Sport’s ability to replicate life, its perils, joys and frustrations is well known.
It specialises in creating setbacks and comebacks as a key backdrop to all its best stories. Imagine Rory McIlroy if/when he wins his next major in golf. Imagine Mayo finally winning an All-Ireland.
These stories would be monumental, Hollywood-esque narratives, not because of the achievement themselves, but because of the classic rising from the dead story arc both would represent.
Derry come rolling into Castlebar this evening. The story of the spring have become the story of the summer.
For everything they amazed us with as they conquered all before them, they have managed to somehow, incomprehensibly, amaze us with the opposite since then.
Their surety on the ball, their swaggering dominance of possession and games, their energy, their defensive ruthlessness. It was such a package that it would have been illogical not to see them as the third of the real All-Ireland contenders alongside Dublin and Kerry.
The hype train had a wave of momentum behind it not seen since Donegal in 2012. Yet a few months later and everything has changed utterly. Even in sporting terms, this collapse is difficult to wrap the head around.
Not least because at the helm is the most experienced manager currently in the game. So much of Derry’s start to the season reminded me of Tyrone first breakthrough in 2003. It felt like Mickey Harte was doing the same trick all over again. Now? Not so much.
Yet, heading in to Castlebar today, there is a definite hesitancy to write Derry off.
Yes, form lines, logic and pretty much all angles of analysis say it’s a Mayo win, and yet, there is a what if?
Now in a world of comebacks this would be a standout one by any measure. To borrow Sid Waddell’s great line, there won’t have been a comeback like this since Lazarus. Harte though has a bit of form in this area.
I remember playing for Errigal in an Ulster club game against Crossmaglen in 2002. The first match in Omagh had seen us overturn an eight-point deficit with 15 minutes remaining to somehow tie the game. In the replay we fell even further behind.
The first half was a disaster, and we went in at half-time nine down. Playing Cross in Cross. It was as bleak as it sounds yet Mickey was surety personified.
At half time he railed against the notion the game was gone from us. He convinced us that the nine points was nothing as we had a full half hour to turn it around. His much commented on stubborn streak and complete belief was in full flow, the worse the corner he was in the deeper the heels dug in. As a player that belief seeps in. Somehow, we got the job done and beat them in Clones a week after.
Several years later in 2008, Tyrone had struggled through a dodgy league campaign. The team of the noughties appeared to be on its last legs. We played Down in the first round of the championship and drew in Omagh with an underwhelming performance only to lose the replay in the Marshes.
To everyone on the outside we were a beaten docket. We stemmed the blood enough to limp through the qualifiers with most looking in from the outside thinking the only humane thing was to put an end to our suffering and get us knocked out.
We played Mayo in the last round of the qualifiers and again scraped through. The performance convinced no one on the outside yet inside the bubble, we knew it was one of real merit. The fact it was undervalued was great. We played a much-hyped Dublin in the quarter-final and blew them apart as we caught fire on our way to our third and most unlikely of our All-Ireland titles.
Harte knows only too well that things can turn. His very nature is to go against the tide, the more they say Derry are done the more he will believe the opposite.
There are a few key differences though. That Tyrone team was filled with previous All-Ireland winners. I remember leaning on the bus outside the ground after and chatting to Hub (Kevin Hughes) and Philly Jordan. There was the acceptance of the possibility that the team was coming to its end yet a defiance that it was going to end like this.
Are Derry in that place or are they deep down wanting to get this year over with to start a fresh next year?
They’ll feel they’ve years in the tank to get it right, but the way years slip by means that’s a very dangerous mindset.
There was a deep-seated belief in the Tyrone camp from the previous All-Irelands that we had what it took. We just needed to find the fecking thing again.
The bottom line is, Derry still don’t know. The belief is much more fragile as a result. Most importantly though, having won minor, U21 and senior All-Irelands with him, Mickey had that team still believing every word he said. Belief in each other, belief in our potential to win it and belief in our management.
That is the most decisive factor for Derry in attempting to pull off the impossible. They can rail against all that has been said, but the only thing that really matters is within the group.
For those on the outside we simply don’t know. We only know that what we’ve been seeing hasn’t been good.
Yet any of us wise enough to know we don’t know it all, know to write off Derry is a fool’s errand. And let’s face it. It’s Mayo they play.
Mayo, everyone’s favourite second team. No other county has quite the catalogue of hard luck stories. The team that knows better how to grab defeat from the jaws of victory than anyone else. While I really like how they are going about their business and can see a growing sense of solidity about them, it’s still inevitably hard to trust them.
It feels like Derry are there waiting to be put out of their misery. Mickey will be defiant to the end but are the players right there with him? Will Mayo find the ruthlessness inside them to finish the job?
One thing is for sure, whatever the result, there is a massive story coming out of Castlebar today. For me, I think Mayo will surely win.
Won’t they?
Watch the Tailteann Cup semi-finals, Antrim v Laois (2pm) and Down v Sligo (4pm), on Sunday from 1.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app and listen to commentary on Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
