I thought of the things that Monaghan is celebrated for, the terrific wit of its people; it's marvellous cultural heritage; Nudie Hughes; their magnificent side of the eighties; the greatest living referee.
I thought of its immaculate literary tradition, from the incomparable Patrick Kavanagh through to the extraordinary McArdle Twins. Then I looked again at the banner, and it was hard not to feel a sense of great disappointment, of an opportunity wasted.

It didn't rhyme. It wasn't subtle. It wasn't funny. It referred to the male member, which vies with the female version for the title of the world's least pleasant image. It described an umbrella – somewhat awkwardly - as 'a tool,' which it isn't really. It brought back memories of bad jokes about umbrellas by RUC men as the family car sat in yet another checkpoint, being stripped clean.

One miserable night in the eighties, when what Kavanagh would have described as the "English bother" was still in full swing, I was crossing the border at Truagh with my father, when the army got us out and stood us in the rain for an hour.

"You forget your brollies then chaps" said the 'para' who seemed to be in charge, as his cronies laughed helplessly.
"Who's laughing now?" as my father might say from his marbled office in Stormont, as the 'para' in question is sleeping in an underground bunker in the Afghan hills.

Anyhow, I think lads you should consult the McArdle twins for the wording of this week's banner, or at the very least, Nudie. Finding someone in Monaghan with a sense of humour won't be hard.
Perhaps the greatest work of the Monaghan poet was 'Epic,' which has words that resound for this uneagerly awaited rematch and, more particularly, for the good Gaels of Monaghan and Derry.

The poem describes a bitter feud over an irrelevant strip of infertile stony ground and goes on to make the point that these things need to be kept in their proper perspective:

"I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork armed claims.

"I heard the Duffys shouting 'Damn your soul!'
And old MacCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue-cast steel - 'Here is the march along these iron stones'
That was the year of the Munich bother."

The 'Munich bother' was the great war. The point is that the ill feeling generated by the Derry Monaghan game needs to be reigned back.
The way the match on Saturday is being painted, you wouldn't be surprised if Michael Buffer, the American boxing announcer, comes out onto the pitch in his tuxedo and announces the teams' arrival with his trade-marked phrase "Let's Get ready to Rummmmmmmmmble" then, "The referee Martin Duffy will now issue his final instructions to the players" at which point, the referee, miked up to the PA system in the stands, will shout "No stamping, no gouging, no spitting, no kneeing, no trash talking. Break on my call, protect yourselves at all times. Let's have a good clean fight gentlemen."

The truth is that what happened in the first game was blown a little out of proportion - but only a little - probably due to the fact that it was an ugly bad game of football.

Great games tend to gloss over the peevish attrition. But it is also true that players on both teams were guilty that day of unsporting and in some cases disgraceful behaviour. Some of those taking the field on Saturday should not be there at all if the CCC had done its job. The fact that Thomas Freeman is missing the game is particularly unfair, since his misdemeanour was relatively trivial and it is clear he was subjected to a high degree of provocation. The problem for Thomas is that he was highlighted on the TV and in spite of the fact that there was little or nothing to it, this was enough to trigger a charge. In turn, once the charge of attempted striking with the head was proffered against him and proved, the rule book stipulates a minimum ban of eight weeks. Put in a nutshell, the rules were properly applied, but not in a way that achieved fairness.

I saw everything that was captured by all of the cameras and most of the stuff was minor bickering and pushing and pulling. Yet there were two really bad separate incidents, involving one player from each team.
The CCC had all of the footage themselves, saw both incidents and did not take action. One of them was a stamping on the face, and I am choosing my words carefully when I say this was the most atrocious thing I have seen on a sporting field. The other was a really nasty throttling of the throat. Yet no action was taken. For this, the CCC should be ashamed of itself, since it was an opportunity to punish severely conduct that was truly disgraceful, rather than selecting the targets pre-prepared by RTE.

No Apologies

I make no apologies for anything I have said. The truth is after all the truth. Both sides must shoulder blame. But there is a bottom line here. This is a Gaelic football match, not some sort of street fight. Both managers and both Boards must spell out clearly before the game on Saturday what is expected of their players.

Players can go in hard and manly as they like, but there must be respect and this unreal corner boy hatred must be stamped out. I don't expect an open spectacle. There is nothing after all wrong with the way for example that Monaghan set out to stifle the opposition, or with Damian Cassidy's defensive wingers. But it would be great if the players reflected the proud traditions of these two fine counties on Saturday.

Football is not, after all, life or death, merely the pursuit by 30 grown men of a leather bag of wind!