The greatest rebranding exercise in Irish sport took place in Croke Park seven years ago. Nothing to do with Mayo or Dublin, nothing to do with the GAA at all, in fact. No, it was the day Leinster rugby rose up as one and thumped Munster in the Heineken Cup semi-final in front of 82,000.
It was a duffing, plain and simple. A brutal declaration of not taking this anymore. It was a kid who’d spent years being picked on turning bully and very much enjoying it.
If you put together a montage you'd overlay it with Thom Yorke of Radiohead sneering "this is what you get when you mess with us".
It’s funny now to look back and recall just how easy it was to insult Leinster in those days. There was the Ladyboy stuff, obviously, but not all the jibes were that unsubtle.
I remember being on a radio panel that afternoon on a makeshift stage at the front of the Croke Park hotel and one of the other talking heads making fun of Isa Nacewa’s kicking style out of his hand.
The rest of us kind of chuckled along, but not because we had given it any particularly deep thought before. It was more that, yeah, sure that’s the kind of thing Leinster would do, isn’t it? Bring in a fella to play full-back who didn’t kick the ball properly. That was, like, soooo Leinster.
Everything changed for them that day.
They beat Munster 25-6 and by three tries to none, and went on to win their first Heineken Cup three weeks later. They followed up with two more, and nobody ever mentioned Ladyboys again. Nacewa, of course, became a club legend.
Nobody laughs at Leinster now. When they fail, they get criticised. It’s not always even-handed and it can often be harsh and even spiteful, as with all teams. But the undercurrent of derision that was once there is a long-since faded memory. That’s what happens in sport. Winning changes how people see you, and it takes a lot to change it back.
Swap the jerseys
Close your eyes and swap the jerseys last Sunday. Imagine Mayo had been three points up in the 69th minute and still found a way not to win.
Imagine they’d been a point up with two minutes to go and Cillian O’Connor had tried to score from a sideline ball, leaving enough time on the clock after he missed for Dublin to equalise from the kickout.
Imagine the combination of pity and disdain that would have been directed Mayo’s way.
Imagine also what would have been said about Dublin. The mark of champions. Stuck to their process, trusted their experience. Dug it out when the need was greatest. Never beaten till they’re beaten. All guff, really. But – and this is the key point – all thoroughly believable guff.
When you win you put a nice big chunk of change on deposit in the bank where nobody can touch it.
You are forgiven for all manner of ills and spills because you have shown that you have a record of being able to get across the line. Judgement is usually sensible and mostly benign.
When you don't win people don't want to hear it. It's a simple truth that Mayo have given Dublin stiffer examinations than Kerry since 2011 – Kerry have lost four from four, Mayo have one win, two draws and two defeats.
Yet if this was a Dublin-Kerry replay we were preparing for it is unlikely you would be hearing very much talk of Kerry having left it behind them the first day.
Instead the inevitable consensus says that Dublin can’t possibly be as bad in the replay as they were on Sunday. They will find their feet, their shooting boots and enough goals of their own not to have to rely on Mayo’s.
Gripe pile
Sure as night follows day, this view has annoyed some Mayo people no end. It goes on the gripe pile, along with – and this is not a gag – the fact that there were two Dubs on
The Sunday Game
panel the other night. One of them was
Des Cahill
. This is the sort of paranoia that strikes people who feel they are not being taken seriously.
They should let it wash over them, frankly. Leaving Croke Park on Sunday night it was hard to feel too sorry for the gathered thousands of Mayo people on the streets.
Leave aside all the fatalism and the talk of famine and all the rest of it. This must be an enthralling time to feel connected to the Mayo football team.
Honesty
Imagine looking down from the stands and seeing those players as your representatives. The honesty, the drive, the total manic unwillingness to allow their myriad flaws define them.
There are plenty worse things you could be doing with your life than following the Mayo football team around.
For the rest of us, though, it’s disgustingly simple. Time and again over the past five seasons Dublin and Mayo have shown themselves to be peers. Yet there is no chance of them being seen as equals unless and until Mayo go and beat them. You are who you are until you change who you are.
Only one way to do that.
