“It was just another game.”
That was the mantra coming from the Dublin camp in the build-up to the All-Ireland final.
There’s no room for romance, no room for excitement or added anticipation due to the fact that they were actually on the verge of history, and a third successive All-Ireland.
This is what we do. This is our job. That’s the way it goes with the Dublin footballers.
Ruthless efficiency is a phrase that is often thrown at Jim Gavin and Dublin.
They’re cold-blooded killers who don’t display emotion during their task, for example a Dublin player will rarely celebrate a goal.
It’s met instead with a burst back to their position as they frantically point and gesticulate at teammates to ready themselves for the next ball.
Then, when the job is done, and they’ve reached the pinnacle, do they actually know how to celebrate it? It’s so alien to them to bask, to soak in the scale of what they have done, that they don’t actually know how to react.
It would make you think, is it this lack of emotion? Is it this unrelenting focus that sets them apart from the rest.
Is it why they are a step above the likes of Mayo, who are clearly motivated by quite the opposite, this emotion, these dreams, this heartbreak and this hope.
Dublin are psychologically solid when they are losing, and won’t display indiscipline or bad body language.
The thing is, they’re the same when they are winning.
They know what they want to do, they are so bloody ambitious and ruthless that it’s always about what they can do next, what they can do to improve.
Dublin defeated Mayo by the bare minimum on Sunday, in a truly heart racing thriller.
Onlookers from both counties went through the emotional wringer, neutrals marvelled, gesticulated at their televisions, got caught up in it all, and most of them urged on Mayo.
Dublin’s machine had the calm head when it came down to it, though, and they edged their rivals at the death.
They had the calm head then when the game was in the melting pot, and when they won, they were still calm.
There was no outpouring of emotion like we saw when Galway won the hurling, there was a few hugs, a few fist-bumps, but nothing major.
Jim Gavin is Dublin’s leader, and he epitomised this business-like approach in the immediate aftermath of the game.
There was no wild emotions, like we saw from Antonio Conte when Chelsea won last year’s Premier League title, like we saw from Micheal Donoghue two weeks ago, like we would have seen from Stephen Rochford had Mayo won.
https://twitter.com/MaireTNC/status/909451456134119424
Criticism came his way, but you’d have to ask yourself the question, is this emotional detachment from it all Dublin’s edge over the rest?
Jim Gavin and Stephen Cluxton could have been extras in IRobot. Zero craic. Zero expression
— Frank Craig (@FrankCraig13) September 17, 2017
Jim Gavin is a robot. An actual robot.
— Hugh Cahill (@hughcahill7) September 17, 2017
Jim Gavin with the emotion at full-time of a fella that won the O'Byrne Cup in January #AllIrelandFinal
— Mark Dinan (@Mark_Dinan) September 17, 2017
Between Jim Gavin's non-reaction and Cluxton's monotone speech, does it even mean anything to Dublin to win that? #GAA
— Derrick Lynch (@DLynchSport) September 17, 2017
