Gavin Cooney

ON OUR DEEPEST, most fundamental level, we do not bear doubt or anger or bitter introspection. 

No, we bear grudges. 

This is a truth once articulated by Samuel Beckett, whom the uninitiated can understand as the Scottie Scheffler of minimalist, absurdist theatre. Hence how Beckett has Hamm in Endgame vent the dawning of his loss of faith in God. 

“The bastard! He doesn’t exist.”

But you don’t need to take a university degree in the highfalutin’ to understand this, do you? You can simply reflect on the 2025 men’s All-Ireland championships instead, for they were once again a ballad to this fundamental truth. 

Tipperary and Kerry this year exhibited the full arsenal needed to win an All-Ireland nowadays: at least one phenomenal scoring forward, a clear tactical plan, and a non-trivial number of bastards writing you off. 

When the history of these championships are written, it will be a line from Jack O’Connor’s press conference after the quarter-final win over Armagh that will echo loudest, as there’s rarely been a more relatable line uttered at a sport’s highest level. 

“We were written off t’fuck.”

When Darragh McCarthy was collared for interview by BBC Northern Ireland in the glorious moments after Tipperary’s victory over Cork, the first words out of his mouth were, “This is for the doubters!” 

Where Cork had to avoid letting people down, Tipp were proving people wrong, which is a far more liberating mentality. O’Connor said it himself after the Armagh victory, that “a Kerry team written off in Croke Park are dangerous because it just takes a bit of the heat off; it allows them to play with a kind of freedom and abandon.” 

Kerry took these slights all the way through the All-Ireland series, eventually leaving them at the steps of the Hogan Stand. 

Every group of talented individuals need an adhesive to become a team, and Kerry found that glue in everyone’s determination to stick it to their critics. 

But while this is not a fresh tale, this column has often wondered to what extent could Kerry really embrace this stuff. When you’ve won roughly one in every four All-Ireland finals played since the lads got together in Hayes’ Hotel, how many people are truly writing you off? 

Then again, every Kingdom requires a bit of internal sedition every now and again, to allow for a show of strength.

O’Connor undoubtedly weathered a harsh winter and he had to do so alone, as virtually the last man standing after his backroom team had stepped away. That he was implicated in the difficulty found in replacing them was articulated for the benefit of Us Up in Dublin by Darragh O’Sé in a pre-championship roundtable for the Irish Times. 

“Jack was under pressure over the winter. Jack had gone around and he’d asked a load of well-known fellas to come in as selectors. He asked Tomás [O'Sé], he asked Kieran Donaghy. But he couldn’t get men in with him. Jack wasn’t smelling well, Jack was on skid row.” 

That was after Kerry had won the league and all was smelling rosy again. Then they lost to Meath in the championship and Daragh was writing of Jack’s failure to inject youth into the panel as contributing to the air of “finality” about it all. 

Then Kerry went supersonic in the second-half of the Armagh quarter-final and suddenly all they were exuding was a sense of foreboding. 

“Dublin got beaten by Meath in the Leinster championship and I didn’t see any ex-Dublin players coming out slating the team or slating the management like we had down south in our county”, said O’Connor. “Unfortunately a few pundits down our way let themselves down in that regard.”

There was an almost valedictory feel to O’Connor’s words here, and one wondered how they could follow this signature performance.

But they arguably matched it in the opening 15 minutes of Sunday’s final, blowing Donegal away to the point Jim McGuinness was left agog on the touchline. 

Kerry’s performance was, of course, founded on their ferocious work-rate, their ingenious tactical plan, their dominance of the skies and, obviously, the genius of the Clifford brothers. But they also found a bit of propulsion from their reservoir of spite, which had been deliberately replenished in the lead up to the final. 

Props once again to BBC Northern Ireland, who revealed so in their post-game interview with David Clifford.

First Clifford was asked as to how he deals with the pressure of being known as the “Messi” of Gaelic football, with McGuinness himself saying in the final’s build-up that Clifford may be the greatest player the game has ever seen. 

“To be honest, I nearly take it as a hit because I think there are people who say it but it isn’t coming from the right place,” Clifford replied. “I think they are trying to build you up and hope that you will fail. That was a massive motivation for me today.”

And then Clifford was asked about his boss, Jack O’Connor. 

“I don’t think Jack was happy with all the commentary around the Donegal manager and what he could do”, he said. “I think there was a lot of disrespect in that for Jack.” 

Look at this Jedi mind trick. Clifford has managed to mine disrespect from both pre-final praise and the lack of pre-final praise.

Relying on grudge as fuel usually has a short half-life, because the success it breeds ordinarily roots out the criticism that fuelled you in the first place, but David Clifford may be impervious even to this elemental rule. 

Therefore, there’s surely no way that O’Connor can walk away from the Kerry job now, because this has all the hallmarks of a dynasty.