Dublin v Kerry 2009

It’s a holiday here in Ireland today, and this August bank holiday weekend we’ve been treated to some great Gaelic Football already. Yesterday’s All-Ireland quarter-final of Kildare and Tyrone was magnificent, and before that Cork racked up an impressive hurling score in a disappointingly one-sided game against Donegal.

So today we have Kerry and Dublin. Again. It’s a fabled fixture thanks mostly to 4 games in the mid 1970s.

In the 1975 All-Ireland final Kerry beat the reigning champions Dublin. Despite being a Dub I was horrified and embarassed, probably because I was young, at some of Dublin’s tackles.

In 1976 both teams met again in the All-Ireland final and I was a proud Dub again as Dublin beat Kerry thanks to a load of goals. Tom Humphries is about my age and he’s written of this time for Dublin fans as being thrilled not simply because we were winning but because, in comparing it to international soccer we were Brazilian in our style.

Due to the rotation system of the 4 provincial champions playing a different province in the semi-finals each year, in 1977 Kerry met Dublin in the All-Ireland semi-final. This is the game so many remember. It doesn’t matter if it really is the greatest game of Gaelic Football ever played as we Dublin fans like to call it, but it was certainly a classic.

Watching it live at the time was exhilarating, and many years later I risked undoing such special memories by watching it in its entirety again. It stood up just fine. It’s special because we won in what then was considered an effective title-winning performance because Ulster was in a long phase of being incapable of sending a team to Croke Park that truly competed for the title.

I’ve spoken of Dublin v Kerry 1977 & 1978 before, so there’s no need to go over it again, but basically this rivalry we speak of for me really started in 1975 (despite meeting in finals in the) and ended with the Sheehy goal in 1978. By full-time Dublin had been annihilated and ever since then Dubs have clung to a single perceived injustice as if it would wipe out 5 goals and 2 points.

Yes the teams met again in the final in 1979 but as we got hammered again by Kerry I was wishing I hadn’t earlier been to Croke Park to watch Dublin beat Offaly with a last minute goal for their 6th Leinster title in a row .

The games in the 1980s were closer, but not that close and as a Dub you watched them digusted with the quality that came so casually to Kerry, and with that slow sickening feeling of all marches to ineveitable defeat.

The quarter-final 2 years ago, that prompted my earlier Dublin Kerry post, was a good one, and closer, but when you lose, well, your memory is never that great.

Traditionally the Kerry Dublin fixture doesn’t bring the tension of so many Meath Dublin games which are mostly very close, because one team or other - and it hasn’t been Dublin for 32 years now - wins comfortably.

This year Kerry have been poor, playing just enough patches of great football to limp past relatively weak opposition, so Dublin are favoured by a lot of people having been impressive in winning Leinster even if we don’t quite know what that means.

I don’t care how poor Kerry have been; a couple of months ago we were calling them the 2nd best team in the country, in the original Munster semi-final they did draw with Cork who nobody is dismissing, and, well, they’re Kerry.

Here we go again.

With the demise of Setanta in the UK I’m not sure of the impact, if any, on Setanta in the US, so not sure what you’re viewing options are in Kansas City. I believe you at least get the option of time-delayed playbacks later in the week - in which case you should make it your business to watch the Kildare Tyrone game - and you probably have online options to watch today’s Dublin Kerry game live via Setanta-i (Throw in is at 8am Kansas City time)

To play Gaelic Football in Kansas City (or just to watch and/or learn) check out the Kansas City Gaelic Athletic Club (KC GAC)

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 6:10 am and is filed under Setanta, Sport. You can follow responses via my RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.