About 10 years ago, the Mayo writer Mike McCormack brought out a terrific collection of short stories entitled Getting it in the Head.
That is what happened to Mayo people and their enigmatic football team last Sunday, in every sense. Who knows why this Mayo team didn't buckle when big, brave, flashy opponents located their central nerve and began to apply the pressure? Who knows why the same players who were visibly demoralised two years ago when Kerry rained the basic high ball down upon them - as Ronan McGarrity memorably said, "like being out on the Atlantic in a storm" - now reacted differently?
Midway through the second half, when Dublin had run riot and The Hill was swaying and performing its boozy chorus line, Mayo full back David Heaney raced with Conal Keaney for the ball as it rolled toward the Hogan Stand sideline. The Dublin forward got there first but with Heaney crouched and legally pressuring him, he lifted the ball off the ground. Heaney looked at referee Paddy Russell and made a signal to highlight the foul. He got the whistle and calmly set about taking the free, looking for a team-mate, searching for a way back into contention.
In retrospect, Heaney's serenity and calm were spooky. The more you study that match, the more it is apparent none of the Mayo players even blinked when Dublin went on the rampage. The doubts may have been rattling through their minds - as David Brady noted disparagingly afterwards, "You could see the headlines: six points down, typical Mayo, the Culchies lost it again" - but they did not show it. And unlike in previous years, when Mayo folks fled in shame during waking nightmares in Croke Park, nobody left. When Ger Brady nailed that high, curling point out of the blue that signified Mayo's intention to make a match of it, there was substance to Mayo cheering. On the field, the Mayo players remained calm to the point of seeming hypnotised, as though they had been given divine assurance they could not lose this one.
This was the same team, remember, who were probably fortunate to beat Leitrim in an early round of the Connacht championship. They were not supposed to do anything special this year. They were supposed to be Mayo: delightful in the harmless dusk of league fare but fancy-schmancy and disposable when the serious business got under way.
Quietly and effectively, Mickey Moran and John Morrison managed to get Mayo believing it was Them against the World. Pushed around and kicked around - just like the boys in Bronski Beat - by Galway in the league-semi final, they had an axe to grind when the neighbours met again in the Connacht final. The quality of the match was poor but it was there that we first saw evidence of the brutally stubborn attitude Mayo had honed. Their style and lack of hard hitting was pilloried on national television during the quarter-final series against Laois - the first episode of which was a minor classic.
Perhaps there is "history" between Joe Brolly and Mickey Moran dating back to the Oak Leaf's great year, 1993, and the fallout thereafter. But if Smiling Joe was prepared to label Mayo "incompetent" during that quarter-final series, it was his duty as an analyst, in the wild moments after the Dublin victory, to admit he had made a catastrophic misjudgment. It was not enough to merely the laud the Westerners' performance as heroic.
Of course, Moran and Morrison would probably have used that slight to their advantage. For years, Mayo football folk laboured under the illusion that because of the gilded age they enjoyed in the mid-20th century, they belonged to the aristocracy of Gaelic football. In a way, it was forgivable because Mayo always played attractive football, regularly produced stylists worth the admission fee and lost so many big games in freakish circumstances they could take comfort in the notion they were cursed.
It meant Moran and Morrison were taking charge of a football county with a particularly tricky psyche. Commenting on that last Sunday, Morrison observed maybe it took people with a bit of distance to come into the heartland and point out what was wrong. In other words, if you are going to sleep in a haunted house, it is best not to believe in ghosts.
When Paul Caffrey clattered into Morrison during the highly entertaining and daft prelude to the match, it could have been construed as the highest praise. Mayo had disrupted a team and management that believed in operating like clockwork. Mayo suspended time and reality by ambling up to the blue end.
One of the most endearing traits of the GAA is that for all the subtleties of its rulebook, it always leaves itself open to outbreaks of pure chaos. The warm-up controversy lay somewhere between the orchestrated "showtime" of the American Super Bowl and outright anarchy, with David Brady, maybe the most compelling figure on this Mayo team, not warming up at all but walking around to hold solemn flash-conferences with players and mentors.
It was an audacious stunt and it succeeded in stripping The Hill of its mystique if not its voice. Had Dublin overwhelmed Mayo after the throw-in, Mayo's cheek would have been heavily criticised but it will go down in posterity as part of the grand plan. Sunday was, as the Connacht Telegraph headline put it, Mayo's Perfect Day. That it was achieved at Dublin's expense - their first victory over the metropolitans in championship history - made it especially magical.
It was a shattering loss for Dublin and again highlighted just how dangerous the great sky-blue bandwagon can be when things go wrong. Much ado has been made about the calls made on the sideline, but Dublin have been a streaky team for the past five years. They play on emotion, stunning in bursts but often mired and hesitant for long periods of any match. And Caffrey has done a fine job but he cannot turn water into wine. He was still working with the same group, highly athletic and motivated but less naturally gifted than previous All-Ireland-winning Dublin teams and at least six other county teams operating today.
Caffrey must have hated the mounting hype and expectation that came with blowing the rest of Leinster away but as long as Dublin have a football team, they will command that kind of intense, noisy interest. It is part of what has been termed the Dublin "swagger".
Dublin's best chance of an All-Ireland-final appearance may have passed them by. But they are honest and ambitious enough to come back stronger next year. What they need is a bit more country cunning.
Dublin on a roll makes for a richer championship - emotionally as well as financially. But you have to sympathise with their players, who do not ask to be part of this grand carnival. It is a brutal kind of glory the Dublin players have, really. Last Sunday, they were feted by 80,000 people in Croke Park and looked invincible during the high point of the afternoon but by Sunday night were still as far away as ever from an All-Ireland, with nothing for it but to seek whatever consolations might be on offer in GardaFaceJacks.
Too often, Mayo folks have haunted the darker corners of Dublin nightspots to reflect on another ruined Sunday. Last Sunday they could behave like they owned the capital. High rollers. This might well be the year they finally do it. But even if Kerry finish the year as champions, as Kerry habitually do, Mayo's achievement will not be diminished. That Dublin-Mayo match was transcendent. It was a complete story. In a way, it stole the championship.
