Keith Duggan: A weird science takes over at Croker

Process that! Not so much a football match as Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Gaelic football may belong now to the laboratory of tactical analysis and practice and repetition, but at the end of this mad, thrilling, error-ridden and sometimes heroic All-Ireland senior football final, everyone could admit they have been privy to some weird science.

The remains of the day prompted a small smile from Jim Gavin: it was as good as an acknowledgement that nothing in the notebook he holds like a priest's breviary contained anything that he had just witnessed. This All-Ireland final was possessed from the start.

No score from any Dublin player for 31 minutes of the match. Two goals handed to them by the strain of cosmic misfortune which must, it seems, follow Mayo football teams into these September afternoons.

James McCarthy slouched on the steps, black-carded for a challenge in a blizzard of wild challenges, and disconsolate after 25 minutes. His replacement, Paddy Andrews, the only Dublin man to score from play in the first half. The champions were 2-04 to 0-5 ahead at half-time, when all the talk in the stadium was of the spookology which trails Mayo and how Dublin might now inflict their attacking onslaughts.

Instead, it was the men from Mayo who came roaring back, bracketing the second half with a series of never-say-never scores which illuminated their absolute refusal to quit. As ever, the army of green and red fans in Croke Park and around the world lived and died a thousand times over the course of this match.

A rush of points – from the terrific John Small, a free by Dean Rock and a killer of a score from Diarmuid Connolly – left Dublin 2-9 to 0-12 ahead with two minutes left in normal time.

Electrifying current

But a low murmur of shock followed a close-in Cillian O’Connor free and the announcement of seven minutes of injury time. Mayo used that gift to forge an electrifying current between this generation and the mid-century champions of 1951. Donie Vaughan stepped into the breach to land a huge score and then O’Connor drew Mayo level with a thunderous effort.

By now, the families of both counties were living on prayers and raw nerves because this was a match following no logic or pattern that anyone was familiar with. When the whistle went, it was as if everyone was just glad to get out of there with their skins.

"At this moment in time we are still in the fight," reasoned Stephen Rochford.

“So it doesn’t change our thought process. We had 12 or 13 turnovers in the first half. I don’t think that is particularly a good game. So have we got things to improve on? Yeah. And that is what we will be doing. It is as simple as that.

“We don’t feel sorry for ourselves either. We said we wouldn’t have regrets about certain things that would happen in the course of the year and the course of the game. Some days, you get a decision; you don’t get a decision. You get a lucky goal . . . things happen. It is 70 minutes; it is not a defining moment. So for us, it is half-time.”

Rochford belongs to the same school of coaching and high reason as Jim Gavin. Afterwards, he calmly rejected all notions of luck or black magic or anything beyond the task at hand.

“Take emotion out of it – we are still in the game and we will sit down tonight and delve into that a little bit deeper tomorrow and look to right some of those errors. We have an opportunity to improve on that performance. We are improving all year.”

Failed to beat

That is true. On this Monday morning, they are the first team Dublin have failed to beat all season. Like Rochford, Gavin will have plenty of material to feed into his evaluation report. Dublin’s spellbinding attacking patterns weren’t helped by the weather but were also halted by some brilliant man-marking from the challengers.

Lee Keegan’s shadowing of Connolly was a sideshow which almost stole the show, and so much of the Mayo blocking and tackling was beyond fierce. Dean Rock had a tough day on free-kicking duty and Dublin’s scoring was sporadic. Yet the champions, established on the scoreboard after those bizarre own goals from Kevin McLoughlin and Colm Boyle, still oozed with menace.

Small was a constant thorn for Mayo and Cian O’Sullivan snuffed out a series of fires before they could blaze. It looked for long periods that they were going to win an All-Ireland because, well, it doesn’t happen for Mayo on these days.

“Just delighted to still be in the championship,” Gavin said quietly and genuinely.

“Playing a really good Mayo team, as we saw. We knew there was only going to be the bounce of a ball, which there was. So obviously that first quarter of the second-half, when they came strong at us. But our guys showed great mental resolve to hang in there and push on again. I think over the expanse of the game, the full 70 minutes, we just didn’t perform to our standards. We didn’t deserve to win.”

Nor did Mayo deserve to lose. They seem incapable of producing dull encounters, these teams. Dublin will regroup in Parnell Park, Mayo in Castlebar. Western talk will be thick with talk of that ill-fated replay of 20 years ago: 1996 and all of that.

Talk away.

“Both teams will feel they have things to improve on. The reality is that we are at half-time now in the All-Ireland,” said Stephen Rochford.

The second act can’t come fast enough.