This overlooked corner of Dublin has brought us diamonds like Troy and Kellie

Pair shine a light on the proud north inner city

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IMAGINE it as the nation's diamond mine, a too-often neglected corner of Dublin from which Troy Parrott, the Sheriff Street solitaire, is just the latest to emerge and dazzle, his brilliance lifting Ireland's mood to a sparkle as vivid as any rhinestone.

When Troy so unforgettably opened the zip-lock on his emotions and allowed the tears to flood out, a sobbing Pied Piper followed by a million countrymen and women weeping with joy, it was the laneways where he was formed filling his mind’s eye.

In that Budapest reverie he saw his family, friends and the streets where they grew together, the odds they had been compelled to defy most days of their life.

And he dissolved with a love that invaded the heart of every one of us caught on the meat-hook of his passionate sense of place, the shared Irishness of this vaulting moment.

The one that triggered all those social media clips of insane, life-affirming celebrations - from Dublin Airport to local bars, the manic commentaries, the wild, unstoppable celebration of feeling as alive as it is possible to feel.

Troy's affection was for roads hard by Connolly Station, the veins and arteries that then run down the limbs of Summerhill and Ballybough to the southern flank of Croke Park where his alma mater, O'Connell School, is located.

Dublin’s north inner city. Proud and ravaged and most-frequently ignored.

STORM

An area often at the eye of a storm of societal contempt, abandoned by Official Ireland, shamefully dismissed in one-dimensional caricatures depicting a crime-infested, drug-ravaged, workshy ghetto that is home to a basket of deplorables.

A grievous affront to a community that, time and again, rises valiantly, heroically, above terrible, systemic disadvantage.