Sorry, lads, this will always be the All-Ireland Final weekend!

I dreamt all last night

Oh, bad ’cess to my dreaming

I’d die if I thought would come surely to pass

I dreamt while the tears down my pillow were rolling

The Clare Captain with Liam McCarthy in Ennis was strolling

Oh, leave me alone will you Dolores Keane, and that most haunting song Teddy O’Neill!

It’s the first week of September, but my biological and sporting clock is all upset and tri na cheile - ’tis like a mixture of puberty, middle-age angst and post-pension blues!

I don’t know where to start, but I suppose the beginning is as good as anywhere to start my tale of woe.

Hold on now a second or an hour, John, I can hear ye say - maybe woe is too strong a sentiment to be expressing. Fair enough, says I to myself, but my dictionary of emotional terms is fairly limited.

Sure, wasn’t it this very week half a century ago I got my Leaving Cert results? Now, I was no model scholar during my formative years - giving up Latin after the Inter Cert was a huge mistake - look at all the occupational opportunities I cut off in one fell swoop; Medicine, the Church, Teaching and Early Roman Studies.

Anyway, I really enjoyed my time in St Colman’s in Fermoy, and I can still refer to it as my ‘alma mater’ so the Latin isn’t totally forgotten!

In fairness though, I was a bit disappointed not to have got any kind of an honour in English or History, and no blame to my teachers, they were a bit upset too.

Now don’t get me wrong, I haven’t spent the last 50 years crying into my tea-cup about the ‘what onlys’ and ‘what ifs’. We didn’t spill the milk -we sent it to the creamery, so there was nothing to shed tears over!

You know, I settled into farming here at home in a fair kind of a way without ever winning any prizes for top-yielding cows or fattening cattle. My agricultural trophy cabinet is fairly small - but I got a few first and second prizes for cabbage and lettuce at Fermoy Show in the 1970s.

The rhythm of farming suited me ’cause even 50 years ago their seemed to be certainty and continuity. We had four seasons and they more or less followed a pattern in a predictable manner.

I know people say we look back ‘through rose-tinted glasses’ and imagine things were different in the good old days. My glasses aren’t and never were rose-tinted and I’m certain things have changed. We had cold, frosty winters, crisp, often bitter spring weather followed by what summer was meant to be.

This season of autumn I always felt was superbly summed up by John Keats:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

Ah yes, and as I grew from boy to man in the countryside of my ancestors, some things were really certainties - as I said, the weather and seasons, and of course September.

In truth, I cant recall the September of 1961 when I started National School, just days after my father Dan had died, but soon September for me meant two things - harvest and the All-Irelands.

Until the 1970s, we grew oats, barley, malting barley, potatoes, and sugar beet. After a spring planting and a summer growing, September saw the start of the ‘great gathering’ when the land yielded its bounty to those who care for and loved it.

From September on, life moved at a slower pace as the autumn hues yielded to the longer winter nights and hardy days. It was the same with hurling and football.

From the time my love affair with Gaelic games blossomed, the certainty of the first and third Sundays of September was as much a constant as Easter, Christmas, Halloween, or Midsummer.

I suppose change is hard, and maybe tougher to accept as one gets older. Maybe so, but last weekend I was again longing for the roar of the crowd in Croke Park.

The national schools were back with a few days so imagine the excitement, the fun, anticipation, and sheer joy that would have been experienced from Loop Head to Mizen Head - in every parish and hamlet in Cork and Clare - as boys and girls dressed in the colours came home from school talking about nothing only ‘the match’.

We had a busy day on Saturday between one thing and another, with an under 12 camogie game thrown in for good measure. That evening was the Eve of September and should have been the eve of the All Ireland Final. My dream was all about the game.

In the run up to the Cork and Clare game in July, I had heard that Hoggy and one or two other Cork players had a few niggling injuries. No wonder, says I to meself, and they after playing a blitz-like Munster Championship. I got onto the GAA president in HQ asking for a postponement of the game, but no joy there.

So what did I do, all in my Saturday night dream, mind you, I got onto the EU - I’m well in with a few of the MEPs - and I invoked a clause in the 1972 EEC Treaty that we signed. This had never been used before now.

I had to go to Brussels and then the United Nations in New York and explain that, on account of the injuries ‘twould be unfair, wrong, unjust, illegal, cruel, callous and downright blackguarding to make Cork play.

Well, all the people that I’ve traced relations for all over the world were invoked and I got the final off, fair play to me, as John Spillane might say.

I also asked that if the final was a draw, we’d have a replay in October -never mind that auld extra time shenanigans. I was pushing my luck there - the Croke Park mandarins shot that down, invoking the Coldplay and Oasis Rule - at least I got the final back to the First Sunday in September.

I was as proud as punch as I tossed and turned in my hurling sleep-like reverie. I was accused by certain people of being a Conservative - I plead guilty. Others said I was old-fashioned - I plead guilty there also. More critics nearly woke me up as they shouted at me, ‘Arnold - you’re only a trouble-maker and hurling fanatic - another guilty plea from yours truly.

With two minutes to go - gone into the 16th minute of extra, injury, water-break, and cramping time - we’re still down three points. Harnedy passes to Fitzgibbon, back to Harnedy, and the Gortroe man is rugby tackled (that’s what we get from having rugby in Croke Park) to the ground. Up steps Hoggy - back of the net, green flag waving.

Surely now we’ll have a replay - but no, play goes on, Hoggy pulls a muscle and goes off. On comes a sub wearing the No.57 jersey - the year I was born. Tony Kelly fires over a point from 155 yards out.

All over now surely, but the ref’s watch has stopped! Clare get possession but O’Donnell is blown up for taking 12 steps with the sliotar in his hand. A free for Cork, Hoggy gone off - I can hear the voice of Michael O Muircheartaigh on the radio “It’s the sub, No.57, John Arnold, who’s standing over the sliotar, he bends slowly, he lifts even slower and strikes and the sliotar is... it’s gone about 30 yards wide and Clare have won again”.

I woke up then in a lather of sweat and fellas shouting right, left and centre, ‘Yerra, Arnold wasn’t fit at all, at all - they shouldn’t have put him on.” Maybe they were right, but one thing I know, it might have been just a dream but the absolute reality is the Sunday for the All Ireland is in September - and that’s pure true.