If RTE, Sky Sports or any other broadcaster sought to find real truth in the analysis of Gaelic football, they would be better off eschewing the careful study of hours of footage by former players and instead put a microphone beside the pint in front of a Kerryman after a game.
For example, Marty McHugh's strange "two-trick pony" blaspheming of Colm Cooper in 2014 was pithily destroyed by a Kerryman in the Abbey Tavern in Tralee. As he told Jim O'Gorman of Kerry's Eye:
Two tricks? What are they? Is it putting the ball in the net and the ball over the bar?
Writing in his Irish Independent column today, Tomás O'Sé told of a truly wonderful encounter with a Kerryman after the 2014 All-Ireland final. O'Sé announced his retirement from inter-county football in 2013, and writes today of how Cooper would be "lying" if he did not feel a twinge of regret sitting on the Sunday Game sofa while his former teammates go to battle in Croke Park.
To illustrate the point, O'Sé draws on his own experience, and meditates on the regret he felt in the stands, watching his brother and former teammates win an All-Ireland title less than a year after he quit inter-county football.
While delighted for Marc and the rest of the Kerry squad after the win against Donegal that September, O'Sé admits to harboring conflicted thoughts: vicarious delight fused with personal regret. He reveals his thought process as he returned to his hotel in Ballsbridge after the final, where he was met by a Kerryman. Let's allow him to take up the story...
I was also thinking I'd made a right mess of things. That I'd been wrong to retire. Selfish thoughts.
'Fuck it, I could have signed off with another All-Ireland!'
I went back to Jury's Ballsbridge after The Sunday Game that night and, heading up to my room in the early hours, there was this Kerry supporter slumped in a chair by the lift. He looked comatose to me, but the moment I tocuhed the lift button, his eyes opened.
And without as much as a hello, he goes, "You fucking eejit, if you stayed aroudn you'd have another Celtic Cross!".
A Kerryman with an aphorism is about as common as one with a Celtic Cross.
Read the full column in today's Irish Independent, or on their website.
See Also: Kerry Jerseys At The Masters: An Investigation
