So here you are, men of Galway; for the second time in a generation, back to a familiar field. And you are here because you have faced down every challenge laid in front of you....and this Sunday, will be just another.
So, as you stand there in Croke Park, in the cauldron of battle, feel yourself, feel the sheer bulk of you. Look around and hear the power of what lies around you. See who lines up alongside you. The stands are heaving, maroon and white, a full house...but look to the skies and you feel where the rest of them are.
That back in Galway, in every home, in every living room, on screens and radios around the world, there is a massive swell willing you on. So you imagine that it is up there, aimed at you. This sea of maroon and white, a chorus of voices, a symphony of souls, an army of knights behind you, all shielded in armour. Their lungs will be your second lungs and your third lungs when you need them...and you will, because you will give every bit of yourself.
But today in this echoing stadium, you will not hear them. Today, you must feel them. The roar of hundreds of thousands around the world. The spirit of John O’Mahony and Brendan Coffey and the Master and Stockwell and Mattie McDonagh and all the others willing you on from someplace tuning in on GAAGod.
This support will breathe oxygen into you when you have expended yours, they will take the pain that you will feel when you have those hits; they will double the pain you inflict when you crash into the enemy, when you enter the challenges that you will win. They will add elasticity to your hamstrings, extension to your arms. They will add spring to your step as you bounce off those attempts to derail you.
Even standing here beforehand, you feel yourself getting pumped with the fresh blood of tens of thousands of Galway people who have gone before you, and battled here on wet September afternoons. And now, on a noisy patch of land in our capital’s northside, you face the final challenger. Knowing that you are the toughest warriors they have faced as well. They fear you, be in no doubt, they really fear you. Because you stand between them, and what they really want. Now, you are their greatest rivals.
And for that eighty or so minutes, you could hear the dust move over the rocks on Dun Aenghus; the waves will crash against the stack at Dog’s Bay; a tide will caress the beach at Tracht in Kinvara....the ocean, that which separates us from all those who will wear maroon and white on its far side. Out on Lough Corrib on the island where a man lived with his wireless in the 1930s, welcoming those who rowed out to him to hear the match...a game that was drawn and rowing home again afterwards, the beat of their oars against the lapping water. You will hear and see all that. However, this is your time, this is your time. Don’t buy the line that you will have more of these finals, because...because. Live now for the moment. As Jim McGuinness said last week, there is no Year One in a project, just Year Now.
And in the back of your mind, you see yourself back on sunny summer Sundays in rural Galway where the crackly summer sounds of Micheal O’Hehir and Joe McDonagh singing, beat out across quiet afternoons when post-Mass and dinners of pork and spuds and marrowfat peas and custard and jelly; in days when they they sat and let the noise of sport break the quietness of Clonbur, the hills of Connemara, the streets of Dunmore and Glenamaddy, the boreens of Gurtymadden.
And you see aged hands place old earphones from a transistor into hairy ears across small dark uncaring flats of Kilburn and Cricklewood where the sounds of home generate a tear; where the joy of Galwayness is a solitary one not shared by neighbours; so they celebrate alone; where old men and women sit in chairs as the sun shines across Ruislip and try and follow the news from home; where the listeners are transported for an hour or two into a dreamland far removed from their reality. And you inhale again this desire, you pick up on the longing they have in their hearts, because it is a longing that you share with them.
And up in those skies over Dublin, you feel the push of a thousand souls willing you on; you hear the chorus of Living In The Sixties still...and the line ‘when Johnny Donnellan held the Sam Maguire, you were standing on the Hill...” You hear all this and you are pumped, but focused.
Focused because the difference is that now, you are here, you can make that difference, you can sate this want. You can change history by living in the present and dominating those men in orange and white who want to deny you this moment.
And you look around at your teammates, the bulk of them, the cleverness of them; and you see in their eyes that they have the same thing in their hearts. You see your net which has been breached just the once and you vow to protect it. They have vowed that today they will all win their duel. Win every 30-second match; win every minute match, every quarter, every half...until, until. There is nothing the other side have that you don’t...you see them, the weight of expectation pushing them down and you know you have the measure of them.
You see those posts at either end, their white lines under the brilliant lights branded into your retinas, so that as a target they are set into your brain. You feel the wide expanse of the greenness that your colleagues will fill, space you know so well, space they will run into to grasp the ball you splay in with the outside of your boot, its curve swerving it away from your opponent. The splendid pitch is playing true to itself, so you arc your strong legs for the give. You come here representing not only your county, but all of Ireland, and all the little towns and villages that want you to win because you deserve to.
But you know today that deserving counts for nothing, and wanting counts for everything.
Here is what you have trained for across muddy pitches of winter in dressingrooms smelling of sweat, spit and wintercream; here is what you have travelled thousands of miles to be fit for; nights spent on buses to and from Loughgeorge, victims of your coincidence of geography, countless plates of pasta and salads and omelettes without cheese; nights sharing a camaraderie that today will face its biggest test, and you know that these guys here will die for you, just as you would die for them.
Nights when you stretched your aching muscles through drill after drill. And you feel the pull of those colours on your swelling chest, your heart beating out a drumbeat that syncs with each wallop of the band that rings out around this hallowed arena.
And then you see the challengers. The two counties have shared thousands of years of history, a different history of painful days. You look at them, you’ve seen them before, but you see in their eyes that they don’t have the same hunger as you, they don’t want it as much as you do. You don’t fear fear. Because it offers you nothing.
And as you face the flag and hear the whistle blow, you meet them head on, you pit your bulk against them; You feel each collision resonate with approval from the millions watching.
For 80 minutes or so, you will bear the pain, you will run the run, you will stand up to everything and inflict yourself upon them. You’ll be smart. Forget history, forget favouritism, forget that rubbish.
Today you create your own story. Today is the day you flood 21st century high definition colour into the images of a Galway All-Ireland win. You give blood to the veins of that quest. You set hearts racing, tears flowing; you etch your name into the stones of history.
Because you are men of Galway, and therefore men of steel.
The final word to Johnno. “This is the biggest day of your lives...make it the best day of your lives.”
