Lady luck is a committed sporting ecumenist, obviously. Either that, or she just heard about the new mood of unity between Ireland's different football codes and wanted to make a contribution, says Frank McNally
It would be just like her sick sense of humour. At any rate, having supervised the denouement in San Marino last Wednesday night, she was in Croke Park on Sunday to balance the account.
We all know that luck evens itself out in the long run, or at least "over the course of the season". If the matter required any urgency, the bill from Ireland's last-minute winner over the world's 195th-best soccer team could have been presented next month, when the Welsh take on Steve Staunton's outfit.
But no. After a two-day stopover in the Apennines to enjoy the heartbreak she had caused locally, Lady Luck caught a Ryanair flight to Dublin on Saturday. She checked into a Northside hotel under her maiden name: Nemesis, goddess of retribution. And, well rested, she was in her box in the Hogan Stand on Sunday afternoon to oversee the last-minute bounce of the ball that cost the Irish rugby team victory.
Maybe it was just the coincidence of the venue names she couldn't resist. From the tiny independent republic of San Marino to the small, semi-autonomous enclave of Marino (or as near as dammit) in three days. Rarely can retribution have been so much fun.
While Lady Luck and Croke Park were both doing their bit to break down barriers between Irish sports, some of the claims made for the opening up of GAA headquarters demanded too much from the occasion.
The Financial Timesrather stretched things when describing Sunday as "the day the wounds of Irish history can be proclaimed more or less healed". Then again, the paper may also have overstated the case in calling Gaelic football "Europe's last great medieval folk game". But it was spot on when it explained another seeming paradox of the Celtic Tiger: "In globalised Ireland, Gaelic football has boomed as the newly rich try to stay close to their roots."
In a country where it is still a serious indictment to be deemed to have lost the run of yourself, contact with roots is indeed more important than ever. The boom has increased the danger of personal run-loss, so that we need regular reminders of our humble origins, whether we had them or not. It can be no coincidence that The Fields of Athenrywas adopted (via Glasgow) as the favoured song of Irish sports fans at a time when its themes were never further from the reality of their lives.
The spectre of Irish rugby fans singing about famine and forced emigration is still not nearly as ridiculous as English rugby fans - some of the whitest people on earth - singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, a negro spiritual about death. But even though the ground in Lansdowne Road had come to resemble something from the middle of the 19th century, The Fields of Athenrystill sounds a lot more authentic in Croker.
My point is that those GAA fans who still worry about the threat from "foreign" games should relax. Croke Park has cornered the market for those in search of their roots, and the demand can only increase with prosperity (something of which the rugby crowd are traditionally at much greater risk).
It goes without saying that this gross generalisation does not apply to Munster rugby fans. If the average Munster fan were any more in touch with his roots, I know, he would need to be sprayed for blight. It's others I'm worried about. Not pointing the finger at any particular province, let's just say that for some fans, the length of the journey back to their roots on Sunday would have been inversely proportional to the actual distance covered.
Then again, the sense of tribal unity even within the GAA can be overstated. Take hurling, for example, a game still largely unknown in the northern half of the country, apart from an outreach mission in Antrim. And of course, there is also the perennial question of the Dubs.
Gaelic fundamentalists who were disquieted by the sight of rugger types profaning the hallowed turf may remember a similar sense of alienation when the Dubs broke through in the 1970s. They didn't play a foreign game, exactly. But their haircuts were trendier than was respectable, and their goal celebrations bordered on flashy. Dublin supporters also had a penchant for streaking that continues even today. And who can forget their refusal to wear ill-fitting crepe paper hats when it was still good enough for the rest of us? I'm only saying.
Whatever significance you placed on Sunday's match, its ending was more than an anti-climax. It was annoyingly prosaic, even down to the name of the French player who delivered the coup de grâce: Vincent Clerc.
Fans of the camp BBC sitcom Allo Allomay remember Monsieur LeClerc, the supposed master of disguise who was central to the multifarious wartime intrigues that revolved around René's café. His main cover was playing the piano. But while engaged in Resistance business, he would camouflage himself as an onion seller, or whatever, before triumphantly revealing his true identity, to no-one's surprise. "It is I, LeClerc," he would announce, inviting groans all round.
Sunday's game had a similarly farcical twist. The manner of the Irish comeback was so stirring as to justify at least some of the hype that preceded it. Then it unravelled like an Allo Alloplot-line. The French winger, who had been disguised as a harmless bystander for most of the game, suddenly tore off his beret and announced himself. It was he, le Clerc. There were groans all round.