Every player in every county would do whatever it took if it meant distracting a rival from destroying your All-Ireland dreams.
Dean Rock has a kick at the posts to win a third successive title for Dublin and ruin a sixth final for Mayo in just 13 years.
He’s setting new records for free-takers this year in terms of accuracy and he’s going to score, everyone knows it. Who on earth wouldn’t want to deter him if you were on the receiving end of it?
So Mayo tried three different ways of distracting the Ballymun man.
Verbals
Ciaran Whelan was pumped full of energy on The Sunday Game highlights show. He wanted to credit everyone who needed crediting and he wanted to encapsulate what a historic achievement this was. And he’s right.
He was also on the defensive about Dublin and their population and what have you but he was mostly just bigging up his county.
He claimed that Dean Rock was getting it in the ear before his frees – taking verbals, the usual shit which Dean Rock is far too used to at this stage.
Encroachment
By the time the kick was taken, both Lee Keegan and Diarmuid O’Connor had taken liberties with their distances from the ball.
Thrown GPS
Lee Keegan or one of the Mayo players looked to hurl a device from his GPS system at the ball just as Rock was taking the free.
“They were trying every trick in the book. I think it was a GPS someone threw at him? But look, it doesn’t matter now. He kicked it.”
Keegan runs along the side of Rock and there seems to be something thrown towards the ball or the line of Rock’s vision.
Anything like that can catch a kicker’s eye and put them off completely.
It didn’t put Dean Rock off though. He blocked it all out – all the noise, all the visuals, all the moving obstacles. He blocked it out and won the All-Ireland.
Here's another look at Dean Rock's winning point from today's All-Ireland Football Final as he kept his cool as @DubGAAOfficial beat Mayo pic.twitter.com/Mlz8hBV8sn
— The GAA (@officialgaa) September 17, 2017
