History points to the scale of Dublin's task

ON GAELIC GAMES:Since the fabled 1977 semi-final, Dublin have failed to beat Kerry in the championship, despite meeting them on nine occasions

IT’S A strange roll call: Offaly, Cork, Down, Clare, Mayo, Kildare, Meath, Armagh and Tyrone. These are the nine counties that have eliminated Kerry from the championship in the years since Dublin last managed to do so. During that period of 34 years, Dublin have been knocked out by 12 counties.

Why, you wonder, amidst the randomness of football’s ebb and flow since 1977 have Dublin simply been unable to land one clean punch on their ancient rivals? It’s not as if they haven’t had the opportunity; the counties have met in championship on nine occasions since the increasingly fabled semi-final of 1977.

This is the most common All-Ireland pairing in the GAA, ahead of Cork-Kilkenny in hurling and everything else in football. Sunday is the 26th meeting of the counties. Kerry have actually played Dublin in championship more often than they’ve faced Waterford, who have spent well over 100 years with them in the same province.

Unfortunately for Dublin the similarities don’t altogether end there; Waterford are two from 24 whereas Dublin are six from 25.

Of late – perhaps out of a genuine desire for context – it has become common for Dublin voices to stress the stark disparity between the counties when it comes to head-to-head meetings. The plethora of the championship encounters between the two and the one-way nature of the outcomes makes the rivalry remarkable not for the traditionally accepted reasons but because it’s been so consistently lop-sided over the past century.

In fact ‘rivalry’ as a word that connotes a degree of competitiveness and the clash of equals seems somewhat inappropriate.

In Killarney on Saturday’s media day it was noticeable how few vibes were resonating at the prospect of the great, iconic clash with Dublin. Kieran Donaghy was respectful but his first reaction was that at least it would be different from playing Mayo and Cork (and especially, one presumes, Tyrone).

Diarmuid Murphy, former All Star goalkeeper, an older player than Donaghy and now retired, was reflective and suggested that Dublin-Kerry meant more to supporters and older generations, such as his fellow selector Ger O’Keeffe, than it did to the current players.

That’s hard to argue. For the current generation the match must be seen through the prism of a little-remarked fact: the last decade saw as many championship matches between the counties as the 1970s – five. Whereas those contests in the Golden Years or Decade of the Dubs (whichever video of the 1970s informs your perspective) were split three and two, the more recent matches saw Kerry unbeaten. It’s hard to generate a special adrenalin surge for an occasion that has proved so unthreatening in your experience.

There are also undercurrents. Manager Jack O’Connor in his revealing memoir Keys To The Kingdom portrays himself as a South Kerry outsider and nowhere is that sense of grievance or alienation more pronounced than in his attitude to the cast of the Golden Years.

He sees slights everywhere and sometimes with reason. At a banquet the crowd hurroos the suggestion that Mick O’Dwyer, who is present, should return to take over the team. Facing into 2006, having won one All-Ireland and reached the final in his second year, O’Connor feels the pressure and identifies the source.

“There’s times when I’m reminded that when push comes to shove there’s the aristocracy from the 70s and 80s and there’s the peasants and if I fail in two out of three years in the Kerry job it will tell people all they need to know about the peasantry.”

It would be natural if O’Connor is also fed up with Dublin, as he sees their former players genially perpetuating the myths and legends of their Kerry contemporaries. He could be forgiven for thinking it preposterous that a county he has with minimal fuss incinerated like autumn leaves should be the touchstones of his tormentors’ greatness.

Kerry players may in private moments wonder what they have to do to slip free of the giant shadow that looms down the decades. Although there are no more survivors from the 1997 All-Ireland victory, Kerry have won six Sam Maguires in 14 years and Tomás Ó Sé and Tom O’Sullivan of Sunday’s team have five medals.

Outside of Kerry, only four counties have won more All-Irelands than that.

The modern championship provides a safety net with the qualifiers but that’s been revenue-neutral for Kerry – the county has won two titles on the outside track but as champions they have been beaten twice by teams already defeated in their province.

Kerry’s motivation is entirely self-generated; they win because that’s what they do better than anyone else whatever the prevailing style of play or championship format. It doesn’t really matter who they’re playing.

Tyrone people like to think Kerry folk fume over their serial inability to beat Mickey Harte’s team in the decade just gone. That’s unlikely; all they see in Kerry are the five All-Irelands they added to the pile between 2000 and 2009 and not because that made them ‘team of the decade’ – they end up with titles in every decade – but because in all of those years they took on everyone else and won.

On Sunday Dublin are just the latest challengers. For those players who saw the old videos and grew up aware of the 1970s tradition it may provide a nostalgic gloss but are they any more fired-up than they were for any other of their All-Ireland finals? Doubtful.

The main function, you suspect, that Dublin will fulfil is to give free rein to the Kerry inclination to flatter the opposition – the best example of which remains for me the man in Killorglin who before the championship one year said that the team would do well if they could get over Tipperary.

So whether they believe it or not, great play will be made of the epic rivalry to be renewed and the implication that Kerry now have opposition worthy of the occasion. A colleague encapsulated a great championship truth in Killarney on Saturday when discussing the prospects of an upset this Sunday. “In the GAA teams that always beat teams, always beat them.” That is both the scale of Dublin’s challenge – and motivation.