The Dubs aren't back - yet

A friend of mine who detests Gaelic football has been severely irritated all summer by the sight of countless motorists driving around with small Dublin flags flapping gaily from the windows of their vehicles.

“How much do those flags cost?” he asked me the other day.

Probably a couple of euro each, I replied. No, hang on, this is Ireland. Five or six euro.

“Well, why don’t they just stick a couple of Arnotts bags on the sides of their cars instead?”

This fellow reckons that anyone wearing a Dublin shirt is automatically an undesirable, or “scooter scum” as he calls them. (He works in marketing, as if you hadn’t already guessed.)

So, from what we have seen this summer, if his calculations are correct, it means that about 70 percent of the city’s population fall into a demographic which is not so much ABC 1 as XYZ 26. It’s already a cliché to state that Dublin filled the gap left by the Irish team after the World Cup, but how else do you explain the sheer scale and preponderance of those slightly naff-looking stonewashed blue jerseys?

I was kinda half-expecting the Dubs to come to grief against Armagh the other week, though not so much that it stopped me placing a bet on them to win by four points.

The manner of Armagh’s goal summed up what a dour bunch they are, with Paddy McKeever clasping the ball to his chest and bundling himself across the goal-line as if he were at Ravenhill rather than Croke Park. As for Ray Cosgrove’s free, you could argue that he did well to hit the post, given that when the ball first left his boot it appeared to be heading for someone’s back garden in Phibsboro.

Cosgrove, surely knackered by that stage, shouldn’t have been allowed to take the free at all. Declan Darcy, an average player but a very good free-taker, had come off the bench seconds earlier. Think back to last year’s draw against Kerry in Thurles, when the St Brigid’s man scored six or seven frees to keep Dublin’s head above water that day. Why didn’t he take the shot against Armagh?

All that aside, it has been a good ould summer for Dublin, undoubtedly their best since ’95. Though in truth, expectations had sunk so low during Tommy Carr’s reign that most fans’ reaction to the win over Meath in June was to say, whatever happens now, it’s already been a great year for the Dubs. When we consider there was still a Leinster final victory and a quarter-final rogering of Donegal to come, then it’s small wonder that so many people have gone berserk over the good run enjoyed by Tommy Lyons’ team.

Of course, there are many who have done very well out of The Dubs’ Excellent Adventure, such as Arnotts, the Evening Herald, the people who run Croke Park, the people who run the pubs around Croke Park, and Johnny McNally, who was made redundant two days before the Leinster final but quickly found other employment, thanks to Lyons helpfully announcing the corner-forward’s newly jobless status to the press after the Kildare game.

We must also remember that Dublin are a relatively callow side, sufficiently so for five of their players (Cluxton, Cahill, Brogan, Casey and Darren Magee) to turn out in an U21 game the week after the Armagh clash. Signs of hope, or something resembling it.