CLUB football has rarely had the visibility that the build-up to this game offered it. When it arrived, the 60 minutes bordered on the invisible.
Peering through the thick fog that never got out of the bed it made early Sunday morning in Páirc Esler, the 10,000 spectators reacted as best they could to what they thought they could see.
For 40 minutes it was impossible to miss how vastly superior Glen were, even moreso than they had been in last year’s final.
And then the chance of a lifetime almost slipped away. Six, five, four, three, Shane Walsh crosses for Hugh Kenny and puff, the lead’s gone, just like that.
Even when they wrestled it back and Ethan Doherty hit the net two minutes into stoppage time, it still wasn’t done. Walsh’s dropping effort deceived Connlan Bradley and cut it from four straight back to one, but time was up on Kilmacud’s reign.
Malachy O’Rourke whipped his players straight off the pitch, keen to avoid the back-slapping that could push his team down an avenue of false security before meeting St Brigid’s in Croke Park two weeks from now.
“Winter football and championship football, you expect to get knocks and even before the game we always felt it was going to come down to the last few minutes of the game.
“And that’s what happened, although with 25 minutes left we would have hoped it would have been a bit more comfortable.
“It hopefully will stand to us going into the final. We were really well tested there and as I said to the other boys, ‘we are in exactly the same position as we were last year. It’s a 50-50 game in the final and you get nothing for what we have done so far.’
“It’s a great opportunity for both clubs and we just have to grasp it.”
The furious energy with which Glen played to build a 0-12 to 0-5 lead wasn’t, O’Rourke insisted, coming from any lingering sense of injustice over the infamous 16th man in Croke Park.
Instead of trying to kill dead things, the Derry champions played a smart, pacy game for which Kilmacud had no answers until Ryan Dougan went off injured and Paul Mannion started to find pockets of space.
“We weren’t really looking at it like that at all. We have parked last year’s game a long time ago. We just wanted to get a really good performance.
“We were looking at what areas of the game we needed to be good at to beat Kilmacud. It wasn’t anything to do with Kilmacud last year.
“With the likes of Shane Walsh and Paul Mannion, if you give them frees you are going to suffer so our discipline had to be good at the back.
“We just had to… We felt last year we gave them a little too much space to play and the Newry field isn’t as big so we felt that would help as well.
“It was just a case of being disciplined at the back and working really hard and then it was about being better in possession as well,” said O’Rourke.
He did, however, cast doubt on whether Jack Doherty and Ryan Dougan will be available for the decider.
Doherty went off having hurt his ankle in a first half challenge while Dougan walked off with a tight hamstring, both of which have just two weeks to settle down.
Robbie Brennan called it ‘bananas’. Not the game itself – though he might well have – but rather the decision to play the game at all.
But he made absolutely no excuses out it, at pains to do the opposite.
“The better team won. If we were to lose to anybody this year, people mightn’t agree or believe me, but I’m glad it was them after all that happened last year. They deserve their shot at it now and I hope they go on and win it.
“I would have assumed a team like Glen wouldn’t be looking at last year. I doubt Glen, despite all the noise, wouldn’t have been looking at it for motivation, it was about performance and process and all those buzzwords. They executed their plan brilliantly. If we were to be beaten, I’m glad it was by them,” said Brennan.