Kerry today, Cork tomorrow,” he said, before Pat made it 3-0 to the manly animals.

They were, as it proved, spot on.

“Form is temporary, class is permanent,” said Pat, his hurt over his flattened freesias eased by the sight of his county doing what they tend to do. Win.