JOE BROLLY: I’m a loser, baby

I ASKED RTÉ before one of the Mayo All-Ireland finals if they would open the show with Beck’s song, “I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me.” They refused. “Why?” I asked. “Because it’s not polite.” It might not have been polite but it is true. As they demonstrated again on Sunday for the umpteenth time. Time wasters.

Galway on the other hand – along with Kerry – are the All-Ireland favourites. I was in Cromane a few weeks ago to do a fundraiser for the small but famous Kerry club. I was persuaded to drive the 394 mile round trip by Sean O’Sullivan, who promised me that the Kerry greats who were coming would be happy to share some of their stories and the secrets to their success. True to his word, they did that.

It was fascinating to listen to Sean, Diarmuid Murphy, Declan O’Sullivan and Donnacha Walsh talking about Sam Maguire as an annual Kerry expectation. Their preparations. The ferocity of their training weekends on the verge of championship. The ingenious ideas.

Donnacha was talking about how he prided himself on his enormous stamina. “I used to run and run hard. Slowly but surely I would break my man down. Sometimes it would take 45 minutes, but I always broke him down. That was my game. Then, James McCarthy came along. I did my thing. I ran. And ran. And ran. It was impossible to shake him off. He relished it. After half an hour, he started saying to me, “Go again Donnacha. Go again.”

Diarmuid Murphy, their legendary goalie and later part of Éamonn Fitzmaurice’s 2014 backroom team, explained the intense management debate before the final about how to deal with Donegal’s kick out strategy.

In the semi-final, that strategy had destroyed Dublin. Donegal were drawing in the Dublin forwards by deploying four men in the full back line for their own kick out, then kicking long over the top for it to be flicked on to their rampaging half backs and half forwards.

The way to prevent this was to not send a fourth man in to pick up Donegal’s fourth man in the full back line. But if they didn’t do that, then Donegal could kick out short to the free man every time and build from the back. Kieran Donaghy would be left with the impossible task of trying to cover between two defenders 30 metres apart.

The solution to the problem was ingenious. Only a goalie could have come up with it. They instructed Star to guess. “We told him to do exactly the same as a goalie facing a penalty kick. Pick a side before the shot and dive that way.” And so, as Murphy put it, for the first 55 minutes the big man was like a dog chasing aeroplanes. For every kick out, he committed full blooded to one defender or the other and guessed wrong.

Then, it happened. Durcan went left. Donaghy was already running in an arc towards the kick out, intercepted it, bore down on goal unmarked and calmly passed to the net. “It was the moment we won that All-Ireland,” said Murphy. “Durcan had to be right every time. Kieran only had to be right once.”

When the final question of the night came from the audience, who will win the All-Ireland and who will be the runner up, the answer was unanimous. Kerry winners, Galway runners up. Mayo were not mentioned. Or Derry.