An All-Ireland Sunday

CUAN my son is collecting me in an hour to bring me to Dublin for the All-Ireland football final in Croke Park between Armagh and Tyrone. That’s why I’m up very early in the morning, drinking coffee and listening to Vivaldi’s beautiful “Four Seasons” piece about winter on the ritual last Sunday of September when the men and women from the country take over Dublin, gloriously and totally, for the last great earthy sporting event of the summer.

Even though I’m up early I was in bed late. It was a beautiful Saturday evening, the trees just tinting golden on a balmy evening, the sun sinking softly, the Shannon silvery, the last roses still blooming redly and graciously in the garden, the birds singing because their small crops are still full from plentiful berries, nuts, insects. 

I went down to The Honk for a couple of pints. Saturday nights are special there. It is the night of the card players, playing the old game of 45 on a table in the corner. 

After three years here I know the most of them well. It is a friendly society around here. The chaffing and craic around the table was at least as good as the cards. 

I always refuse to play because the traditional card players are so good and fast with the playing that I’d be caught out in minutes. I just sit at the bar and watch with relish.

Strange, in 2003, in its ember days, that so much of the past remains intact amidst all the changes. The card players still have their games, Guinness is still the most popular drink, the fourth Sunday of September is maybe more important than it ever was. 

The currency may have changed to euros, the society may have fundamentally altered and modernized in many ways, but the heart and gut of rural Ireland is still remarkably as it always has been. 

One of the card players, the great fiddler Pat Mullins, joins me briefly during a break in the cards. He tells me two good yarns in five minutes and regrets the fact I missed a good night of music in the bar on Wednesday night when the American folksinger John Smith was at the heart of a great session. Pat goes back to his cards, the way card players do, and I go back to my musings.

I’m looking forward to the All-Ireland final. I have not missed too many of them in 40 years and more. They are always special.

This one, for an Ulsterman, is the most special of all. It is two Ulster sides for the first time ever. Ye will know the result by the time this is being read, but of course I don’t yet. 

I so want my immediate county neighbors Tyrone to win. They have always played beautiful yet gritty football and they are led by Peter Canavan, maybe the best forward I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen Sean O’Neill, Sean Purcell, Mikey Sheehy, Jimmy Keaveney, even the legendary Frank McGuigan, another Tyrone player). 

Yes, Peter is surely one of the best and, after all these years, still without a medal from the last Sunday. And running out of time. And carrying an ankle injury into the final. Life’s like that, is it not?

On the other hand, no matter who wins, the Sam Maguire Cup will be crossing the border again, and that is something to warm the heart. 

Down were the first team from the North to achieve that feat after many years of waiting. Southerners don’t really appreciate the fact that the GAA in Ulster is a little more than just a ballgame to us. It is a statement of identity, a declaration of nationalism and Irishness under the fluttering Union Jacks of our realities. 

I could get hot under the collar about that but I won’t. In my time I’ve seen an Armagh team training for a semifinal under a low-hanging British Army chopper, a soldier in the chopper with a machine gun scanning the entire practice session, the rotors disturbing the flight of the ball. 

None of the players or mentors passed the slightest heed on the chopper’s presence. But I remember it so clearly. So, no matter who wins, Ulster wins. 

I laughed earlier today at the witty statement of a Unionist politician that today’s final is the first ever All-British football final! Think about it!

Cuan called about two minutes ago. He will be arriving inside the hour. 

He has the tickets. We will be in Dublin in the early afternoon, please God, and then the whole day stretches out before us.

My father Sandy brought me to my first half-dozen finals in Croke Park. Now my eldest son is bringing me. I find that pleasant, not having to drive the journey, and just the kinship and continuity of it. 

We will have a huge steak in some steakhouse in Dublin late this evening before coming home and hopefully, by then, all of Tyrone will be celebrating their first ever All-Ireland title. I’m so looking forward to it all.

As I said above, it is amazing how so little has changed at the fundamental level on this little island of ours. I’m bringing an anorak for that reason. 

No matter what the forecasters say, there is always a shower of rain during the second half. That’s traditional too.