Life comes at you fast.
One day, you’re a card-carrying culchie – usually a Mass card that the mother gave you with a picture on it of a neighbour you haven’t heard tell of since you were 19, but sure look it’s no hardship to keep it in the wallet for six months and surely to God the poor divil will be through security by then. Then you wake up one morning and you’re a jewel and darlin’ Dub, a city sham, a hair’s breadth away from canvassing for The Monk.
That’s how it felt in our house this week, anyway. For we are a Na Fianna house, Dubs to the bone. Blue and yellow flag hanging out the window, windscreen sticker on the car, MyHome.ie notifications enabled on the phone to keep abreast of the latest house-price moves. As we say around here, our club is set in the heart of Glasnevin or Finglas East, depending on whether you’re buying or selling.
Our club. That’s the shocking thing, the bit that still takes a bit of getting used to. We are blow-ins, rampaging culchie settlers. We are far from alone in that – plenty of Na Fianna parents still kit our kids out in the jerseys of our forebears, whether said kids are fully behind the idea or not. Our young lady spent some of her Communion money this summer on a half-and-half Dublin/Monaghan number. Or Monaghan/Dublin number, to give it its proper title.
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So many of us grew up in other clubs in other parts of the country. But though we’d be slow to admit to being Dubs now, we are (mostly) resigned to the fact that we are raising Dubs. The elastic that drags us back to our clubs of origin will never completely snap but the tension eases over time and eventually we have to face up to it. We are who we are.
And if we were ever in any doubt, this was the week that brought it home. Nothing will tell you who you are quicker than the outside world fitting you for a black hat and taking potshots in your general direction. You can’t know how much you care until circumstances inform you that actually you care quite a lot.
It all came about because of a post on the Na Fianna social media pages during the week. We’re in the Leinster club hurling final on tonight and so the club is making a big day of it. Santa is coming to the nursery this morning, the Ireland-Aussie rugby match will be on in the bar in the afternoon, there’s a fan zone with face-painting and DJs and so on, all leading up to us marching together down to Croke Park for the game. So far, so wholesome.
The kerfuffle came about because of the last line of the post. ‘10pm: Team Welcome Home, DJ & Celebrations until Late!’
And of course, anyone who ever had anything to do with a GAA club – or indeed any sports team ever – can guess what happened next. The word “celebrations” was taken to mean that Na Fianna had already decided that victory was a given. Offaly champions Kilcormac-Killoughey needn’t bother turning up at all. Send the cup up to Mobhi Road now and let the Croke Park staff go on away home after the Cuala crowd get back in their limos.
“Arrogance,” pronounced one chap online. “Hope ye get trounced by KK. Arrogance with celebrations til late a week before the game,” said another. “Imagine they mentioned a rugby match too and they in a Leinster final only hours after, hope Kilcormac do the job,” said a third. A rugby match! Imagine!
Here’s the thing. For the vast, vast majority of my sports-watching life, I would have had more or less the same reaction. Celebrations until late? That’s more of it, now. Typical stuck-up, snotty Dubs, dismissing the turnip-eaters from beyond the M50 without a second thought. The usual superclub shite from a crowd that have got way too big for their boots.
I’d have been rolling my eyes and sending it around endless WhatsApp groups, pointing out that Kilcormac-Killoughey actually have a Leinster title to their name whereas Na Fianna were never even in a Dublin final until 2021. I’d have been laughing like a drain and looking up clips of Adam Screeney and getting stuck into the 7/4 price about the Offaly champions. You mean, not only are they an arrogant shower but there’s money to be made too? Sign me up!
But instead, my instinct was to stand up for my people. No, no, no – ye’ve taken us up completely wrong here. The celebrations aren’t for any Leinster title. They’re for the journey we’ve been on. This is our 10th game of the championship – if you had any idea how close we’ve come in those games to not being here, you’d see that.
Of our seven games in the Dublin championship, four ended with a lead change in injury-time. Lucan beat us with a length-of-the-field goal in the 64th minute, leaving us third in our five-team group – nobody was talking about Leinster title celebrations that day.
We needed extra-time to beat Vincent’s. Crokes had us gone until Ciarán Stacey’s goal with nine seconds of the final left. Last week against St Martin’s of Wexford, we were a point down against the wind going into the final quarter before we stitched together the sort of rat-a-tat stick-passing goal we’ve been threatening to score all year.
It’s been an amazing four months, it really has. Our under-nine girls have been heading over and back to Parnell Park throughout it and the only downside to the whole thing is that we haven’t got a road trip out of it. That would nearly be the biggest prize for winning – a jaunt to an All-Ireland semi-final somewhere down the country would be deadly for them. But if the road ends here, so be it.
Whatever happens tonight, we’ll celebrate it. What else would we do?
