EVEN THE weather duped us. The oppressive closeness of the morning’s swelter suggested a brewing storm, something grand and elemental with which to match the mood in Croke Park.
Instead, all that happened was that Dublin got rained on. What promised to be a classic All-Ireland quarter-final unfolded as a parade.
The most anticipated football game of the summer transpired to be a dud – without small print attached. Kerry cantered home on a score of 1-24 to 1-7.
We had longed for a game which would remind us of the 1970s. We got 1978 or 1979 – one-sided mismatches.
What happened? This wasn’t hinted at on the playbill. Yesterday’s theatre at Croke Park was meant to be a chance for Kerry to lay down their burden at last and for Dublin to seize the day and to march on to glory – or to a neighbourhood quite near glory.
Some 81,892 fans came along to share the moment. Kerry came to town advertising themselves, Barnum-like, as poor, wretched creatures finally on the verge of extinction. Dublin’s fate was leavened by hope.
This, said the formlines and the bookmakers was to be Dublin’s time. Sure Kerry, wasted and wounded, half said it themselves in a series of downbeat pronouncements about their own fragile sense of wellbeing.
And then Colm “The Gooch” Cooper – a man whom we are told has had so many footballs placed before him that he has developed an allergy – popped up, swivelled and put the ball in the Dublin net before the latecomers were settled into Hill 16.
A respectful silence descended. Kerry added two points quickly. Even then you could sense the game was over.
“We all played well,” said Tom O’Sullivan, the Kerry defender whose eclipse of Bernard Brogan was a key factor.
“Everything went right for us. If we get to an All-Ireland final we will dream that we could have kept that performance for an All-Ireland final.”
They should reach that final, their sixth in succession, at the end of this month when they play the winners of the sole outstanding quarter-final game between Mayo and Meath.