The holy grail of Croke Park is elevated a few feet closer to the clouds overhead. In Kerry heads, a voice won’t rattle or boom. It will bounce with rhythm and rhyme with every hop and solo.
They sense it will carry them to victory. They never lack belief.
And perhaps the passing of Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh has given them a cause. It’s no longer ‘we can’ or ‘we should’ or even ‘we will’.
It’s ‘we have to’. The great man whispers of an oak tree falling.
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done? Well no, not on this occasion, on this stage, at this time in this most majestic place. The script, it is written. Not today Derry, not today.
If only football was such a heavenly place. Sacreligious jersey pulls, hits that are timed and mistimed, a ruthless edge that would be turned away from God’s golden gates.
Unmerciful greed, unholy desperation. The 10 Commandments tossed into the Royal Canal in a gesture to say: Any which way.
How Mickey Harte would make Hell on Earth just to overthrow the Kingdom throne once again. By Christ he didn’t take the Derry job because it was easy.
A man of devout Catholicism himself, he could tell a tale or two of suffering, be it Jesus in the Judean Desert, or the loss of football, of friend, of family.
A challenge you say? The ears prick up, Kerry in Croker. Hartes in mouths but is there a sting in the tail?
God loves a trier.
There’ll have been a prayer or two in Louth this week too. It’s worked so far, Ireland’s smallest county overcoming Ireland’s largest.
Inniskeen, the field of dreams. Dreams that get more far-fetched each passing week on a train bound for Lord-knows-where.
Louth need a miracle. An occasion wouldn’t describe it. Nerves will jangle, words will wrangle. Omnipotent, omnipresent, Jim McGuinness stands before them.
During this European Championships, perhaps a taste of Dutch courage? Turning Donegal water into Donegal whines, that is their mountain.
Meanwhile, Diarmuid Murtagh, Daire Cregg, Conor Cox and Donie Smith will come to HQ with confidence, the new and improved Holy Trinity of The Primrose County.
This is where The Orchard must stand up. You sense that they will.
Which leaves us with Dessie’s Dubs. Comer and Walsh, like Batman and Bruce Wayne, they finally start together so Galway’s ambitions don’t fall apart.
It still may not be enough.
Though often this game of ours is blow for blow for 70 plus minutes. The clock goes red. Tactics evaporate.
Come Sunday, even the voice of the GAA himself may have his hands together somewhere up in the stratosphere.
When it matters so much, all you can do is pray:
“The stopwatch has stopped. It’s up to God and the referee now. The referee is Pat Horan. God is God.”