Unified green and gold axis appears off colour to a Kerryman in pre All-Ireland final Donegal
Micheál Clifford
THE GREATEST FEAR your offspring could visit on you?
The standard one is that some day in the distant future, they will push a glossy brochure into your hand advertising the comforts of the Mystic Rose Nursing Home, before loading you into a car to see those facilities up close and personal.
Well, that used to be it up until last weekend, when it was brutally displaced by a new reality we really did not see coming.
Flushed of face and hoarse of voice after a day well spent in Dublin’s Big House, the first born comes bursting through the door in the wee hours not just hollering joy, but without taking breath trash talking David Clifford with the kind of venomous intent that would not just have left Ricey McMenamin blushing but desperate to bathe in holy water to cleanse.
We never thought it would end like this.
Donegal was sold to us on a glossy brochure, too, entitled Home from Home.
It informed us that the distance between the deep south and the far north west was immaterial. Landscape and not kilometres shape people. Kerry and Donegal was the same patch of ground which just happened to be separated at birth, small farmers land, big hills, sea views, turf, emigration, green and gold football, only the lingo separated us.
Take away their “aye” and our “yerrah” and we were one and kind of the same.
Never be fooled by that sales pitch, because whatever little cracks do exist become chasms when exposed to the red hot heat levels an All-Ireland final generates.
Of course, we have been here before in 2014, but it was different back then because things were more malleable and manageable.
We found a perfect compromise, they would be dressed in the Donegal uniform for the first half, Kerry’s for the second. It was the perfect nod to both identities, but came with the considerable bonus of a happy ending to ensure that there would be no legacy of mental scarring. No maybe about it; it was our finest parenting hour.
And in those pre All-Ireland final weeks when Donegal were not involved, they would be dressed in the other shade of green and gold while parading around the Diamond in Donegal Town to a hummed Artane Boy’s tune.
It was a trick picked up from the odd summer when Cork holiday makers, in the event of beating Kerry, would dress their children from head to toe in red and white at 10am Mass, before marching them up the aisle twice for Holy Communion, just to be sure, to be sure.
Beyond the homestead, though, the reality of being different tribes in similar colours manifested in ways that we simply could not comprehend.
They would spend their whole summers locked literally – these were pre flowing football FRC times – in a wrestle to the death inside Ulster, but when they were banished from the stage, they invested their goodwill without any hint of betrayal or shame fully behind whatever Ulster team was still left standing, despite having weeks earlier been their sworn enemies.
Offer them a choice of an angry red hand that may well have slapped them into submission or a friendly green and gold one, and guess which one they would clasp?
It boggled the mind because we came from a place where the only support ever extended to Cork was limited only in the event of them ever following through on their promise to seek a referendum to declare an Independent People’s Republic, in which instance we were committed to hitting the paving stones to canvas for it.
We tried to reason with them. We peddled the line that together as a unified green and gold axis, we would all be better served.
We could help Donegal exploit their huge tourism potential by showing them the knack of greasing a coach driver’s hand, we could share our resources and corner the bagged turf export market to China and, together in football, we could be a superpower. Sure, haven’t we 40 All-Irelands between us . . .
But they were not for listening. Instead they trusted in God or Jim – it was always hard to tell the difference – and in the return of a man who might as well be the son of God in Michael Murphy and they would keep their faith.
And that is why we are where we are, isolated and peering out the window fearing a changed future and regretting the not too distant past.
There is a little oasis in the South Donegal village of Laghey which we frequent regularly and in the immediate aftermath of that 2014 final, the host insisted that we should visit so his locals could get it all out of the way and imbibe in peace.
We took him up on the offer, offering words of consolation which we fear may have been interpreted differently.
We feel there is a reckoning coming and it may well be that we will not be calling to Laghey again until such time as the Seven Arches is repurposed into a health and well being centre.
We could stay at home, but those comforts are sparse in nature now that it has become a base for the Tir Conaill Ultras.
The only comfort now may well be that brochure to a place where the misery will be nursed.
The 42
