The Olympics have been a beautiful thing to behold over the last 12 days. Ireland’s successes have been thrilling, bold statements of power by brilliant, focused, athletes. And after the pinnacle has been reached, they get to live the moment they’d probably dreamed about their entire lives, as they face the flag and hear Amhrán na bhFiann being played.
Visualisation is a big part of what they do, but this is not the part they visualise. They visualise the performance required, the standard they have to try and attain. The medal and the anthem are what follow the performance — and that’s why that part belongs only in their dreams.
I was struck by something Daniel Wiffen said after his win in the 800m freestyle. He felt he had finished in gold medal position so often this year that he’d heard Amhrán na bhFiann five or six times already, heard it “more than anyone else”.
(It’s pretty obvious Daniel Wiffen has never sat down to watch a full weekend of nondescript national hurling and football league games on TG4 and RTÉ in January, because you’d reach five or six entirely unnecessary, often sub-standard, versions of Amhrán na bhFiann in no time.)
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For him, and Rhys McClenaghan, and Kellie Harrington, and Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy, hearing that song is a culmination of a lifetime’s work. It symbolises reaching the global pinnacle.
Of course, it’s not just Amhrán na bhFiann. Watching the world number one Scottie Scheffler dissolve into tears, right at the end of the Star-Spangled Banner, must have done at least as much to cement golf as an Olympic sport as the glittering quality of that last day’s play at Le Golf National.
Léon Marchand leading the crowd in La Défense Arena with rendition after rendition of La Marseillaise in the first week of the Games was similarly emotional. You deliver the goods, you get your medal, and then you are brought face to face with that which you represent. It’s a phenomenally powerful moment — no wonder we are used to seeing tears on the podium.
The national anthem in Croke Park before an All-Ireland final is an emotion of a different kind. It doesn’t symbolise an Everest climbed. Rather it is a moment of pure anticipation, after the raucous slow Mexican Wave of the parade, and before the glorious unknowing of the game.
Theo Dorgan’s beautiful poem All-Ireland Final begins with the words:
“We stand for the anthem, buoyant and tribal, heart beating with heart, our colours brave, our faces turned towards the uncertain sun.”
“Then, one by one, the crowd disappears into the song, into the moment. And then, in the last moments of the poem:
“The whistle blew and we all came back with a roar, everything brighter and louder, desperate and vivid.”
In that moment 10 days ago, as the All-Ireland football final began, the national anthem was a chance for Galway and Armagh people to recognise that they’d made it this far. After months of striving on the field, after weeks of ticket worries and familial strife and flights booked, you were inside the building, and ready to let the game take you where it would.
At that stage, anything was possible. Players have to treat the anthem (and the parade, and shaking the hand of the President) as necessary evils on big match days. They are distractions to be navigated, like a fence around Aintree. For the rest of us, they are moments to treasure. Every year this happens. And most years, it’s Dublin or Kerry, or Cork, or Kilkenny. But this year, we are the ones standing to attention. We are the ones who get to squeeze the hand of the person beside you, to wish the opposite side the best of luck before the game begins.
Two weeks in a row now, Galway teams have stood for the anthem in Croke Park only to see their dreams ebb from them. In the women’s football final last Sunday, there was no argument about the better team. Kerry’s moment had come, and they were in no mood to let it slide past them.
For the men’s footballers the week before, the regrets will last a lifetime. To have played so poorly, to have missed so many chances, and yet still to end the game a width of a post from extra time, was indicative of how little had to change to give the whole winter and spring in Galway an entirely different texture.
Walking out of Croke Park as a Galway supporter last Sunday week, I would have given anything to have been back at that moment at the end of the anthem — before we knew what we know now about Shane Walsh’s frees, Rob Finnerty’s injury, Killian McDaid’s late chance, and Joe McElroy’s heroic block down on Paul Conroy.
This week, for a third Sunday in a row, Galway are in an All-Ireland senior final. They are 3-1 outsiders against Cork in the camogie final, and the spectre of losing three All-Ireland finals in 14 days now looms large. When the anthem strikes up at 5.13pm, they will hope that it’s a harbinger of a golden moment to come and not the moment when the day started to run away from them.
