Open the gates and let them play.
There’s something special about a game being played under lights.
With everything else in darkness, the pitch and everything inside those four white lines becomes sacred. As if nothing else matters in the world for an hour and a half.
The grass is greener than ever before and the jerseys shine in the spotlight like they’re going out of fashion. When the lights are on, it’s nearly always cold too and that’s the feeling of club GAA right there.
It doesn’t matter that you’ve forgotten your wooly hat because it should be enough to warm anybody up.
Wathching a man like Paul Mannion in full flight sure as hell helps too.
Paul Mannion getting @KCrokesGAAClub off to a good start in the Dublin SFC final! pic.twitter.com/JVPLP5jPvS
— The GAA (@officialgaa) October 29, 2018
He dazzled under the Parnell Park lights on the Bank Holiday Monday night. He kicked 1-6 from seven shots and all the Donnycarney crowd had to do was admire.
His shooting was deadly, his movement was rapid and meaningful and the Dublin senior football final quickly turned into the Paul Mannion show. By half-time, each one of the three Jude’s men in the inside back-line had tried their hands at staying close to him but it was the same result for all of them.
By half-time, every single soul in the stand and in the terrace was enchanted by Mannion’s balance, his agility, his accuracy and his pace. All they wanted to see was more of it but they had fifteen minutes to wait for that.
Those 15 minutes passed quickly though.
The stewards left their stations and opened the gates and the atmosphere lifted again. The chat was all about Paul Mannion in the stands while the youngsters flooded onto the pitch with their footballs to try and emulate what he had just done.
Five minutes into the break and every youngster present must have been out there. They were kicking balls the length of the pitch. They were side-footing it, kicking it with the laces and they were selling dummies to invisible tacklers all the while.
Ten minutes in and young or old, it didn’t matter, they were all out there under the bright lights on a Monday night and you’d be left thinking, where else in the world would be a better place to be?
A big horn sounded that would have been heard in Ballymun when the men of Jude’s made their way back out onto the pitch. Everybody cleared back into the stands for part two of the Paul Mannion show and you’d wonder why every county doesn’t open the gates let them out.
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