Sunday 27 April, 2014. Dublin 3-19 Derry 1-10.
The Irish Times headline reads: Freewheeling Dublin dismantle Derry.
A 15-point margin flatters the Ulster men as Jim Gavin’s side stroll around Croke Park for a bout of unchallenged kicking practice. They scored 22 times that day. They kicked 17 wides as well just for the craic. They hit Thomas Mallon’s post twice and they missed two further goal chances in a lifeless, one-sided affair.
Derry limped back up the road with the arsehole torn off them.
That league final was dead after 10 minutes. Brian McIver’s side insulted their hosts by hitting the net with their first attack and they were soon taught a cruel lesson when Dublin racked up the next 10 points and kept Derry scoreless for over 25 minutes. No-one enjoyed the game that day. No-one even bothered to talk about it.
That’s what happens when a team like Derry try to go toe-to-toe with the best side in Ireland. It’s pointless. It’s idiotic.
On Saturday night, they returned to the haunted scene that hit them so hard last season that it completely obliterated their championship as well. Even after an unprecedented league campaign, Derry were stomped. They realised they couldn’t win. It wasn’t possible.
And the purists would tell them to accept it, that it was the only way. The romantics would tell them to just try again. The warrior, the savvy, the underdog, they would tell them to find another way. Another way of competing. Another way of winning.
So Derry revisited Dublin on Saturday night under lights at headquarters fighting for their Division One survival and they learned the lessons of 2014. The saw what happened when you took on the might of Dublin in a man-for-man shootout. Excuse them for refusing to bend over and lube up again for their hosts.
On Saturday night, Derry stuck together. On Saturday night, Derry respected the most frightening attack in the land and, on Saturday night, Derry brought Dublin to their knees.
An understrength, underaged, underdog Derry took the capital city side to the wire and they damn near took something home with them, too.
Granted, they were beaten anyway but here’s a side who’ve accumulated just one point from their previous five games, a side without Patsy Bradley, Fergal Doherty, Eoin Bradley, Chrissy McKaigue and the rest of their defence and they’re going back up the road with the boos of Croke Park ringing in their ears. And why? Because they had frustrated the life out of an outfit who, just 11 months ago, humiliated them. Annihilated them. Ruined them.
They’re going back up the road, beaten sure, but this time they’re not bowed. This time, they realise that they can compete. This time, they realise that it is possible.
But the nation have since spat at the audacity of Derry for daring to compete with Dublin.
The Croke Park crowd booed and jeered them and called them every name under the sun because they refused to kick the ball down the throat of a 13-man Dublin defence which, for some reason, was overlooked.
Derry were discredited to the point of excommunication from the GAA last night because they decided that this time they wouldn’t play into Dublin’s hands. They decided that they wouldn’t just pass them back possession, or run at their blue wall and they wouldn’t – they definitely would not – turn that game into the foot-race that Dublin so obviously wanted.
Why on earth would they? They would’ve been beaten out the park long before Dublin would even have pondered throwing on their ridiculously luxurious substitutes. Dublin wanted a sword fight but Derry only had knives. So they tried their very best to play the game on their terms.
And, for 63 minutes, they were level. For 63 minutes, they had Dublin – that’s right, Dublin – restricted to four single points.
Yet their name is dirt because there’s this naive, romantic, moronic culture in the GAA – so alien to every other sport on the planet – that everything has to be done in a certain way… just because. There’s no reason for any of it. That’s just the way it is.
You have to kick the ball forward – into a 13-man defence if you have to – because otherwise people are told that it’s no longer a spectacle. An underdog rising, a genuine battle, men putting their body on the line – you know, sport – that’s not a spectacle unless people do what they’re told to do and ‘kick the f**king thing.’ This is how it’s supposed to be played and all that.
It’s the same problem with the issue of professionalism that Joe Brolly talks about. You’re not allowed to have a life. You’re not allowed to play rugby on your day off. You’re not allowed to wear a soccer jersey to training. You’re not allowed to go out at the weekend. Why? Because that’s not what the GAA is about.
Sky Sports shouldn’t be buying rights to broadcast our games outside this island. Why? Because that’s not what the GAA is about.
And the way Derry played last night, defending in numbers, keeping the game tight, respecting the best attack in the country and refusing to run up against an opposition with as many men back as Derry did at times, that’s not Gaelic Football apparently.
If it wasn’t Gaelic Football then there would be no allowance for a hand pass in the rule book. Or a solo. Or a kick sideways. Or any of the other basic skills demonstrated in a more conservative fashion.
How anyone could sit in Croke Park last night and say they didn’t enjoy that contest more than they did the league final back in April, they’re not sportspeople.
Playing tight may not be the beautiful, free-flowing, aesthetic solution that we’d all love in a perfect world but creating a war is more satisfying than watching a spell of shooting practice devoid of any sort of heart, meaning or intensity.
Not everyone has the tools to entertain. It’s why some boxers try to get inside, spoil the fight, keep it tight. It’s why some soccer teams are boringly effective. It’s why Lionel Messi is double-marked. Heck, it’s why the Irish rugby team is winning.
But that’s also why we like sport. You don’t have to accept being second best. You can find another way.
In 2013, Derry and Down took the sort of plaudits that Ulster teams didn’t know existed when they played out a gung-ho free-for-all up at Celtic Park in the first round of the championship. Down scored more than Derry that day but, by God, the pats on the back must’ve felt good for the Oak Leafers.
They didn’t. They meant nothing. Three weeks later, they met in the qualifiers. Same venue, same teams. Derry restricted Down to seven scores. The crowd didn’t oh and ah as much but Derry won and the public were happier. Much happier. Because that’s what this business is about.
How anyone could’ve come to Celtic Park that day and not marvelled in Patsy Bradley’s demon display is beyond me. The Derry midfielder hounded and destroyed Down men like his life depended on it. He ate up the yards of a bloodied field and hammered at anything that moved in red and black in the most viciously heartening defensive performance you’re likely to see anywhere this decade. That was a sight to behold and he didn’t have to blindly thump a ball into the air – just because – for the fans to enjoy it.
Those barging the northerners – and just this system in general – would’ve had Derry come to Dublin last night and pointlessly take on a far superior side player-for-player. They would’ve had Derry playing Dublin at their own game – a game they could never win – and they would’ve had Derry taking a right, royal pelting because that’s the manly thing to do. That’s the way Gaelic Football should be played. And none of us would’ve spoke of it again.
When weaker teams go toe-to-toe with Dublin, there are as many groans in the stands because the game is over after 15 minutes. Then the nation cries that Dublin needs to be split in two because they’re too strong.
No-one enjoys non-events like last year’s league final, like Monaghan’s collapse in the quarter finals against Dublin. And when Donegal do something about it, it’s not fair. The game is in disarray. The rule book needs torn up and redesigned.
In years to come, people will talk about Donegal’s rise from nowhere and they’ll even talk about the drab tactics Derry deployed that rainy night in Dublin because it was interesting. It threatens everything we thought we knew about the game.
This nationwide high horse of people sitting in their arm chairs demanding aesthetic pleasure has to stop though. Teams are trying to win games.
Is the GAA really so simplistic and fragile that one tactic can really threaten its entire future?
I don’t particularly like the tactic and, in a way, it annoys me that a side as fine as Dublin can’t just blow it to pieces because one simple strategy shouldn’t be so easy to stop a monstrous machine. But the argument that the whole game needs changing because weaker teams are competing better is just childish and romantic.
I get romantic about a nomad like Donegal rising from the ashes and touching the very top, touching greatness.
I get romantic from the idea that anything is possible.
That’s what sport, at its finest, is supposed to make us believe in. We’re not suppose to just give up because someone is better than us.
Anything is possible.
Don’t take that away from us.
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