Feeling blue after their meeting with the Kingdom, battered and bruised, feeling sore and sorry for themselves. All that remains is a winter of discontent, fuelled with recrimination.

The GAA world in Dublin is a different one to the rest of the country. In Dublin, the football team is a big fish in a big bowl. All bar one of the national newspapers are based in the capital, thus it is convenient to place their focus on the local team. The Evening Herald is at times suffocating in its coverage of the Dublin Gaelic football team. Yet there is an irony in all of this.

De Scribe feels that the majority of Dubs just don’t get GAA. Yes, the real Dublin GAA fan is a delight, he knows his stuff and welcomes his country cousins with open arms, the craic is good and the camaraderie is heartening.

But when the Dublin team is on a roll, when the big stage is entered, those fans who know neither what a sliothar is or what a hurl/hurley (delete as appropriate) for, jump enthusiastically onto the bandwagon, hoping for a ride on the good time train that they believe Dublin football to be.

But its not a good time train. There hasn’t been a truly successful Dublin football season since 1995, when Pat O’Neill led the Dubs to Sam over an unlucky Tyrone. Jayo had just broken on the scene and the rare oul times of Heffo’s army were back….

The reality was somewhat different. Dublin football is a soap opera, wrapped up in drama. Managers come and go, players retire and bitch in the media, and the fans vent their spleen.

Granted, the atmosphere at Dubs matches is fantastic, but it always feels somewhat false, almost synthetic. Dare we say it, but it is almost like soccer. This is the heart of it. Much of the crowd who follow Dublin are there to recreate what they see across the water, in the Premiership. It all began with Heffo’s Army in the seventies, as they attempted to imitate such English terraces as the Kop and the Stretford End. It became sexy to follow the oul Gaah. It was the event itself rather than the team that was being supported. Entering Croke Park, taking over the Hill, this was the best chance that most Dubs would have of showing the rest of the country who they were; these were the city slickers, resplendent in their chanting, ridiculing those who dared enter their turf. They couldn’t do it at League of Ireland grounds, as the stage was too small, and anyway, most of the teams were from Dublin itself.

With the reconstruction of Croke Park, it became even more fashionable to go to GAA matches. Tommy Lyons captured the mood perfectly two summers ago, riding the wave created by the World Cup in Japan and Korea, cajoling Dublin people to swop their Irish flags for Dublin ones – the city was whipped into a frenzy.

Many Dubs entered Croker for the first time that summer, local radio stations spoke in excited tones about this newly discovered game of Gaelic football. The bandwagon had been boarded.

De Scribe is not saying that all this is bad, rather trying to illustrate its uniqueness to the Metropolitans. It is a fact of life for Dublin teams that every year they have to experience the pressure of playing to an audience who may have an unrealistic expectation of their team, an expectation fuelled by media hyperbole. The Herald will speak of “this being the Dubs year”. Shops will sell the almost annually new jersey in their thousands, as Dubs seek to enter the circus once again. Reality will take a back seat….until the ball is thrown in.

Dublin has, by and large, produced average teams in the last decade. There have been moments of inspiration, flashes of skill, drama sparking the team into life. Their second half comeback against Kerry in the 2001 drawn game was admirable, their Leinster Final win the following year deserved, the defeat to Armagh heroic. But the majority of it has been average.

Their championship exit was a case in point. When push came to shove, Dublin didn’t have it. They lacked the guile, the cuteness, to put away a Kerry team that still has to really play anywhere near its potential in this championship. Sherlock looked unsure, grasping at chances and only scoring when the pressure was gone. Brogan had an off day, Ciaran Whelan didn’t look up to it.

It seems that the GAA in Dublin is currently full of style but lacking substance. The fancy soundbites, snazzy jerseys and packed championship crowds all cover up the fact that the county is not producing teams of an adequate standard. Granted, the under 21s won the football All Ireland last year, but that was an oasis in a bleak desert of results.

The national game might as well not exist in the capital. Walk down Grafton Street any day of the year, ask a Dub to name one of their hurlers, and the look you can expect will at best be quizzical. The GAA has a battle on its hands in the capital city, a battle for the hearts and minds of its sports fans; not just for the few big championship matches in the summer sun. In the city, both soccer and rugby are also challenging for the imagination of the sporting public. It is not sufficient for the GAA to have a few packed houses in the summertime, then letting those thousands in blue exit stage left after another championship defeat. These fans must be absorbed fully into the GAA family, welcomed to their local clubs, and fully involved at every level.

It’s a cyclical thing. De Scribe saw the cycle before his eyes. The venue was the Big Tree, the time shortly after Dublin’s defeat to Kerry. The television was showing a replay of the afternoon’s matches. Then it happened. The group of Blues watching the TV had had enough, it was time for the next cycle to begin – they asked the barman to switch to the soccer. In that instant, when the channel was changed, so too was the sporting season in Dublin. It was slán to the GAA and hello to the Premiership. Swift and lethal, the Association won’t see them back until the next big Dubs day in Croker.

Granted, some will follow the league closely, even fewer will get involved with their clubs, but the majority will hang up the Arnotts jersey and exchange it for their United/Arsenal/Liverpool/Chelsea/Celtic, take your pick, top. Rather like the Dublin team, it’s an opportunity missed.