Joe Brolly: David, Jim and the ungrateful Seánie

IN comedian Conor Moore’s most recent sketch, a very depressed Dessie Farrell is asked what he thinks of Dublin hurlers’ win over Limerick. He looks at the interviewer in puzzlement, before saying, “I didn’t know we had a hurling team.”

Watching the Dublin supporters’ overnight conversion to hurling reminds me of David Hickey’s great story about Dublin footballers’ breakthrough All-Ireland in 1974. As the team was being mobbed on the pitch, a supporter asked Hickey, “Who do we get in Europe?”

Now, the sunshine supporters are learning a new language, regardless of the Cork result. I suggest they listen to audiotapes of Ger Loughnane and Michael Duignan talking about “lowering the blade” and bemoaning the softness of the refereeing.

“I know he decapitated him Marty, and of course our thoughts and prayers are with the deceased Waterford captain, but you’d still have to say that was a very harsh yellow.” They will quickly learn that there are no two pointers in hurling from beyond the arc, no red cards (unless the referee is planning to retire directly after the game) and fewer frees than rugby (“the referee would want to take a long hard look at himself Marty, this is exactly the sort of refereeing that is ruining the game”).

Now that Dublin have moved production to the hurling, the way is clear for another Kerry Golden Years.

Galway are the new Mayo, unsatisfying, and failing regularly enough on the big days to demonstrate that they do not have the stuff. Tyrone are fortunate to have gotten this far due to beating a Dublin team that is house private, donations in lieu of flowers. Only Donegal stand in their way. I say “only.”

Jimmy was the first person to realise that it is no longer possible to defend your way to victory under the new rules. Hence, being a logician, he concentrated primarily on maintaining a high scoring rate. They can score. Also, with Jimmy, Donegal are fundamentally serious. By this, I mean that they are absolutely committed to victory.

I have often written in these pages that David Clifford’s great tragedy was to have been born in the era of the blanket defence. Now, suddenly, Jim Gavin has released him from that prison and he is taking full advantage of his pardon.

As I wrote before the quarter-final, the game is now about skills. It is about proper man-marking and long, accurate kick passing and high fetching and scoring. It is about footballing intuition amid the chaos. The game can no longer be controlled. It is no longer a series of well-rehearsed set pieces.

It is fascinating to watch the game coming alive again. From a very early stage, I realised that almost every county player still playing has had to learn a brand new way of playing and this cultural transformation is taking time. Things that we did automatically now have to be practised. One of Galway’s problems was that they are still trapped in the old game. Defensive, conservative, risk averse, moving the ball forward slowly via the hand, afraid to lose possession.

What Kerry have finally realised, coming in at half time trailing after playing routinely through the first half, is the priceless lesson that they can and must play adventurously.

When they did, they unleashed a 15-minute avalanche of electrifying football that buried Armagh. It is a concern that they also unleashed so much pent up anger and emotion.

After the game, when he was being awarded his MOTM crystal, I was certain Seánie O’Sé was going to go for me, like ‘Star’ after the 2014 final. “Do you still think Kerry have only one forward Joe Brolly?” Sadly, he did not.

At the start of the 2014 championship, when I wrote about ‘Star’ allowing his uproarious, anarchic, dam-busting career to end in pathetic anti-climax, he said afterwards that this became his obsessive motivation. He thumb-tacked the column to his bedroom door and said it was the first thing he saw every morning and the last thing at night. He never so much as thanked me after that final, a bit like Seánie last weekend.

Now, their secret is out. There are of course buts. Like the fact Armagh were way off the pace. Like the fact they neglected to mark Seánie, leaving him free to kick points as though he were in the Kenmare pitch on his own of a summer’s evening, something the Tyrone Taliban will most certainly not forget to do. Like the fact that Tyrone, for all the fact they are an unproven mish-mash of young and old, will go to war for their people as they always do.

But in the end, I come back to my central point, and the central point of this new era. David Clifford is unmarkable.

He is the greatest footballer to ever play the game and now that he is free to play, he will be the difference.

Against Armagh, he was dogged throughout, unlike Seánie, but in spite of this, he scored seven glorious points, all of them under serious pressure. Tyrone cannot mark him. No one can. For that reason, Kerry to win.

As for you Seánie, it is only when you meet Donegal that we will find out what you are really made of…