Michael McDowell was said to have spent election night at the cinema with his children, watching Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Frank McNallyat the RDS
Maybe he knew something. Twenty-four hours later, in the shark-infested waters of the RDS, he was locked in a grim struggle with his old seafaring nemesis, Long John Gormley. This time it was a fight to the death. One of them would walk the plank.
When the end came last night, it was for McDowell. Shortly after 8.30pm, he arrived at the count centre not merely to concede defeat, but to announce his departure from public life.
It was a dignified speech, despite his surroundings. As he left the RDS, it was not so much the sharks he had to worry about as the Shinners, who jeered him into retirement with a chorus of "cheerio, cheerio, cheerio".
Ultimately, it is the electorate who did for the Minister for Justice, answering the question he didn't ask them - "Michael McDowell in government?" - with his favourite answer: "No thanks!" But the instrument of his demise provoked strong feelings of deja vu.
This was not the first time he had been done down by his old buccaneering rival. The Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush of Irish politics have provided no shortage of excitement over the years, since fate and the constituency of Dublin South East first threw them together.
Who could forget The Long Recount (1997), that gripping drama in which Gormley took the seat from under McDowell's nose, despite having his chads examined by half the Law Library? Certainly not those of us who spent five days watching it, that's for sure.
Then there was the 2002 sequel, a romantic comedy by comparison, when the two men sailed in together on a fair wind. It was entertaining enough in its own way but the plot lacked something. The feeling was that when the two men met again, the action would return to the blood and guts of the original.
The darker theme was confirmed in last week's trailer - shot under a lamp-post in Ranelagh - when not even Lucinda Creighton's cameo could lighten the mood of menace between the old protagonists.
Such was the build-up to the latest Dublin South East epic that, when it came to the real thing yesterday, you couldn't help feeling something was missing.
On closer inspection, it emerged that neither of the leading men was in the RDS all day. Once it emerged that the figures faced another grim struggle for the last seat, both absented themselves until their fate became clear. Nobody with a heart blamed them.
In their absence, campaigners from both sides predicted victory. Fianna Fáil's Eoin Ryan was adamant that transfers from his party's Jim O'Callaghan would elect the minister. But most of the predictions were just educated guesses. Only Joe McCarthy, the man who exposed the flaws in the Government's e-voting machines, produced a figure. Ominously for McDowell, he had Gormley taking the seat by 189 votes (it was rather more than that in the end).
While we awaited the official verdict, we had to make do with subplots. Creighton duly won a seat, joining the poll-topper - Fianna Fáil's Chris Andrews - in providing the Dáil with an infusion of new blood. Then there was Sinn Féin, descending on the RDS en masse, the way they always do, as if they were the big story. And yet they too were only a subplot, a minor one at that.'
The real drama was confirmed at about 8.30pm, when the Minister for Justice and the final figures arrived almost simultaneously. If McDowell had a consolation, it was that in going down with his ship, he had inflicted severe damage on the Good Ship Gerry Adams and most of his left-wing adversaries.
Except for one, of course. Long John Gormley had bested him yet again. In this pirate drama, it was McDowell who didn't have a leg to stand on.