Kings of September

by Michael Foley

  People knew about Tommy, but Tommy was quiet, and allowed his sons find out about their heritage for themselves. At home Tomás occasionally rooted out old newspaper clippings from a cupboard and was swallowed up by his father’s past. Football people in Offaly were pleased to fill in any parts he missed. They told stories about his toughness, and how the same traits passed through all the O’Connors. It was nice for his sons sometimes, other times it irritated them. On a football field Tomás couldn’t move for the family reputation. Any time he got up to any mischief, he was immediately tagged as one of the O’Connors. His brother Liam was three years older, but he never showed the promise Tomás did. Over the road, Jim had lost the ‘O’ on his surname along the way, and his sons grew up as Connors. Jim watched Murt grow into a good footballer, then Richie. And in time his son Matt sprinkled his stardust on Walsh Island and made all the Connors immortal.

  Other families teeming with footballers surrounded them. The Fitzgeralds had moved from Ballivor in County Meath when their father started a job with Bord na Móna, and settled nearby. Down the road, the Mulhalls were still sending footballers into Walsh Island. During the summer the boys footed turf and played football on Sundays in O’Connors’ back field. There were the seven O’Connor brothers. Liam and Tomás O’Connor would call over. Pat and Mick Fitzgerald came and a long supporting cast of Bryans, Mulhalls, O’Sheas and others. The games bristled with intensity, and their own little ecosystem was creating a unique type of football.

  ‘What emerged apart from the toughness,’ says Pat Fitzgerald, ‘was a lot of good, intelligent play. Eugene McGee encouraged that too – the use of the ball. His idea was to move the ball as quickly as you can to the full-forward line, but don’t just kick it on top of them and get them half killed. The Connors were big into that, and that comes from people who appreciate sport generally.

  ‘Take Matt. He could tell you the scoreline between Scunthorpe and Spurs from twenty years ago. He’d talk about rugby, everything. The idea was you were learning from all sports, then you were playing your own as well and honing that intelligence. You needed guts and skill as well, but you can’t leave aside intelligence either.’

  Their heroes lived close by. Willie Bryan was a cousin of the O’Connors and had brought the Sam Maguire cup to Walsh Island for the first time in 1971. In the final, Murt Connor had smashed a shot to the net that sent rainwater sprinkling into Hill 16 and finished Galway off. Their heritage was deeply ingrained in their past, but still close enough for them to touch.

  ‘I was eleven when Offaly won their first All-Ireland,’ says Tomás O’Connor. ‘That’s a very impressionable age. I suppose I grew up with an unrealistic view of Offaly football. I thought Offaly always won All-Irelands. We expected to win All-Irelands, or at least [went in with] with the expectation that we could.

  ‘I came into a very good set-up in Offaly and Walsh Island. I just knew about winning. Walsh Island won games in Offaly that we shouldn’t have won, but we pulled them out of the fire. We never accepted that with five minutes to go we were going to lose a match. Then, as years went on, you could see where teams were used to losing games.’

  Offaly were in severe recession, but O’Connor never believed they were truly poor. In 1976 Walsh Island would resume the dominance they last had in Tommy and Jim O’Connor’s time, lacing six consecutive county titles together. All the while, the boys from O’Connors’ field were massing together with Offaly. Pat Fitzgerald was there, and Richie had already attained the status of McGee’s most trusted lieutenant.

  One day in 1978, work with CIE landed Liam O’Connor in Longford town. As he strolled along, he heard a car horn beeping. He looked around. It was McGee. ‘See you in Tullamore on Tuesday night for training,’ McGee shouted, and drove on. O’Connor had never played any football for Offaly before, but standing at six foot three and weighing fourteen stone, he possessed phenomenal size and strength. McGee could teach him the rest.

  In training he followed McGee’s instructions to the limit. He diligently commuted from work in Dublin and poured everything into training. He dragged himself through the worst training, but stayed cheerful and attentive to the mood around him. If the atmosphere dipped, he could crack a joke or play a trick. One night he reached home in Walsh Island before training in Tullamore without time to eat anything, so he wrapped a steak in tinfoil and balanced it on top of the engine. By the time he reached Tullamore the heat from the engine had cooked the meat to perfection. Nothing would be allowed to impinge on football.

  ‘I never rated myself a skilful footballer. I was more a mullicker. The biggest thing I had was, whatever I was asked to do on the pitch, I did it. If Eugene asked me to do a particular thing, I’d try and do it. I’d know I wouldn’t have the same level of skill other lads had, but once you know that, you’re fine. I could handle it in my own way.’

  He grew up playing football in Connors’ field and hanging around the old handball alley with Richie when they were kids. He worked the bogs every Sunday from the age of seven and played football in his spare time. He carried the same size and strength that was bred into the family’s bones, but by his late teens he had seen enough. O’Connor had to get out. He went to Dublin, and happily missed out on minor and Under-21 football with Offaly. But, in time, the game began to drag him back. McGee had caught him at the right time.

  There was another boy from Connors’ field who didn’t need teaching. Just a football.

  3 THE NATURE OF MAGIC

  Life was often hard for the red hen that waddled around Connors’ yard. Every day she patrolled the farm, clucking with worry, looking around corners. The daily traffic that busied up the farm was one thing. The mob of children looking to chase her was another. It was Matt and the football she worried about most.

  In Matt’s mind the farmyard was a shooting gallery. The frame of the stable door was a set of goals. The diesel tank balanced on two supporting walls was another. The second rung on the ladder was a target. And the small window in the turf shed. When the hen saw Matt firing shots, she knew it was time to run.

  Everything about Matt was deceptive. He was shy and quiet, but blessed with a sharp, dry wit that could cut to the bone. He grew to six foot two inches when he got older, but, even when he was fully grown, no one really noticed his height. No one could ever fathom how a slender boy could unleash shots fuelled by such awesome power, but those who shared dressing rooms with him were always struck by his thighs, thick as elephant trunks.

  Sport obsessed him and he was drawn to beautiful things. Leeds United’s sober brand of grit and competence dominated English football when he was a boy, but Matt preferred the irrepressible glamour of Tottenham. When the boys picked teams for those cataclysmic matches in O’Connors’ field, Matt was too small to be chanced outfield, so they stuck him in goal. But the goals would never hold him. Soon he moved outfield into the forwards and became the best they had ever seen.

  During threshing season, all the Connors would assemble to help, and they passed the evenings talking football. As Matt grew up he watched Offaly players coming to collect Murt for training. When Paddy McCormack, an old Offaly full-back hewn from granite, pulled up, sometimes Matt hid behind a wall for fear McCormack might turn on him.

  For years, Tony McTague kicked the frees that kept Offaly alive. To Matt he was a hero and an instruction manual: only three short steps back from the ball, quick run-up, then bang. He liked the theory: the further back from the ball you went, the more you were taking from the emphasis of your kicking style, replacing technique for power. He carried himself like McTague, his head tilted to one side, peering up at the posts, his shoulders hunched like a penitent as though he didn’t wish to be noticed. But people couldn’t miss him.

  He trained as a garda and was stationed in Tullamore. He worked night shifts, and every morning Walsh Island resounded with the thud of footballs being kicked over the bar from all corners of the local field. He would bring home the net of footballs McGee allowed
him take, and pass hours soloing the ball, feinting to go right but swivelling to the left, dummying the imaginary defender that stood in front of him. No one was watching, but it felt good. That was enough.

  During his first year with Offaly in 1978, Matt’s free-taking became the cornerstone of Offaly’s scoring tallies, and as time passed he started to express himself more. Matches were adorned with cameos of his brilliance. Some nights he could dominate. Other nights he could lie dormant close to goal for most of the game. One explosion was enough to wipe the opposition out. One night Eugene McGee went to see a titanic club game between Ferbane and Walsh Island, and watched Matt beat five players before smashing the ball to the roof of the net to beat Ferbane. Decades later, he still reckoned it the greatest goal he had ever witnessed.

  ‘If we were ten points up in a match, he could be standing there in the corner with his arms folded,’ says Liam O’Connor. ‘But if you were two points down, Matt would stick the ball in the net for you. He wasn’t a showboater. I don’t think there was a vain bone in his body. Reporters would be down in Tullamore and Matt would be out the back door and gone.’

  Training sessions were part-masterclass. At the end of every training session, the mandatory shooting practice against Martin Furlong, who had returned that winter, always ended with an epic duel against Matt. In 1978, Matt was eighteen, Furlong was thirty-two. While Matt’s career was beginning, Furlong’s legend was already enshrined. In 1964, when Offaly won their first All-Ireland title at minor level, Furlong made a stunning save in the final minutes to keep Cork out. When Offaly won their first senior titles in 1971 and 1972, Furlong was there. He terrorised attackers with his manic charges to grab the ball. If a player stood in his way, he risked getting flattened, and instinct told him Furlong was never going to pull out.

  ‘He’d kill you,’ says Connor. ‘He was fierce brave. If he went for a ball, he went for a ball. At club championship level there would’ve been people afraid of him, and you could see that. He had that aura about him.

  ‘During one training session, there was a game going on and a big, high ball came in. It was coming to me. I knew if I caught it, Furlong was going to come out and crease me. I thought: he’s going to come out, so I’ll tap it over his head. So I did, turned around and Furlong was there, waiting for the ball. He bluffed and double-bluffed me.’

  Every evening Furlong and Matt faced each other like a pair of gunslingers. The shots Matt took came at Furlong like missiles. He hit penalties and twenty-one-yard frees. He galloped in from distance and shot from different angles. The players and McGee would stay to watch. Every goal Furlong conceded was greeted like a personal insult. Every goal Matt scored was followed by a quiet titter. That drove Furlong even wilder.

  ‘There would be evenings when Matt would take twenty-five shots on Furlong,’ says McGee. ‘When I look back I can see them hitting all corners of the net and Martin saving some and getting thicker and thicker. He wouldn’t give out, but he’d be swearing to himself.’

  ‘He had an almighty powerful shot,’ says Furlong. ‘You’d have stings in your hand after a night. God, he was special. The best I ever saw.’

  One evening Connor buried one shot in the net, and turned away chuckling to himself. Behind him, Furlong was muttering under his breath. ‘You can kick those fourteen-yard frees over the bar, because you’re not getting another goal!’ For the rest of the night, Furlong flung himself furiously around the goals, relentlessly blocking shots, and kept Matt scoreless.

  They played for pints. Every goal Furlong conceded, he owed Matt one. Every one he saved went into Matt’s debit column. Furlong had grown up playing with Matt’s brother Murt and won All-Ireland medals with him; football bridged the years and brought them together. At the bar they could chat for hours. Although Matt was quiet, a few pints always brought the conversation out of him and they passed endless nights in each other’s company.

  Sometimes Furlong simply couldn’t understand Matt. While the public revered him for his skill and teams routinely went out trying to smash him to pieces, Matt would never respond. He took the hits and converted the frees. Matt’s icy temperament contrasted with Furlong’s fire. At half-time during one game with Offaly, Matt returned to the dressing room with studmarks dotted down the sides of his legs. Furlong finally snapped: ‘Would you hit the fuckers back?’ But he knew Matt couldn’t, and that was why people loved him too.

  Furlong had returned in 1978 after his absence the previous year, but the average age of the Offaly team that started the 1978 championship was under twenty-two, filled out by the players who would secure two Leinster Under-21 titles in three years under McGee. Longford and Laois were despatched without any panache, and only Matt’s 1-5 against Longford turned any heads. Now, they finally faced Dublin in Portlaoise. Offaly were raw, but they would have a go.

  Tomás O’Connor joined Gerry Carroll at centrefield to face Brian Mullins and Bernard Brogan. In the previous year’s All-Ireland semi-final, Mullins had delivered a severe lesson to a raw-looking Jack O’Shea. O’Connor was happy to leave Mullins to Carroll, but taking on Brogan didn’t diminish the scale of his afternoon’s work. In his own mind, he had everything to prove, but these were his kind of days.

  ‘I just went for everything, and caught it. You just went out in a fury and played out of your skin. You threw everything at it. And that gives you the belief: all of a sudden you start thinking you can beat Dublin.’

  O’Connor dominated at centrefield and Offaly flung themselves at Dublin. Midway through the first half, Offaly’s Vincent Henry launched a free that found a weak spot on one of the posts – the post split on impact and toppled on to the pitch. The delay didn’t interrupt the flow and Offaly strode to half-time in the lead. McGee looked down the line at Kevin Heffernan. He was simmering with rage. Dublin were suffering. As they walked off the field, McGee didn’t look for his own players, but the Dubs.

  ‘Some of them were white in the face,’ he says. ‘They realised, Jesus, we’re in trouble here.’

  Heffernan had clubs in the bag for this sort of occasion. Kevin Moran was home after his first season with Manchester United, and Heffernan had added him to his bench. He needed him now. With Moran introduced after the break, Dublin were reborn. A long ball towards Bobby Doyle in front of the Offaly goal tempted Martin Furlong, who took the ball in a headlong rush and smashed into Doyle. Referee Seamus Aldridge whistled for a penalty, and Jimmy Keaveney finished the job. Dublin held on by a goal till the end. Offaly were beaten, but now they had hope.

  ‘That was the first sign of life,’ says McGee. ‘We lost the Leinster Under-21 final after, but there was lots of activity and they could never say get rid of that bollocks because there was always another team coming. Most people were pleasantly surprised we’d got anywhere near Dublin.’

  That winter, Tomás O’Connor won an All Star, and Dublin were nursing the wounds inflicted in a heavy defeat by Kerry in the All-Ireland final. Next time, Offaly would meet men with feet of clay.

  * * *

  As 1979 began, Eugene McGee continued pruning his panel and caring for the newest shoots. Liam Currams came from Kilcormac, which straddled the border between the hurling strongholds in south Offaly and the football heartlands of the north. He spent three years with Offaly minor hurlers and footballers, emerging with a reputation as a sweet hurler with enough of an engine to make a fist of football.

  In 1979 he left home to start an apprenticeship with the ESB in Lanesborough, just up the road from McGee in Longford town. One evening after a minor football game, McGee visited the dressing room and invited Currams up to a senior match against Galway in Kenagh, Longford. Currams was mobile enough to play anywhere, but the half-back line seemed to suit him best. He was gentle, and he thought deeply about the strange complexities of the game.

  ‘I’d be big into philosophy. I’d read a fair bit on the functions of the human approach. You think of the story of the archer. If he shoots for nothing, he uses all his
skills. If he shoots for a brass buckle, he starts to get nervous. If he shoots for a pot of gold, he sees two targets. He still has his skills, but his will to win is overpowering his ability to do his tasks.

  ‘Even when I was in school I couldn’t fathom that out: how you could go out and play well on one day and the next day you wouldn’t play well. There had to be an explanation. I reckoned if you’re not over-worried about the outcome, then you play well. It’s the archer thinking of winning. You must stay in the moment and not get ahead of yourself. If you make a mistake don’t go back and stay in the history of it. It’s an attitude of mind.’

  McGee would have to share him with the Offaly hurlers, but he knew he could find a job for him.

  As the year began, life had got complicated. One freezing cold afternoon in November 1978, McGee headed to a trial match for Offaly before popping over to a club game in Tullamore; he then repaired to a local pub afterwards. He hadn’t paused to eat all day, and as he quelled the cold in his bones with hot whiskies, there was nothing to soak the alcohol up.

  He had made it to Edgeworthstown when he was pulled over. McGee’s licence was withdrawn for a year. Without a car, McGee was isolated in Aughnacliffe. He couldn’t go to games, and training the Offaly team was almost impossible.

  At the time, Currams was living in digs and stretching his meagre wage as an apprentice. McGee called him with a proposition. He needed a driver. In return, Currams could move in with McGee and his mother in Aughnacliffe. ‘It was the obvious thing to do,’ says Currams. ‘He had a big house. Piles of room. I was getting free digs and a car. I wasn’t going to start complaining.’

  They drove to training in Offaly and to matches at the weekends. In the morning McGee would feed the cattle, and leave the evening feed to Currams. Everything about Aughnacliffe’s tranquillity appealed to Currams, but his duties as a driver knew no limits. Currams spent nights sitting in the car as McGee visited players and their families. He would read a book, or flick on the radio and sit for hours as McGee made his visitations.