And so Thin Lizzy get another turn out of the Dubs. As the golden streamers fell like the July(!) drizzle and Kerry shoulders all around started to sag at the 1-15 to 1-13 defeat, all that remained was for Phil Lynott’s urgent whisper to sum the whole thing up. The boys are back. The boys are back.
For how long? Well that’s anyone’s guess. Sometimes we can overthink these things. All year we tried to find the hidden depths in Dessie Farrell sending up the bat signal and bringing Paul Mannion, Jack McCaffrey, Stephen Cluxton and Pat Gilroy out of retirement. It couldn’t just have been for one last job, could it? They’re not going to come back, win it all and then ride off into the sunset together, are they?
“Who knows?” said James McCarthy afterwards. “Maybe. Look, this isn’t a bad way probably to wrap it up. But there’s a lot of guys have to make decisions in the next couple of months. We’ll enjoy this now and see what happens.”
As McCarthy was speaking to us someone arrived from stage left with a pint of Guinness for him. None was ever more deserved. The Dublin captain wasn’t at his best on the pitch – and hasn’t been for a couple of games, as it happens. But when you boil it all down he remains the Dublin footballer to whom Dublin football means the most.
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There’s no pretence in James McCarthy, no artifice. He won his ninth All-Ireland here, as did Stephen Cluxton and Mick Fitzsimons. They played as if they were chasing their first. You want to know how badly McCarthy wanted it? Here’s a man who went so far as using his wedding last December as a recruiting weekend.
“We lost two All-Ireland semi-finals, one by a kick of a ball, one after extra time,” he said. “The margins are tight. Very, very tight. We’ve come out the other side of them plenty of times as well. We were ferociously disappointed with the last two seasons. We were hurt. They really did hurt. But life goes on. We gathered at the start of the year. We had a bit of a chat at the wedding, try and get a few boys back. And they made a difference as well.
“I knew we were still good enough to win it. I had no doubt in my mind. It was just getting a few pieces together, try and drive a few lads on to get a bit better. And myself get better, Mick Fitz get better, Stephen Cluxton get better. Look what Mick Fitz done today. Mission impossible, some would say, but he went one-on-one with David Clifford all day. I played with Mick a long time, he is an incredible player. He is like glue. That’s the type of player you have on the team, sacrificing everything, and that’s so important. That was special today.”
The winners get to write the story. For all that Dublin kept Clifford quiet – he scored three points, one from a free – this was a game that was still level in the 74th minute. Clifford had eight shots across the afternoon and missed with five of them. On an average shooting day he gets a few more of those and maybe the result flips around and the boys came back for nothing. But he didn’t, and Mick Fitzsimons has nine All-Irelands. Ten if you include the junior one he gathered in before all this started. The margins are infinitesimal.
“It is a tough one,” said Kerry manager Jack O’Connor. “Because I thought there were stages of that game in the second half when we looked like we were, I won’t say in control, but that we were playing within ourselves. I just thought the goal was a huge turning point. It gave massive energy to Dublin playing into the Hill.
“And while our boys reacted really well to the goal I felt that the effort it took to come back from the goal and go back up three, that that possibly took it out of our fellas in the last five, 10 minutes. Once Dublin smelled it they have the extra bit of experience and know-how that has seen them get over the line in tight games before. This one was no different.”
Experience and know-how. Mannion was man of the match, kicking five points including four from play. McCaffrey came off the bench and had a direct hand in two points. Cluxton was money on his kickouts all day, as he had been since his return. Dessie Farrell didn’t have to push all his chips into the middle to try and get them back. But he did. And here they are.
“Look, there was plenty of conversations in the background but ultimately the players wanted it,” Farrell said. “I never forced the agenda. I was always talking to the three lads when they moved away, and it was never a case of the door being closed. They needed to be ready themselves. And I think obviously having seen how the thing had gone in the last two years and us being beaten by the tightest of margins and understanding that that strength in depth may not have been what it once was.
“While the young fellas were great, they were still maybe a year or two potentially off the level of the development that you need in the clutch moments on the biggest days of the year. So I have no doubt that there’s that level of selflessness in them all, and the care and nurture of the group flipped the balance in our favour, and meant they were much more amenable to coming back.”
And is that it? Will they all disappear now and leave it at that?
“It could be an inevitability for some,” Farrell said. “But it’s important that the lads get to enjoy it, that there’s no pressure on making some of those decisions. And it’s not just some of the senior guys. You could move down the pecking order or the age profile a little bit and there’s a lot of lads who have committed so much over the years and there will be big decisions to be made for everybody.”
They made the biggest one. It paid off in spades.
