Dublin now just another hungry fighter

ON GAELIC GAMES:In 25 of the 36 seasons since Dublin and Cork established their modern rivalry, Dublin have either won the All-Ireland or lost to the eventual champions, writes SÉAN MORAN

IT MIGHTN’T be the most obvious starting point for Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final, but big matches between Cork and Dublin should be viewed in the context of a different and higher-profile rivalry, that of Dublin and Kerry.

The 40 years between 1955 and Dublin’s most recent All-Ireland title 15 seasons ago defined one of modern football’s most prominent frameworks, the clash between the capital city and everyone else.

That urban-rural frontier wasn’t invented by the GAA, but the rise in the 1950s of Dublin’s first indigenous teams, as opposed to the residence-based sides of previous decades, helped create the definitive sporting expression of the differences between city and country.

Assisting in the delineating of easily-grasped demarcation lines was the characterisation of Dublin as “modern” and “scientific” – at a time when the description connoted technical excellence and forward thinking – and “progressive” whereas Kerry, under the baton of one of football’s foremost gurus Dr Eamonn O’Sullivan, was “traditional” in its adherence to fixed-position marking and the precepts of catch and kick.

A record crowd of 87,102 attended the 1955 final and public transport was jammed over the match weekend with CIE running 20 special trains from Kerry and such huge queues building up for the Holyhead boat train in London’s Euston Station that an extra service had to be provided.

Kerry’s win was seen as a seismic, defining event and that day’s captain, the late John Dowling, was greatly revered in the county from that day on, having led Kerry to victory and played a major role in securing it with his performance at centrefield.

That essential narrative was greatly expanded during the 1970s when the counties were for a while genuinely rivals – Dublin actually won some of the matches. Although three semi-finals had unfussily gone Kerry’s way in the previous 20 years, the final of 1975 was seen as the great re-engagement of football’s top counties.

Excitement began to ebb with the predictability of the All-Irelands in the 1980s before foundering altogether on the sheer one-sidedness of the fixture. Since 1955 the counties have met in championship 14 times; Dublin won twice, in 1976 and ’77. As former Kerry captain and current RTÉ panellist Dara Ó Cinnéide pithily observed before last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final: “We go romancing about the rivalry (with Dublin) when we’re winning. You won’t hear a lot of talk about the rivalry with Tyrone, though.”

Running into the great Kerry team of the 1970s and ’80s didn’t strip Dublin of its self-esteem even if it prompted a rueful recognition they had helped for a while create an ongoing contest with the most successful team in history. What Dublin football believed in the aftermath of the 1970s was that the county could deal with anyone except Kerry at its best. Six Leinster titles in a row led to six All-Ireland finals and three Sam Maguires.

Even if Kevin Heffernan’s team eventually gave way to Offaly in 1980, that process was rendered respectable by Eugene McGee’s side winning the All-Ireland in 1982; in other words it kept Dublin just a step behind the very best.

The Dublin-Cork semi-final of 1983 was an affirmation of this confidence. Both counties had slipped unexpectedly out of their respective provinces, but there was belief in the city that in a year when Kerry were surprisingly out of contention there was no reason why Dublin shouldn’t slip in and take the All-Ireland. How close Cork came to winning that match the first day was generally forgotten after the memorable thrashing that was administered in the replay down in Páirc Uí­ Chaoimh (see the match report for the ’83 replay on facing page).

And the self-image of accomplished opportunists was perpetuated amidst the controversial circumstance of that year’s final against Galway.

Dublin’s confidence was initially undermined by the emergence of Meath, but that quickly conformed to the Offaly precedent, as Seán Boylan’s team became undisputedly the best side in the country in 1987-88 and coming second to them in Leinster still positioned Dublin at the top of the game. For good measure, it was Dublin who toppled the champions a year later and expectations were that another All-Ireland had become conveniently available.

That semi-final of 21 years ago is arguably a hinge moment for Dublin football. What had been perhaps missed was that Cork were not “slipping out” of Munster any more, but were instead subjugating Kerry to an historically unparalleled extent.

Psychologically, they were blithe to any sense of Dublin’s entitlement and even the whirlwind start of an unanswered 1-4 wasn’t enough to knock the self-belief of Billy Morgan’s team. It was a violent shock to the Dublin system and one that arguably unpicked the first thread in the prevailing worldview.

The next unravelling came with defeat in the epic 1991 series against Meath. Paddy Cullen’s team had restored the swashbuckling self-image beloved of the county, but the cavalier self-assurance was peeled away in layers over those hectic seven weeks.

A year later the county’s first championship defeat by an Ulster county gave Donegal an All-Ireland Dublin had – along with everyone else – assumed was theirs and inaugurated a painful trend of exiting three successive championships at the hands of different Ulster counties. That sequence ended with Dublin’s most recent title, in 1995, where a couple of boxes were ticked: Ulster standard bearers Tyrone were beaten in the final and in the semi-final, supremacy restated against Cork.

But the team was falling over the line, both in career terms after giving so much to trying to win the elusive trophy and in the context of a season during which they had peaked spectacularly in walloping Meath in the Leinster final. In the past 15 years there have been no illusions. Anyone can beat Dublin. Once the proximity to All-Ireland achievement gave way, counties that hadn’t bothered the Dubs in generations were emboldened in Leinster – not just Offaly and Meath, but Kildare, Laois and even Westmeath.

By the time that was halted in 2005, Leinster no longer mattered. The province hasn’t seen an All-Ireland football title since the last millennium. Dublin’s claim to fame became its ability to test the top teams.

That in itself is a striking record. In 25 of the 36 seasons since Dublin and Cork established their modern rivalry, Dublin have either won the All-Ireland or lost to the eventual champions. But the opportunities to do that have significantly increased with the introduction of the qualifiers. The sense in recent times has been of a team with the proximity to greatness of a sparring partner rather than a contender.

Sunday is accordingly different: a team with no experience of topping the bill, little charisma, less celebrity and not even the unquestioning devotion of the Hill.

Just another hungry fighter.