And you’re thinking about the Game, the tickets are sorted, the train booked, the Whatsapp group buzzing, what time to meet, where to meet and what if…
And you’re thinking of that moment this fine young team, race down the tunnel and on to that verdant green patch of Dublin, running in their Green & Gold colours, our beautiful colours.
And part of you fears for them, wants them to do well, pray they do well, hope they give a good account of themselves but another part of you says, even if they don’t, sure what about it…
And you’re thinking of the awestruck kids who look up to these local heroes, heroes who generously pose for selfiesand take time to autograph match programmes on the backs of future stars,starting the cycle off yet again. You think of these young warriors running themselvesto a standstill, dragging their boots through the mud and slop of winter pitches,in rain, wind and sleet….
And you’re thinking of all the people around this world that are also thinking about this team, emigrants and the sons and daughters of emigrants. Young men with the red dust of the Pilbara on their overalls, young women standing on busy Subway carriages in rush-hour, or running up escalators on the Tube, descendants of the men who mined deep under the dark Pennsylvanian soil, men who dug the canals, laid the railway tracks, built the motorways of Britain, who drove the buses and trains and policed the streets of New York. And your thinking of the women who delivered thousands of babies in London, Birmingham and Manchester, waited on tables in diners in Brooklyn and Dorchester, and you’re thinking of today’s boys and girls who plot their own paths and carve out their own niches.
Because its all there, bound tightly into an identity of a small, often forgotten place, where the soil was too poor to feed them all, and no government cared enough to do something for them, where nobody shouted stop. Let them scatter, let the leaves blow and the seed spread and hope they’ll land on fertile ground. They survive, some thrive and tied by bonds often unknown and unseen but somehow creating this shared identity. Oh it’s there and its real and its more than just bloody football, it’s much more important than that. It’s the hill of Sheemore and the majestic Glenade Valley, and the wandering waters of Glencar and the calmness of the Shannon calloughs, it’s in the music of Carolan and writings of McGahern, the fiddle and the Uileann pipes, its there, it exists, it will be all there at three o’clock Saturday and it will be there the day after, and the day after that……
And I’m thinking about all these things because that’s what football does in a football mad place, where parishes games have imperial importance and where every field, rock and bush has a name and every family a nickname and everyone has Aunts and Uncles in the Bronx, or Chicago, and cousins in Manchester and Melbourne and a thousand other far off places.
And I’m thinking, but possibly I’m dreaming, because that line is blurred at times like these, and I’m wondering, what if the Gods favour was with us this day? What if they were in a benevolent mood? What would it be like to see a son of Leitrim raise a piece of silverware aloft in the Dublin sky, overlooking those blessed three acres? When generations to come will hear old people say things like ‘That was the year of the Brexit bother’.
Well I’m dreaming but I’m also thinking, I’m thinking wouldn’t it be just GRAND!
And perchance tonight I’ll have a pleasant dream and I’ll wake up with a smile.
'A River runs through it' 