“Will you ever f**k up about England?”

Before you can even finish reading, it’s followed up with its own punctuation of sorts.

“Seriously.”

Barney has had to swallow a lot when it comes to me and my obsession with Jack Grealish and it’s not even the relentless England-watch that’s concerning him most now - it’s when the Birmingham-born Premier League player is likened to a Derry GAA great, another man dripping with so much talent that he never seems to have a care in the world on the pitch.

“Did you really just compare Jack Grealish to Eoin Skinner Bradley?”

Before you can finish reading, “Jesus.”

Was it becoming too much? Was it just Euros fever? It’s okay to like English football and it’s understandable to like it even more these days after it’s been the one constant throughout the last 15 months – well, English football and four plinths with a green Rialtas na hÉireann backdrop delivering bad news.

You could set your clock to either and it just seemed more fun to set it to a mazy Jack Grealish run.

But there’s been a vacuum too and, up until last month, you were thrown a condensed inter-county championship in the winter to keep you going. A championship consisting of five rounds, four for some, and, just like that – from November to December - it was gone again.

In fact, if you didn’t make it to any of the early league rounds in 2020, the last inter-county game attended by a lot of people – by most people- was during the 2019 championship.

Back when Dublin and Jim Gavin were still chasing five-in-a-row. Back when Diarmuid Connolly was still playing. Back when Joe Brolly was on RTÉ. How long ago does 2019 seem now? Long enough for the England football team to start dominating your tweets.

Only a day like Saturday could pull you back from a brink being manned by Gareth Southgate. Finally, for the first time since February the previous year, the gates were opened for GAA fans to support their counties and 2000 souls were admitted into Croke Park for the Division Three football final.

On the drive through Drumcondra, those familiar feelings begin to stir again as a Derry jersey walks towards the Jones’ Road sun. A big game in the capital and there it is, the county colours proudly on their way to headquarters.

Four Offaly fans are standing by the canal eating takeaway but there’s no burger van in sight. One man in green, white and gold is across the road chanting at them waiting to join them on the canal but there’s no-one behind him to support his chorus. It’s all a little different, but it’s all the same.

There are no hats, scarves and headbands, there are no roars of ‘official match programmes’ but there is a pace to the walk of everyone lucky enough to be heading towards the Cusack Stand.

The giddiness is back, the sort you can only get when you have a stadium in view, a PA system within ear shot and opposition supporters surrounding you. It’s the only thing on this earth that compels your stomach to unleash the excitement through your throat with a “come on Derry”, prompted by nothing specifically but the occasion.

A feeling of mischief, almost. A childlike playfulness in the height of anticipation. A feeling that GAA weekends are back at long last and for a couple of hours, all is right with the world.

There’s nothing that can explain that urge to respond to every vocal support of Offaly with your own louder backing of Derry. Maybe it’s overexcited cheekiness.

Maybe it’s just a reminder that we’re here too.

Whatever it is, it can whip up 2000 people into a frenzy, even if they’re scattered across the biggest stadium in Ireland. It starts as a bit of innocent back-and-forward joking in the stands and it ends seconds later with supporters on their feet manically roaring over the top of each other onto the pitch.

A symbolic passing of all your hopes and needs from the fans to the players – a way of saying you are now in control of every emotion I’m going to feel for the next 70 minutes of football and, what’s more, I’m thrilled to death about that.

Niall McNamee has Spiderman hands as he sucks in a long ball landing horrifically between his legs as he sprints out under pressure. His hands just stick to it and, within minutes of coming onto the pitch, he has Offaly in behind for the only goal of the game and the deep yawp of “Uibh Fhailí” breaks through for the first time and it’s intimidating.

It’s the sort of thing you don’t want to hear again because it’s powerful enough to keep the Offaly tails up.

But Chrissy McKaigue is in the full back line for Derry. He’s the defensive version of the Michael Murphy type, the player they say if only you had two of them to play at full forward and midfield.

If only you had three McKaigues, you’d have no qualms about filling your number 3, 6 and 8 jerseys with his skill set, his brain and his unwavering athleticism.

But he’s strong and he’s smart and he’s a brick wall in Derry’s last line of defence and, to be honest, when everything’s working back from his club mate Shane McGuigan in full forward, everything’s usually alright.

I feel compelled to tell everyone around me about a 2014 club league game when we should’ve beaten Slaughtneil.

The faces staring back already aren’t that interested and then I finish the sentence and make it worse and make this the most pointless story of all time: “but we didn’t beat them.”

In that moment though, it’s clear what this power is the GAA has over a man. You feel part of it. Not in an advertiser’s wet dream way, not in some intangible way either - a nice line that everyone likes to just throw out anyway. No, you feel part of it because you are genuinely part of it.

You might’ve lost to Slaughtneil every time over the years but you’re there on the pitch playing against these men now spearheading the county.

Your team mates were their team mates on different development squads. Clubs are playing in the same schools. You’re watching down on Croke Park at players you’ve even coached and then you run into your own first coach afterwards.

As you’re chatting, the old county chairman walks past and says hello in his Derry gear and all those issues your own club had over the years, ones you pestered the chairman with, are simply part of a bigger picture now. It’s a bigger picture that only the shoulders of Play On Sean could fill, as the toughest referee in the country strolls by too.

It all feeds into each other. Every member, every role in the county feeds into Derry’s first win in Croke Park since they won the Division Four final a couple of years earlier.

From the bottom tier, they’re back in the top 16 and all these players, coaches, administrators, referees make their way back up the road, back into different pockets of the county – every one of them as responsible as the next for what just happened in the capital.

So much so that this game – Ireland’s first stadium match with fans this year – wouldn’t even have happened if it wasn’t for Offaly and Derry pushing to make it happen.

And Eoin Rigney deserved that platform to show he’s a genuinely top class full back. Shane McGuigan deserved that audience to curl over a sideline ball with his bloody instep, not his laces.

Conor Glass got his return to Croker via Australia and spent his time dishing out punishment whilst Gareth McKinless and his brave, straight, explosive runs were made for this stadium.

Niall McNamee deserved it because he’s one of the true greats but mostly because he keeps answering his county’s call. That’s the biggest problem when you’re as good as Niall McNamee, you’re never allowed to retire in peace.

And the 2,000 supporters in attendance deserved it more than anyone because they’ve been shut out from the action, they’ve been deprived of those days meandering around a different town in your county jersey, witnessing the top of the game in the flesh again and passive aggressively roaring at a referee just to make a point to the opposition fan beside you.

And they deserved it because they were part of making it all happen. Every one of them.

Somewhere along the way, I forgot to care about England’s misfortunes. When it comes down to it, I was never part of that.