The Dubs, 'the dark arts' and the Illuminati of Bavaria

THE INIMITABLE Matt Treacy tackles Ciarán Kearney over his column in the May issue of An Phoblacht.

THE REAL MEASURE of the Dublin’s footballers’ recent success is not the fact that they’ve won two All-Irelands, two national leagues and eight of the last nine Leinster championships but the fact that they have reignited the irrational hatred of the Dubs that lurks in the murkier depths of the Irish psyche.

Ciarán Kearney seems to share that view and — like most of those most antipathetic to Dublin — comes from a county that has enjoyed little success over the years. The more prestigious football counties (Dublin’s main rivals like Meath and Kerry, and more recently Mayo and Cork) tend not to take it all so personally and do not subscribe to bizarre conspiracy theories regarding why other teams are doing well when they are not!

In fairness, Ciarán does not confine his condemnation of other teams to Dublin. Mayo are also seemingly masters of the ‘dark arts’, as are Donegal, who he accuses not only of manipulating the new rules (not very successfully it would seem) and, even more sinisterly, videoing opposition players! Why did Mickey Harte not think of that one? Or Heffo or Mick O’Dwyer?

And there are apparently Kerry people who call Derry ‘Londonderry’ and Dublin Gaelscoil kids who sing “You’ll never beat the Irish” when playing kids from the North. All part of the partitionist conspiracy, apparently — unlike the fine upstanding Gaels from Derry on the Hill last Sunday singing “Take it down from the mast, Irish traitors.” In their Scottish soccer jerseys, drinking their cans of cider. We got a great laugh out of them in fairness.

Dublin have other unfair advantages beside the rules, the referees, the weather and the alignment of the planets which are studied closely when the Illuminati of Bavaria plot Dublin fixtures. Among them apparently are “limitless financial resources” and a “massive panel”.

Well let us take the second point first.

All inter-county panels are of the same size. Which is why you do not see lads wearing number 47 appear off the bench. Dublin does obviously have a bigger population to pick from but on match days there are 15 Dubs on the pitch, same as everyone else, and five subs on the bench. Granted it might appear more when the other team have all their players behind their own 21-yard line. Tactics, I believe that is.

There are no limitless financial resources. Dublin GAA is a vast operation and it costs a lot of money to run. The vast bulk of that is raised by individual clubs and by the county teams drawing big attendances. Like all other counties, Dublin gets money from central funds, per capita and pro rata. No more than any other county.

I do accept that Seán Cavanagh was unfairly targeted, ironically by a fellow Ulsterman, Joe Brolly (who like most Derry people I know abhors Tyrone) in the debate over cynicism. What Cavanagh did in dragging down Conor MacManus of Monaghan was certainly a foul and deserved to be punished but very few players would not have done what he did so as to prevent a goal.

And, yes, Dublin players were guilty of impeding Mayo players when they were out on their feet in the final minutes of last year’s final, playing with two concussed players on the pitch who had obviously punched themselves in the head. The black card is designed to deal with the deliberate impeding of players and as such seems to me to be working quite effectively.

This year’s league has seen some excellent high-scoring matches and allowed the more skilful teams to express themselves.

However, there remains aspects of cynical play which are not being detected and punished, mainly because they take place off the ball and behind the referee’s back. Players are being punched, pinched, spat at, goaded about dead relatives and so on. Ask the Gooch and Mattie Forde about that. Wasn’t Corkmen or Dubs at that. Indeed, it was a feature of one of the Dublin matches which Ciarán refers to, and it wasn't Dublin players who were at it. Perhaps all of that is more manly than throwing a dig?

Added to that is time-wasting, which again has been a feature of matches where Dublin and other of the more football-oriented teams have gotten a run on opposition defences. Suddenly lads discover life-threatening injuries that require rolling about in agony and urgent medical attention. In the Dublin/Derry match at Celtic Park, Derry managed to run down the clock by nearly five minutes after a Dublin point. That sort of thing needs to be addressed although, in fairness, Stanislavsky himself, were he a ref, would have to admire some of the excellence of the acting involved.

So let us hope that all teams embrace the new dispensation that will promote good football rather than rugby league. And each person behind their own county, no matter how poor they are.

After all, they can still bask in the reflected glory of the likes of Tyrone and Monaghan. ☺