All over Co Cork, the rebel flags are flying proudly over high and low, over poet and peasant, merchant prince and pauper, over banks and bothans, barns and breweries (on double shift to cater for the celebrations). From the tight rocky fields of Beara to the fertile eastern plain of Imokilly and northwards to the purple hills of Duhallow, the native heart beats fast and strong. In the city, neat suburban homes and even the occasional villa in Montenotte bloom forth in red and white.
Little kids, some kitted out in Man United shirts make solo runs up and down the city housing estates. Are Man United playing GAA? No, sure haven't we got Roy Keane and Denis Irwin there, boy? Sober adults grab scarlet GAA sweatshirts at £35 each from the shelves of sport-stores. Reels of red and white hazard tape disappear mysteriously from Co Council sites and Garda incident vans, to reappear on road signs for Cloyne, Bantry, Douglas and Blackpool (emphasis on the last syllable, boy!). Yes, Blackpool, not Blackpool. The latter is the place where Vera Duckworth goes for a day at the seaside. Strange flags like Texas and Cuba are pressed into the rebel cause. Not so strange; didn't you know that JR was one of the Ewings of Mallow, and that Che Guevara's grandmother was an O'Sullivan from Skibbereen?
Iarnrod Eireann is closing down the whole rail network except for Cork to Dublin and back until sometime next week. Sorry about that, oul' stock in Galway, Wexford or Belfast; it is a national emergency to transplant the whole of the county up for the match and home with the cup. We're thinking of giving Kofi Annan a buzz to see if he has any C35 transport planes handy. In fairness, Kof, this is a humanitarian crisis, like. Get your priorities right.
Next thing, The Irish Times phones up for a colour piece on Cork pride. At last it's sinking in that Cork superiority is a National Issue. John Bowman did a whole radio programme on de Ringer (Christy Ring) last Saturday.
Charlie Bird will be putting on his flak jacket and coming down to report live from the front line. Brian Farrell is practising saying "Sean Og O hAilpin" in front of the mirror every morning. Bertie Ahern is dusting off his childhood memories of holidays in Cork. Yes, the mandarins of Montrose and Westmoreland Street are getting the message. The papers are stuck for words as their sports writers gag on all the bad stuff they've been writing about Cork GAA for the past few months, years even. Eating their words?
They're swalleying them in gulps, boy, as it dawns on them that we're on for the double. Even The Examiner made a wrong prediction for the hurling final; God help them, they're not the same since they dropped the vital word Cork from their masthead.
You see, all this elation springs from Mortas Cine, a blinding, blazing local pride that took a bit of a back seat since we won the last double (1990), and since poor Jack (The Real Taoiseach) stood aside, which is one way of putting what they did to him. We lost our focus for a while with all this macroeconomic stuff about euros and the Internet, when we should have been reminding the rest of ye that we have the biggest county, two rivers in the city (well, North and South channel so), the cheapest pint (Beamish), the greatest national hero (Michael Collins), two martyred lord mayors, the deepest harbour in Europe, the loveliest girls (Rose of Tralee 1999), the tidiest town (Clonakilty), and the best garden of 1999 (Patricia Carey).
I could continue the litany, but I might depress the jaded readers of Dublin 1 to 24. Most of them are closet culchies anyway, with silver-haired grannies back in Abbeyfeale or Knockrockery, but the nouveau Dubs are too sophisticated to get excited about it, and haven't voted since 1977. For them, hill tribes start somewhere between Inchicore and the M50 Rinda Bite.
I know. It's depressing. It's Saturday morning and you're sitting there over a cafe latte, nursing a headache and a huge mortgage on a very small house somewhere between Drogheda and Wicklow, and you can't dredge up one sign of a Cork relative, inside or outside wedlock. Seamus Heaney fails to trace his cousins in Knocknaheeny. Pat Kenny has to admit that all his seed and breed are from Kilkenny. But there is a small glimmer of hope for you.
We have a very select band of honorary citizens of Cork, and you could start buying Barry's Tea, speaking with a lilt and then join the queue behind the current hot favourites for selection, Liam McCarthy (recently welcomed back to Leeside) and Sam Maguire.
P.S. In the unlikely event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure in the Cork full back line next Sunday, or a flash of genius from Trevor Giles (cousin of Johnny's?) or Ollie Murphy (surely a Corkman), or the ref losing his contact lenses at half time and Meath actually lifting the cup, will we be down? Not as long as Viagra is being made in Ringaskiddy, boy! Sure, there is nothing more buoyant than a Cork. Chuckie Awr Law an bhliain seo chugainn. "Romantic Ireland's dead and gone"? Incorrect, W.B., 'tis with Jimmy Barr and Larry Tompkins in the dugout at Croke Park.