Heaven can wait on days like this
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Early on in the second-half, Kieran Donaghy unravelled the ball from the Cork defender as if he was taking bandages off a mummy and there before him was a goal as eerily empty as the Marie Celeste. The Cork keeper had gone off out to the sideline for a chat with Paddy Cullen and Kerry were out the gate with their 35th All-Ireland.
Cork were well up for it before the game. "Where's Row X?," I asked the Sherpa at the highest part of the stadium. Before he could answer a helpful Corkonian said: "It's next to Row Y ."
His poor wife couldn't stick the heights. "I'm half expecting them to drop an oxygen mask," she said.
"Don't look down," advised her husband.
"How am I going to watch the match so?," she replied.
She had good reason to turn away when the farmer left the gate of the chicken run open for a second time. Donaghy plucked the golden egg and again amazingly kicked into an empty goal.
Before the match on the way up to the loft I met Liam Hasset, who lifted the Sam 10 years ago. "Will we win?," I asked, "We can't lose."
Ambrose O Donovan, another winning captain, said to us: "Do you realise there are children in Kerry of 20 years of age who have never seen a two in a row?"
Kerry could not have lost. All the Munster final wins would have meant nothing.
The weather was a worry. The wind lifted tweed skirts and the sky varied from the eyeliner used by blondes to bring out the blue in their eyes to sudsy grey and monsignor purple. The pitch was as slippy as an eel swimming in Quix and it affected both teams early on. Aidan O'Mahony and Paul Galvin won all the hard balls. You will win nothing without fixed bayonet men, but these lads can work the rapier too.
In that second-half Kerry played the game as it should be played. We knew we were watching a truly great team when Colm Cooper, who had earlier scored with the Hand of Gooch, gave an exhibition of twirls and pirouettes that should land him the lead in the Killarney production of Billy Elliot. But it wasn't all ballet.
The Kerrymen knew Cork like to work the ball out of defence and tackled and tore into them like lions who had the cunning to wait at the spot where the wildebeest like to cross the river.
The stadium shuddered when Kerry shouldered and the clock not only stopped in Mrs Murphy's on the Clonliffe Road, but it fell off the mantelpiece as well.
I watched Billy Morgan try to rally his troops. There might be snow on top, but inside the fire still rages. He brought his boys a long way, but Pat O'Shea and Dave Geaney are football thinkers who know what it takes to win an All-Ireland.
We will take the win and enjoy it, but we will not lord it over the Rebels. When the football is over the friendships still remain.
As I walked up Jones Road with my best pals and the sun shining in my face I said to myself: "Hey Bill, if there's a better place than this, it has a bouncer by the name of Peter and a rake of saints".
O'Se's of Ventry has now eclipsed Spillanes of Templenoe as the country bar with the most All-Ireland medals -- Heaven can wait.
