Cuala had that about them in Parnell Park. The cut of a group that just couldn’t be stopped shy of a first county senior football title in their long, mostly hurling-centric, history.
Nope. They wouldn’t be refused. Not by the goal that fell out of the sky for Kilmacud Crokes with less than 10 minutes to play, to level a match Cuala had not quite dominated to that point – but not a mile off either.
And not when Con O’Callaghan – of all people – was sent off on a straight red card for an off-the-ball incident with Kilmacud’s Kerry native goalkeeper Devon Burns.
The confluence of these events might reasonably shellshock a team. Cuala were playing in their first county final against a side vying for a fourth Dublin SFC title in a row. They had studiously constructed a useful lead for themselves. Yes, all was rosy on the path to victory and Cuala were skipping down it at a great pelt.
And then, in the space of a minute: bang and bang again. No lead. No Con.
“Our ‘MO’ all year was to play with courage and an absence of fear and really go after teams and go after games and really express ourselves,” said their manager Austin O’Malley afterwards. “It’s a big part of our identity.”
What happened next was maybe the most remarkable part of a county final played in the maw of a storm. Cuala didn’t flinch. They didn’t even sigh.
They didn’t turn inwards. They didn’t doubt themselves or erect any preservation order or try and strangle a draw out of the game.
They just kept running. Kept storming out with the next ball. No panic. No hesitation. Risky long kick-outs into the great white shark teeth of a howling storm.
Hence, what they deserved, even if it had a splash of fortune about how Luke Keating’s late free fell kindly for Eoin Kennedy.
Listen, you make your own luck.
“We’ve tried to cultivate the idea of courage and bravery,” O’Malley explained. “You must back yourself in those moments. Tactically, you could try and re-engineer things, but it was so frenetic at that point that we had to trust the ingredients that we have put into the cake.”
You don’t get any extra medals for winning county finals the hard way. But the afterglow from the win, and its manner, will make up for the declining light around Dalkey this week.
Cuala were all value here. Anything other than a win, even with the late unspooling drama, would have been wrong.
Crokes, the afternoon’s vanquished, have displayed a penchant – a fetish even – for doing things the hard way over the past six years. They have seen a most of it and a least of it. Tasted the sickly highs and the acrid lows.
This was probably somewhere in the middle. Palatable defeat.
As Robbie Brennan, their now ex-manager, admitted afterwards, “If you hang around long enough, you’re going to get beat.
“Better team,” Brennan conceded. “Hungrier team. Just wanted it that little bit more than us on the day. Even though we hung in there and we nearly got back, we wouldn’t have deserved to nick that, which is what it would have been, at the end.”
Those of us in Parnell Park early yesterday noted the dispatches from around the country about postponed games and then tried to calculate how many flags would be required to fly off their poles beside the dressing rooms to force a decision to be made here as well.
At one stage in the first half, a cardboard box and its content blew and scattered across the pitch. Flag-handlers required all their strength. Some people lost good hats in Parnell Park yesterday.
It all added to the tension. The sense that it could all go wrong for either team at any time.
Cuala played like they had been expecting it. Running hard. Defending as one sturdy block. Had they looked closely enough, they’d have seen the writing on the wall in that first half.
Mick Fitzsimons has done most things in Gaelic football but scoring two points in one half was almost certainly a new one.
At 0-7 to 0-2 up at half-time, and no reliable way of measuring what, if any, advantage the gust would bring, the feeling around Parnell Park was that this was there for Cuala.
Then a brilliant pass from Paul Mannion found Luke Ward, who scored a sensational goal to draw the match.
O’Callaghan then walked after referee Seán McCarthy was called from the opposite end of the pitch by an umpire.
It had all the elements of a sabotage, but Cuala’s energy never dimmed. They played with 14 as they had with a full deck. Winning your county final isn’t supposed to be easy anyway.
“This game is funny,” O’Malley acknowledged. “You can talk as much as you want about tactics and whatever. Sometimes it is just the sheer desire not to bend and be true to your values and go for it.”
SCORERS – Cuala: C Doran, L Keating (2f) 0-3 each; M Fitzsimons 0-2; E Kennedy, C McMorrow, P Ó Cofaigh Byrne, P Duffy, N O’Callaghan, C O’Callaghan 0-1 each. Kilmacud: P Mannion 0-4 (1f, 1m); S Walsh 0-3 (1f); L Ward 1-0; H Kenny, C Dias, D Mullin 0-1 each.
CUALA: R Scollard; D Conroy, M Fitzsimons, E O’Callaghan; E Kennedy, C McMorrow, D O’Dowd; P Ó Cofaigh Byrne, P Duffy; C Dunne, C O’Callaghan, C Doran; L Keating, N O’Callaghan, C Ó Giolláin. Subs: C Groake for Ó Giolláin (43), C Mullally for Dunne (48), M Conroy for D Conroy (57).
KILMACUD CROKES: D Burns; M Mullin, A McGowan, D O’Brien; M O’Leary, T Clancy, J Murphy; B Shovlin, R O’Carroll; H Kenny, C Dias, D Mullin; P Mannion, P O’Connor, S Walsh. Subs: C O’Connor for O’Leary (43), T Fox for Kenny (45), L Ward for Murphy (56), S Cunningham for P O’Connor (61).
REF: S McCarthy (St Vincent’s).
