The day when Mayo ended Old Dublin’s reign

• Author: Keith Duggan
• Date: 19 December 2020
• Published date: 19 December 2020

Nobody talks about Mayo-Dublin 2012, which is a shame. It was significant in a number of ways. To begin with, the day stands as Mayo's lone championship win over Dublin in this hectic rivalry.

And it was the very last time that the country would see Old Dublin on display - the hard-charging, unpredictable bunch of individualists sucking in the butane fumes drifting in from the Hill and riding that wave of energy, sometimes brilliantly, sometimes foolishly.

It was August 4th and sunny and the economy was rolling along. Life was good and the mood buoyant. But what was unfolding on the field was startling. After 50 minutes of play, Mayo led Dublin by (rub your eyes) 0-17 to 0-7 and right around then Jason Doherty hit a piledriver just right of Stephen Cluxton's posts; a goal at that stage would have left the city team in an embarrassing place. And most importantly, it was a riotous game of football. The key line in Seán Moran's match report contains all you need to know.

"This was a mad match."

And how.

It's almost poignant looking at it from the perspective of early Christmas 2020, knowing what the coming decade would hold for the players on both teams. Dublin, in particular, were playing a game that would be alien to the current crop - spontaneous and largely instinctive; a patchwork littered with the untidy edges that Jim Gavin would fastidiously trim out of existence over the following seven years.

Colossus

Influences peaked and waned. In the first 40 minutes, Barry Moran was a beanpole colossus at midfield. And then, as Dublin got their act together, Michael Daragh Macauley became the pre-eminent performer.

This was during the period when Macauley was a novelty in Gaelic football; a hyper athlete plucked from the city's basketball courts and rampaging through centrefield, arms flailing and legs akimbo so the crowd was never quite sure whether he was about to lose or had just then regained control of the ball. Whatever, it worked.

Mayo were cold outsiders that day. They had lost their totemic forward Andy Moran with a serious knee injury in the quarter final, when they stung Down for a whopping 3-18. Worse, their dynamic young defender Lee Keegan went down after 20 minutes, holding aloft a dislocated finger that had achieved Nixonian levels of crookedness.

It was also the afternoon when Dublin got its first proper look at the influence Ciarán Kilkenny would have over the decade. And Dublin-Mayo 2012 may contain the last recorded use of the marvellous GAA...