Tomorrow's final has an epic feel about it

Sideline Cut: Those of us privileged enough to hear John McGahern reading in the Town Hall theatre in Galway on Thursday evening walked into the unseasonably mellow evening with singing hearts. The Leitrim writer was in town to mark the 10th anniversary of the reopening of the old city landmark and read passages from the harrowing and beautiful account of his childhood, Memoir.

He moved from uproariously humorous anecdotes to episodes of devastating pain and loneliness and back again, reading with steady grace and clarity for well over an hour and we were spellbound. One of the lighter accounts involved an ill-fated trip to the Ulster football final with his father, Frank McGahern, a Garda sergeant of notorious strictness and an impossible man.

He decided they would stop for second Mass in Ballinamore, laughing off his son's protestations that Canon Duffy enforced the rule that all boys who attended Mass there must attend catechism afterwards, without exception. The sergeant greeted this news like a dare and so they stopped as planned and as the boy tried to steal out the gates obscured by the crowd afterwards, he was plucked by the ear by the hawk-eyed Canon. The sergeant explained, evenly enough, that they were going to the Ulster final. The priest retorted that he didn't care if they were going to Timbuktu but the boy would attend catechism. Voices were raised, tempers lost and the matter reached an impasse when the sergeant declared hotly:

"If you don't let go his ear, I'm taking your ear in a citizen's arrest. You are preventing us from going about our lawful business."

The priest was not for turning and so began a surreal and comical power struggle between church and State, with the priest holding the boy's ear and the sergeant holding the priest's as they walked up through the sacred house in "a strange procession of the ears".

A truce, of sorts, was eventually arranged and the McGahern men made their way to Clones. Many people have gone to extraordinary lengths to attend Clones before but surely few had run-ins like that. It must have been one hell of a football final if it made any impression on the young boy. One thing is for certain: it did not feature Tyrone, who even by Ulster standards are a relatively new county, winning their first provincial championship in 1956.

The funny thing was that outside the Town Hall, conversation seemed to move from what we had just heard to this year's All-Ireland football final. That seemed appropriate. It was clear to everyone in the audience that we had happened upon a particularly rare and special evening.

To be in the presence of one of the great writers that this or any country has known on a night when he delivered what seemed like a valedictory, recalling the dramas of an austere country existence with warmth and honesty and stunning clarity, was a very moving and powerful experience. The applause lasted a long time afterwards, the audience being reluctant to quit and to let go of the moment, which was fiercely poignant. It was a night that most people in the attendance will carry with them through the remainder of their lives.

Great championship days hold a similar kind of power, falling somewhere between sporting entertainment and miraculous wonder. It may be a disappointment of a match (though I suspect not) but the meeting of Tyrone and Kerry has an epic feel about it.

Some All-Ireland finals seem destined to be forgotten but others are magnified with the passing of time and the prolonged and inevitable meeting of these two counties belongs in the latter category.

Great football players and hurlers are remembered all through and after their lifetimes. In counties like Tyrone, through a happy coincidence of talent, hard work and, one imagines, peace in the North, this is particularly true. Counties that achieve a maiden or extremely rare All-Ireland victory experience a palpable release from an oppression that is never fully acknowledged until it passes.

In the broad term, life goes on as normal but in places like Derry, Donegal, Clare and Wexford comes the knowledge that the Sunday, the September when they won the All-Ireland championship, caused a surge of energy and happiness in the county that might well never pass through again. In a way, this Tyrone team owe the county nothing but they probably feel they owe themselves another championship.

Should they conquer tomorrow, they will become one of the immortal GAA teams. From the suffocating nature of their first All-Ireland victory against their neighbours Armagh to the inexplicable passing of their smiling young captain Cormac McAnallen to this year's strenuous journey to the All-Ireland final. If they were to beat Kerry, the laureates of the sport, then the journey would surely be complete.

For Kerry, where All-Ireland medals lie scattered like gold bullion on the ocean floor, the motivation is different for spectators and players alike. Because consistent excellence is their ultimate ambition, All-Ireland final memories tend to merge into one another. It sometimes seems Kerry football people are as interested in the aesthetics of the victory as the victory itself. An All-Ireland medal is not enough to make a player stand out in a crowd.

It seems incredible that Dara Ó Cinnéide is seeking his fourth All-Ireland tomorrow, a magnificent feat that would still only leave him in the middle ranks of all-time Kerry honours holders. But the pleasing thing about Kerry is they do not regard medals as an absolute reflection of class. Maurice Fitzgerald is placed in the lower echelons of Kerry's all-time honours roll but, in terms of respect and affection, he ranks alongside the most revered players to have worn the green and gold jersey over the last century. I cannot believe the statements from the Kerry camp that an All-Ireland victory is an All-Ireland victory, regardless of the opposing team. I cannot believe tomorrow's final does not possess added depth for them or that the Kerry supporters do not feel that there is more than the usual September honours riding on this game. The endless pattern of the championship means that rivalries rise and fall, be they Kilkenny and Cork in hurling or Dublin and Kerry in football.

The current story has been of an Ulster philosophy and granite spirit imposing itself on the 26 counties and forcing a rethink. However fabricated or exaggerated that claim may be, there is no doubt the Ulster counties have behaved in a way that seems almost insubordinate in the face of Kerry's long and distinguished history. That's why every second will count tomorrow and why the players on both teams have the chance to perform in one of one of those heightened, rarefied atmospheres that makes time stand so still that the game, the day, will be lived and relived long after the players have stopped.

For greatness comes with time.

As Jim Carney, the distinguished newspaperman from Tuam, said on the steps of the Town Hall afterwards: "He (McGahern) must be our greatest living Irishman." And I don't believe he was talking about the Gooch or Peter the Great.