In today’s Hospital Pass, there’s enough humble pie for everyone – and we salute Joe Brolly’s skill in getting it wrong, despite getting it right.
Cork were humbled at the weekend, and no-one, but no-one saw it coming. Well, almost no-one, because just a week before the Rebels made their final bow of 2011, Joe Brolly saw their true worth.
Brolly is the barrister-cum-tidy-corner-forward-cum-media-mouth, and it was in the latter visage that he riled everyone in the proud nation of Cork with his pronouncements on their abilities a week ago.
Cork were a dumb team, he said. Graham Canty was committed but feck all else, he said. They were a bunch of megalithic cavemen who tried to sledge their way through more talented teams, he sort of said.
And fair play to Brolly, the weekend just gone saw Cork get their comeuppance, just as he predicted.
Except he didn’t. When the shit hit the fan following those comments, Brolly backpedalled quicker than a Tour de France sprinter on Sky Plus rewind and declared that they would wipe the floor with Mayo.
So if you say a team is (a) dumb, useless, cavemen and (b) they’re going to wipe the floor with the opposition, one way or the other you’re going to be right, aren’t you?
Humble pie
If Brolly got it half-wrong, there’s no debating how wide of the mark I was myself in the build-up to Cork-Mayo.
I couldn’t see anything else but a Cork win. I was afraid that Cork would get ambushed by Kerry, forgetting that they could get ambushed long before then. I passionately argued with one of the Mayo lads in the office that no Mayo player would get in the Cork team.
It would be an embarrassment, I said. And it was – for me.
So now that I’ve been shown to be about as clueless about GAA as I am about everything else, I’ll surely be revising my opinions about Mayo ahead of the All-Ireland semi-final against the Kingdom.
No. Again, I can’t see anything but a heavy defeat for the Connacht champions. I’ve checked the record books and over the last ten years Mayo have made a habit of producing a big performance to knock out one of the big guns – only to fall flat on their faces soon afterwards.
In 2004, they dethroned then All-Ireland champions Tyrone at Croker, but struggled to keep the ball kicked out against Kerry. Two years later, they ousted Dublin in arguably the game of the decade only to lose by 13 next time out. Against Kerry.
There’s a trend here, and I’m not one to go against trends.
But given my hapless record in making predictions, Mayo supporters should be happy enough about that.
