Anyone watching that brilliant Netflix documentary, Last Chance U, has probably long since given up on taking much inspiration from it or even finding someone likeable enough there to enjoy.
It’s just a fascinating insight into the grim desperation in the States where young men will do whatever it takes to advance their American Football careers by even just a year if it comes to that. No long term plans or ideas, no thought that they might not even make it. It’s all or nothing and the vast, vast majority of them are headed for nothing and God only knows what their lives have in store for them.
Right now, they’re in East Mississippi – a group of really talented individuals who for one reason or another find themselves in junior college trying to attract interest of mainstream college scouts. They’re far too good for this level and none of them really want to be here but they are because they’ve either been kicked out of college, they’ve flunked high school or they have criminal records that make them ineligible for a lot of places.
So you have this asshole coach at the head of these troubled young fellas, most of whom can’t literally stay awake for three seconds whilst their advisor tries to explain why they need to pass their exams, and they’re being chased by these anxious college scouts so worried about missing out on the next best thing that they’re all willing to overlook their previous records now.
Jesus, it’s a horrendous system they have over there.
Anyway, there are still a few redeeming characters in the show, one of which is defensive line coach, Davern Williams.
Williams is a former NFL player and in the second last episode of season 2, he goes back to his old high school, Jefferson Davis, to give them a pre-match speech.
It’s pretty bloody rousing as he patrols around the dressing room with a case of rings and a group of teenagers ready for battle hanging off his every word.
“Sometimes you gotta have a little dog in you too,” he says.
“Dog is me lining up in front of you and saying, ‘you’re not going to kick my ass, I’m going to kick yours’. That’s dog.
“Not willing to quit, son.
“This right here [holds up high school championship ring], this is my first level of being a dog. This ring right here, led to this ring right here [holds up college ring]. This ring led to this ring [first coaching ring]. This ring led to this ring, a national championship at East Mississippi.
“Championship is in your blood! You take your ass out there and you show it tonight.”
The players are absolutely wired. They’ve just had a respected old footballer, a respected coach and someone who once wore their same uniform deliver an impassioned plea for them to stick their chests out and rule the field.
He’s reminded them of exactly what sort of stock and legacy they’re coming from and he’s not filling their head with the usual shite of, ‘oh, they’re going to up for this and that lot will want revenge and they’re going to get stuck into us.’
No, this is about knowing who you are. Knowing your own power. Williams finishes by asking them who they are. They respond with pure conviction, “JD!’
His final instruction is simple then:
“Well f**king act like it.”
Act like it.
You know, of all the skill and blistering pace that Dublin possess, of all the continuous progression they’ve gone through under the beautiful wit of their manager, it’s their hunger that sets them apart.
That team is a team of pure savages and sometimes you wonder how on earth they can still be so insatiable. How can they still be foaming at the mouths for every single ball when they’ve been here and done it so many times already?
Before the game, Jonny Cooper was running around like a man demented but he was doing it in a friendly way. He sprinted to Darren Hughes and shook his hand. He exchanged pleasantries with the ref before piling down straight towards Jack McCarron and you thought there was going to be a flashpoint. No, they shook hands. Then he turned and burst straight for the corner and gave Gavin Doogan a fair, old shake of the wrists too.
Then, it started. Cooper flicked a switch and in one instant went from a gentleman showing good sportsmanship to an animal possessed.
He stayed right in Doogan’s face and started pushing him and grabbing him by the chest and the pair went at it. The ball got thrown in and Cooper took off up the field like he was a head case getting far too carried away on his debut.
McCarron missed an effort and Philly McMahon came tearing into him. Good enough for you, that sort of thing.
Brian Fenton and James McCarthy are probably nice enough fellas but they too have absolutely zero interest in making any kind of pleasantries on the pitch and they go to war every Sunday intent on killing lest they be in the firing line themselves. They would’ve heard the talk of the aggression of the Hughes brothers and seemingly took it as an insult and decided to make sure they would be the ones bringing the thunder and the noise.
It’s hard to tell without ruling out hypnosis just what Jim Gavin is doing to get inside these lads’ heads to make them so manically driven.
It’s utter chaos at Croke Park whenever Dublin take the field.
You don’t just have sold out stadiums and hostile fans, you have instructions being roared and passed on, fingers pointing and crazy presses – pure desperation to just win the next ball – and you have Jason Sherlock sprinting breadths of the pitch every time the thing goes dead urging boys to push up more, come into this space, don’t you f**king dare let them win that thing again.
Then you have individual players living life on the edge and doing it with almost a psychopathic smile on their faces. Even the playacting, as unsavoury as it is, it still falls under the category that these footballers – these absolute mad men – are so desperate and so greedy to win not just the game but every single passage of play that they’ll do whatever it takes to achieve that.
Dublin don’t seem to give a shit who they’re playing, how much they’re expected to win by or even how much they’re already ahead, they just want to trample all over everyone who had the bare-face audacity to actually think they could stand on the same pitch as them for 70 minutes.
It’s vicious what they do. It’s relentless.
And they don’t even care how many times they’ve done it before, it’s like they’re addicted to the taste of blood now and its smell looms beneath their nostrils permanently – they just wait for the right moment to be unleashed from their cages to go in for the kill again.
Before they do so, it’s like they’re reminded of who the hell they are and why they can take whatever they want off whoever they want and why, before they pull on that sky blue jersey, they had best f**king act like a champion if they want to go out and show this latest pretender just who and what Dublin is.
And what they are is the best football team in Ireland. They’re the fastest, they’re the strongest, they have the most depth and they have two back-to-back winning seasons behind them already.
They have the manager, the resources, the fans, the odds.
But, sometimes, you gotta have a little dog in you too.
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