Up For The Match makes its long-awaited return to our lives tonight. Here's our essential review of every UftM, which was written by Conor Neville in 2015
In defiance of curmudgeonly cynics everywhere, Up for the Match is still an integral part of All-Ireland final weekend. And rightly so, too. Some of us hypocrites are only pretending to dislike it...
Here are the essential components of every Up for the Match experience...
A couple comprising of one partner from each county
'We've got Sile and Brian here. And you'll never guess, isn't she from Kerry and isn't she only after marrying a bloody Dub (cue ooohs and aahs) What was she thinking?
There'll be no dinner made for anyone in that house on Sunday, will there? Ha? Am I right? (Taps microphone) Is this thing on?
A former player in his 50s who reckons the game is gone soft
'Sure they're blowin' up for everything. It wasn't like that when we were playin'. You took your belt and got on with it. Lads nowadays are fallin' round the place. Tis like soccer.'
A Mumford and Sons rip off band in cowboy hats from one of the participant counties giving a rendition of *insert county song here*
A quiz question asking something tough like 'who won the All-Ireland last year?'
Not specific to Up for the Match, the practice is common on the Sunday Game.
For Dublin-Kerry matches, someone will quote the Con Houlihan line about Paddy Cullen running back into his goal like a woman who smelt the stove burning
The line will likely be misquoted but there's no shame in that. It's easily done.
For the record the line is:
And while all this was going on, Mikey Sheehy was running up to take the kick and suddenly Paddy dashed back towards his goal like a woman who smells a cake burning.
The ball won the race and it curled inside the near post as Paddy crashed into the outside of the net and lay against it like a fireman who had returned to find his station ablaze.
A brief chat with one of the player's parents who are sitting in the audience and probably come from the county against whom the young lad is playing
'And I have to ask ye, who will you be supporting tomorrow?'
'(Hemming and Hawing) Arrah, we'll have to support *insert Christian name of young lad* so we'll be up for Dublin just this once'
A brief video clip featuring a poet or a playwright who has scripted a little ditty in the local paper this week
'Our strapping centre back is big Jack Keogh, he'll tear apart and rip the heart of Dublin's Hanahoe...'
Supreme confidence
In the whole history of 'Up for the Match', it has never occurred (or at least not to our knowledge anyway) that a panellist or a member of the audience has tipped his or her own county to 'just come up short tomorrow' - probably not even before the 1989 All-Ireland hurling final did this happen.
See also: RTE's New Show - Up For The Budget
