ALL we can ever really ask of our county team when they go out to represent us is that they are as well prepared as possible and treat defeat as an outcome only slightly worse than death.
We want them to express our passion about where we’re from and never yield to the opposition no matter what the game situation.
A few years ago that wasn’t happening, probably more through a lack of belief than a lack of pride.
Whatever the cause, the net result was we suffered embarrassing defeats in the championship with an alarming regularity.
For all the pain of Sunday’s defeat – and it is a very deep hurt – at least this team represents us in the best possible fashion.
Pride in the jersey? Their determination goes beyond that. You can criticise players’ mistakes and tactical issues all day, but the fact is that the vast majority of teams in Ireland would have succumbed to a hammering in Croke Park on Sunday given the circumstances.
Short our two best centre-fielders, we were wiped out in the middle third of the field. Even aside from that, we were lacking our usual fluency. As well as that, officials got three key decisions wrong, each time in favour of Down.
And late on we slipped seven points behind. We do not have to speculate about how most teams would respond in similar situations – we saw in the last round, when even Kerry, one of the best sides ever to play the game, seemed to acknowledge in the closing stages that it was not to be their day and threw in the towel.
A Kildare team, however, that could scarcely win a kick-out or string a slick passing move together all day, still found the courage to create a situation where good officiating would have seen us awarded a penalty kick to win the game.
In those sort of scenarios, where a team is two points ahead in injury time and has close to their entire team huddled around the goal, it should be impossible to fashion a three-pointer – but Kildare came oh so desperately close.
The Mourne men are worthy All-Ireland finalists and played the better football on the day, and we are normally not into bitching about refereeing decisions. And we would not go as far as to say that had Benny Coulter’s goal been disallowed, Kildare would have won.
But it is accurate to say that if the umpires and referee had got that very basic decision right, we would have been in for a very different game of football. Maybe Down would have rallied from behind and won anyway. The soul-destroying part is we will never know.
Down fans could say with some justification that Eamonn Callaghan took far too many steps for his goal, but scores at different times have different impacts on the game.
Coulter’s goal gave a Down side being outplayed at that stage a way back into the game, a serious confidence boost, and a lead that allowed them to play their deadly counter-attacking style without having to go and chase the game in the second half.
You can forgive the penalty decision late on because Pat McEnaney does not have X-ray vision to see through a ruck of bodies, but the other decisions, Smith’s point and Coulter’s goal, are really galling because they are so routine and so easy to see.
We should be in a situation where those calls are made correctly all of the time, and then we could move on to discuss ways of improving officiating again, such as giving properly trained umpires the power to let someone know that they have seen a player touch the ball on the ground inside the small square, roughly six yards away from their eyes.
If the GAA are more serious about treating supporters like thugs than sparing themselves embarrassment by getting serious about changing the way the game is officiated, at least Kildare have the power to look for more improvement.
We will get better. Johnny Doyle and Dermot Earley are naturally fit enough to play for several more seasons (injuries permitting in the latter case). There is no real transfer system in the GAA but big pushes from the likes of Gary White, Mikey Conway, Mick Foley and Rob Kelly next year would make us feel like we have signed a raft of players.
There is reason to be hopeful but I hope we are not left to look back on 2010 as the year an All-Ireland was there for the taking and then taken from us.
No matter. Trophies would be just reward for these players, but they are never guaranteed. All the players can guarantee us, and all we can really ask, is that they represent our passion as best they can.
They have gone beyond that call. They give everyone from a commuter in Confey to a farmer in Rheban a sense of common identity.
Their efforts mean that when people ask us where we’re from, we can stick our chests out rather than mumble. They make us very proud.