Top Issue 1-2024

14 July 2011

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Be good or be lucky

HERE IS an old adage which states that if you can’t be good, be lucky. The Dublin footballers are certainly living proof of that these days.
Probably most referees would not have awarded Bernard Brogan a free in the dying seconds of the Kildare game. And the first goal against Wexford might have been scripted by Harold Lloyd.
Mind you, any attempt thereby to detract from Dublin’s inexorable march towards the business end of the championship will elicit little sympathy from the more longer-suffering of the Fancy.
Even if we accept (and we do not necessarily accept) that Dublin have been ‘poxed’ of late, it is surely small recompense for years, decades, a generation even of the worst luck imaginable.

ust last week, for example, there was a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the last match in the Dublin v Meath epic of 1991, although that was decided not so much by bad luck as a series of calamitous events worthy of Aeschylus.  And, of course, there must be a deeply masochistic gene in the Dublin DNA that consents to be party to such a celebration of being, well, losers.
I have never seen that match again and have no intention of ever seeing that match again. It is up there in my ‘pretend it never happened’ box with others like the collapse against Mayo in 2006, the mother and father of hidings from Kerry in 2009, getting beaten by Laois (any one of the three occasions — it’s just not right somehow!), the Leinster final when Kildare scored two goals in the first minute of the second half, and a few others as items that will never again afflict my eyes.
And so while there was a good deal of sympathy for Wexford goalkeeper Anthony Masterson after he and full-back Graeme Molloy contrived to put the ball into their own net with no involvement from any Dublin player, it was tempered by the knowledge that, sure, we’ve often had the same happen to ourselves.

lthough Dublin contrived to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, rather than as is normally the case and accomplish the reverse even when it seems nigh on impossible, there was a subdued air amid the celebrations of the 50th Leinster title.
Pat Gilroy looked a bit like Napoleon might have done when he realised that they might be spending Christmas in Russia.
What basically happened was that his game plan was stolen by Wexford. Some pundits had condescendingly forecast that the plucky yellabellies would go toe to toe with the Dubs in an open high scoring game and be happy say 4-18 to 3-12.
It was not to be.
While Brogan Minor did have an unusually off-day, Wexford have to take a lot of the credit for restricting the Dublin offence and had they not conceded that disaster of a goal when they did they might very well have gone on to win.
And Dublin supporters would not have resented them too much for it. They are almost impossible to dislike although I am not certain that sentiment is reciprocated!

nyway, Wexford are still there and should win their qualifier against Limerick or Waterford and may very well emulate their run to the semi-finals three years ago. For Dublin, they will have to use the few weeks until the quarter-final to sharpen up in various areas. There are not too many teams that you would be sure could beat them but they are going to start to run into them pretty damn soon.
If Wexford can look back on their final with some pride intermingled with the heartbreak, their neighbours in the Déise can derive no such comfort. They were literally taken apart by Tipperary and had it not been for Brick Walsh, Tipp could just as easily have had a goal count in double digits.
The two qualifiers also ended in hammerings for Cork at the hands of Galway, and Antrim at the hands of Limerick. That now sets up quarter-finals between Dublin and Limerick and Galway and Waterford. You would have to fear that Waterford are going to take another pasting but Dublin will have a tougher game against Limerick with perhaps their having spent more time hurling and beating better opposition being the difference. As well as that, Limerick’s unlucky defeat to Waterford has lost some of its lustre given what happened in Páirc Uí Caoimh.
Some had predicted a much tighter championship this year but it may well turn out that the four teams in the quarter-finals are really only playing for a place in the last four. It is difficult to envisage Dublin or Limerick beating Tipperary in their current form. And while Galway have often pushed and sometimes beaten really good Kilkenny teams, the suspicion must be that they will not do it this year.
That all points to a repeat in September of the last two finals in what could be an even better game to decide who are hurling’s king pins. But there is still a bit to play for yet and, hopefully, other  than Dublin beating Limerick, of course!, it will not actually turn out to be as predictable as I suspect it might be.

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