At the end of the most engorged, most 'open' championship in years, we wind up here again, with Dublin and Kerry.When Kerry last beat Dublin in an All-Ireland final in 1985, most journalists and pundits were wearying of the same old pairing.In advance of this year's semi-finals, it was telling that this was the decider most desired by neutrals, save for in Ulster.Today's game has the feel of an epochal clash.A Dublin team who may - may - be approaching the twilight of their dominance and a Kerry side seeking to reclaim their perch once and for all.During the apocalyptic years of the late 2010s, there was a widespread view that Dublin would be winning All-Irelands in perpetuity and that going forward the benighted entity known as the rest of Ireland would be lucky to squeak a couple of them a decade.That the capital city, with its vast human and financial resources, had at last created a Gaelic footballing high performance unit and a talent production system which your average county team had no hope of matching.Those fears have abated somewhat since.
All it took was a couple of All-Ireland semi-final slip-ups. It's also become apparent that the succeeding generation aren't quite tearing up trees compared to the class of 2013, aka, the '93s.The phrase 'golden generation' became a contested one during this time with the rural doom-mongers insisting that this crop in fact represented the new normal: get used to it.
As of 2023, this viewpoint appears less credible than it was.The core of said golden generation - the players born in 1993, Jack McCaffrey, Brian Fenton, Ciaran Kilkenny, Paul Mannion - are either fast approaching 30 or already 'the wrong side' of it.The goalkeeper is so far the wrong side of 30 that he's now the