McGee gripped his paper and quietly raged to himself. For six years he had built Offaly up from nothing. He had made mistakes and learned. Kerry were great, but Offaly were good enough. He would tell them so the following night at their meeting in Tullamore. For two hours, McGee would hold the room spellbound. He would work his way through the Kerry team again as he had done all week. There was nothing there for them to fear. They had run Kerry close in the 1981 final and made mistakes. He would hand a slip of paper to each player, detailing their opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, distilling years of information and tactical discussion down to a simple set of instructions. They could see it for themselves in games and training sessions. He would tell them. They were good enough.
He supped his pint and stored the anger for another time. Sunday would settle everything.
PART III
THE PEAK
14 THE MORNING
Athletic interests dominate your activity during the week. Perhaps you participate in some real competitive sport. If your particular interest is football you should get a lot of satisfaction as a result of being on the right side just now. A particular feature of this week’s events is the way success comes in the most unlikely situations. Start off this week on a really positive note, and you can’t go wrong
Sunday World horoscope for Scorpios, Sunday, 19 September 1982,
Eugene McGee’s star sign
Sunday morning came hurtling at Seamus Darby like a freight train. He reached out from under the covers and looked at his watch. The time was heading towards ten. The train to Dublin was pulling out at 10.40. Veronica was asleep beside him. Furry feeling in his head. Stale taste of brandy on his lips.
They were late.
He scrambled his gear together, pulled on his green team jumper and got into the car. As he pulled out of Edenderry for Tullamore, he noticed the fuel gauge on the dashboard dipping into the red. They had to stop for petrol. Tommy Cullen’s was the last stop out of town. Tommy had played football for Offaly and lost an All-Ireland final to Down in 1961, but this morning he was manning the pumps. When he saw his latest customer, he paused for breath.
‘Are you not meant to be in Tullamore?’
‘I was,’ said Darby. ‘I’m on the fucking way.’
Tommy filled the tank, and dug deep for a piece of wisdom for Darby to carry through the day. ‘Well, you’re late. You better move.’
As he swung his car into the train station, the last of the team was boarding. Tom Donoghue had returned from a quick trip home to gather up the net of footballs he had forgotten. Darby leapt on the train and the team were off.
With a carriage to themselves, the players settled down for the short trip. With the footballs safely stored away, Tom Donoghue regaled the boys with a dream that had visited him the night before. Offaly were playing Kerry in a schoolyard, scuffing the ball across the tarmacadam. In the end, he said, Offaly won by a point. ‘I tell ye, lads,’ he chuckled, ‘it was one dream I didn’t want to wake up from.’
That morning, all the Connors had been to Mass in Walsh Island. As he concluded his sermon, the local priest wished them the best of luck – and a hundred eyes drifted towards them. At that moment, something inside Richie Connor tightened up. It was strange. Walsh Island wasn’t a place for heroes. Usually, people simply saw neighbours who were footballers, though cabinets all over the parish groaned with county medals. Willie Bryan and their brother Murt had brought Offaly’s first All-Ireland back to Walsh Island, to the bonfires and the pouring rain. Today was different. There was history in this final, and the four Connors were bringing that to their neighbours’ doorsteps that Sunday morning.
In Newbridge, Pat Fitzgerald was up and about early, breakfast eaten, bags packed. He was driving to Dublin, and leaving his car with his brother-in-law. There was nothing about the day that could creep up on him. There was no fasting, no worrying. Everything was ready. The butterflies were zipping around his guts as normal, but this time they were flying in formation.
When the train arrived in Heuston Station, the team bus outside whisked them away to the anonymity of the team hotel. McGee was waiting for them.
* * *
That morning, the trains pulling out of Kerry teemed with people. When the first train reached Killarney, Weeshie Fogarty and his son Ciarán stepped aboard and found some seats, the inheritors of an undying ritual. Fogarty had grown up in the town watching great teams roll out of the railway station for matches in Croke Park before returning with All-Ireland titles. In 1953 he listened on the radio as Kerry met Armagh in the final. Just before half-time, Bill McCorry of Armagh missed a penalty, Kerry cut loose in the second-half and poor Bill carried one unfortunate moment to his grave. Down in Killarney, it made heroes of local men.
‘When that final was over and the full-time whistle went on the radio, we had arranged to go to the seminary field at St Brendan’s College and we had a fifteen-a-side game. The match was gone into your blood and into your mind. The week previously we’d been collecting jam jars in the Killarney dump pit. We’d collect the jars, wash them and sell them. We were after buying a football for ten shillings and sixpence. When we were collecting the jars we found an old oil lamp and I brought the lamp home to my mother. It was shaped like a cup and she got out the Brasso and polished it up. And we played our All-Ireland final that Sunday for that cup with the ball we bought from the jam jars we had collected.’
Two years after the 1953 final, Fogarty travelled to Croke Park as Kerry beat Dublin, and never missed another final. He grew up among All-Ireland winners and learned to aspire to the same things. Fogarty would eventually play for Kerry at every level, and for years had lodged himself at the back of Fitzgerald Stadium to watch Kerry train. He had been there on Mick O’Dwyer’s first night. He had witnessed Dr Eamonn O’Sullivan prepare teams at the end of a career that saw him win All-Ireland titles in five different decades stretching back to the twenties. He had worked under O’Sullivan in St Finan’s, the psychiatric hospital tthat overlooked Fitzgerald Stadium.
O’Sullivan had been a revolutionary. A bell hung in one corner of his office, tinkling to notify the doctor of impending company. He carried himself with a certain air of detachment, as though more profound thoughts and ideas were always arresting his attention. He committed his thoughts on occupational therapy to print and allowed some of his patients work on the building of Fitzgerald Stadium. He also produced a training manual: The Art and Science of Gaelic Football. It quickly became a bible.
In time, Fogarty had become a referee and had officiated at Offaly’s All-Ireland semi-final against Galway. Sometimes he wondered how many finals he might have refereed if only for O’Dwyer’s team. Kerry’s prosperity always doomed their referees to a career in the wings.
The mood around him on the train was cheery. The supporters weren’t worried, and from what Fogarty had seen at close quarters, Offaly had nothing for Kerry to be overly concerned about. The journey passed merrily. They would be in Dublin soon.
The Kerry players’ morning began with all the familiar trappings of September. For Mikey Sheehy, a day’s fretting always began when he drew back the curtains and looked to the skies. This morning was grey, but no wind. Good enough, he thought. Too much wind was a free-taker’s nightmare. The rain he could handle.
Downstairs, the hotel was emptied of supporters. The usual gaggle of players congregated in different groups, waiting for the day to begin. Jack O’Shea headed for the local pitch-and-putt course with the younger players and played a few holes. The same cackles of laughter that had followed Páidí Ó Sé the previous day in Killarney were there in Malahide. All the talking had been done on the beach and over the previous six years. There was nothing left to say. Time to head for Croke Park.
Some travelled by bus. A few travelled by car. Some players felt a tension that had never been there before. Mikey Sheehy had never known anything like it. Ger O’Keeffe had been worried for a while now, and the feeling in his guts didn’
t improve his mood.
‘I was unbelievably nervous. The butterflies were extraordinary. A lot of us were mentally drained, and subsequently physically drained. Even Dwyer was tense. There was no cooling impact. But how could there be? We were there to make history. You had other teams who had won four in a row. It had been said to us: “You’ll never be as good as the John Dowlings, the Paudie Sheehys, the Joe Keohanes.” There would’ve been that little thing there in fellas’ minds as well: if we win five in a row, we’ll be known as the greatest Kerry team of all time. If you add all the little psychological bits and pieces knocking on your brain, you’ll have enough of a collective amount of bullshit that you’ll believe in the end.’
Back in the city centre, McGee had sent his players for a walk in Merrion Square. Now they were back for one final chat. The same simple message floated around the meeting. ‘If each man doesn’t believe he can outplay his opponent,’ said McGee, ‘there’s no point in being there. We’ve worked for fifty-two weeks in the muck and dirt for this day. When the time comes, don’t go out and waste it.’ He turned to corner-back Mick Fitzgerald, and prodded him to speak. Fitzgerald had been added to the Offaly panel in 1973, the season after they won their last All-Ireland. He had been known as a centrefielder and in time would end his career having played in every position for Offaly aside from goalkeeper, but McGee had transformed him into a corner-back designed to hold Mikey Sheehy.
Fitzgerald burned with intensity. He had no patience for those who didn’t put the work in, and over the years he reckoned some of those sorts had made the team before he did. When he questioned McGee’s decisions, they butted heads. Both were stubborn, and in the end Fitzgerald had left the panel for a few years.
Since his return, the defence had solidified. Along with Sean Lowry, Richie Connor and Martin Furlong, he had become part of the team’s conscience. Some players feared him. On match days he sought peace and quiet for his nerves to settle, and growled when people came near him. Training matches spent in his company were as brutal as competitive games. He demanded everything from those around him, but gave everything in return. Now, with a few hours left before the greatest challenge of their lives as footballers, after years of scrapes with McGee and tetchy training sessions, Fitzgerald was the one McGee sought.
‘The only thing on my mind was that white thing. The ball. McGee had already mentioned it at an earlier meeting, about the importance of making sure Kerry didn’t get it too easily. If we had our hands on it, we had to use it or put it out over the sideline. That was what was up here, in our heads. We had to put all the other stuff aside. Concentrate on this white thing.’
To Mick Fitzgerald every layer of hype and tactical thinking melted away. It was that simple.
* * *
Inside the Kerry dressing room, players were settling down, but county secretary Gerald Whyte was getting twitchy. Having conjured tickets from nowhere for the general public all week, now he couldn’t secure one for himself. A limited number of sideline passes were issued to the senior and minor teams and, having squeezed as many people as he could into the dugout, Whyte realised he had nothing left for himself. As he argued with a Croke Park official for more space, he stormed out the door, cracked his head off the doorframe, and passed out. When he awoke, they had got him a ticket and others he was looking for, but a difficult afternoon was only beginning.
The new jerseys were missing. Whyte swept the dressing rooms. Nothing. He remembered bringing them out to the bus. Now, they were gone. He struggled back out to the bus and searched the baggage hold. He looked in the overhead racks and around the seats. Nothing. Then, at the very back, piled up in a tatty cardboard box, he found them. He sighed, lifted them up and headed back inside.
As the jerseys were given out, the players looked at them but didn’t pause to consider their sartorial merit. It was just as well. They were green. Lime green. The yellow collars and cuffs didn’t distract from the horror of the jersey that was being foisted on them for the biggest day of their lives.
‘They were hideous,’ says Tom Spillane. ‘They weren’t even a proper green. There were issues with that jersey. It didn’t affect us, but our preparations were blighted.’
But in the end Tom didn’t care. None of them did. Kerry had been chopping and changing jerseys for a few years against Offaly. ‘The jerseys could be purple with pink spots,’ said Mikey Sheehy. ‘Whatever the people might say at home, Kerry jerseys wouldn’t win a game against this crowd.’
They all went through their rituals. Charlie Nelligan sat silently, his back against the cold wall, eyes closed. His mind was in a state of near-delirium. When he opened his eyes, he felt dizzy, but it was familiar and made him feel better.
Ger Power was cool. John Egan sat beside Ogie Moran with a gentle grin playing around his lips. After all the political pulling and dragging of the summer, he had made it. Pat Spillane sat in his tracksuit top, willing his knee to be right. On the other side of the dressing room, Jimmy Deenihan sat, feeling a strange kind of satisfaction. He had never worn a tracksuit on All-Ireland final day, but at least he had made it. Páidí Ó Sé was starting to stoke the fires, while down the line John O’Keeffe was thinking of Matt. Only Matt.
Offaly were arriving. As the bus trundled over the Canal Bridge, ‘Five in a Row’ came blaring from the back of a van and wafted through the open windows. They got off the bus and waded through the crowd. Outside the ground, stand tickets costing IR£6.50 were being sold for IR£60. All down Jones’s Road the flag and hat sellers were making a killing on five-in-a-row gear. As Richie Connor forced his way towards the players’ entrance, a woman weighed down with five-in-a-row scarves stood in front of him.
‘Hey mister! Buy a scarf! They’re lovely!’
Connor pulled his kit bag from behind him and showed her the Offaly crest on the side.
‘Ah go on,’ she said. ‘You’ll take one anyway!’
As the minor final between Kerry and Dublin continued, Pat Spillane wandered out to the corner of the tunnel. A few minutes later he was joined by Liam O’Connor and Padraic Dunne. A few minutes passed before Dunne hopped the first ball.
‘Who’s winning?’
Spillane looked up. ‘Kerry.’
‘Right,’ said Dunne. ‘Who are you, now? Are you with one of the Kerry teams?’
O’Connor stifled a chuckle, and before Spillane had a chance to compose a reply, the kid was gone.
Down the hall, Eugene McGee was pacing. The old masseur, Ossie Bennett, was at his table, going through his list of patients. As McGee walked by, he grabbed his arm and pulled him in. ‘They’re as finely toned as you’re going to get,’ he whispered. ‘They’re perfect.’
Sean Lowry was talking out loud for anyone who would listen: ‘Remember to change the studs on your boots just before you go out, so the loose grass won’t stick to rough edges on the old ones,’ he said. Other players and selectors moved through the players, calming some, rousing up others. All the pressure that had followed Liam Currams into the 1981 final had fallen away. Now it was just him and his friends. He was living in the moment, just as he knew he had to. As he slipped on his boots, he never felt the medal of the Holy Spirit his mother had quietly placed in it the night before.
Tomás O’Connor was winding himself up. Today he would quieten some people. A knot of nerves sat in the bottom of John Guinan’s stomach and no amount of trips to the toilet could shift it. Mick Fitzgerald had entered his own world of silence. Only Mikey Sheehy could intrude on his thoughts.
It was almost time. Fr Heaney was flitting around the edges of the scene when McGee approached him and asked if he could say a prayer. ‘I was totally flummoxed,’ says Fr Heaney. ‘But I said okay. There I was, stuck, wondering what was I going to say? So Eugene said: “Before we do anything else I’ll ask Fr Heaney to say a prayer. We usually go to Mass together but we left it to yourselves.” I just said one or two sentences. The main thing was to give us the conviction and the relaxation to perform.
To show our talents. To thank God for the gifts we have and to take this opportunity. To have no fear.’
Then, McGee spoke. The message was simple. Remember what they had spoken about the night before and that morning. He told Gerry Carroll to avoid solo runs on his left foot, and Liam Currams not to hare upfield. Finding himself up there would be considered a crime. Shooting for goal was tantamount to murder. Then there was that song.
‘They’re talking about Matt Connor being a fallen star,’ he said. ‘Let the stars fall in that dressing room. You could go down as the team that gave the Kerry team the five-in-a-row, or as the team that stopped them. You’ve nothing to lose.’
Then, at the last moment, Sean Lowry told his story. He asked them to remember the people at home. Their people. They were carrying a small, noble tradition with them. Generations of players from Walsh Island and Ferbane, Rhode and Edenderry could never have imagined that an Offaly team could position itself so close to history. The mood lifted again. They walked out the door, leaving the lives they knew behind them.
* * *
Offaly trotted out on to the field and ran into a wall of noise. Michael Lowry jogged alongside the Hogan Stand and heard a shout: ‘Come on, Ferbane!’ Kay and Sean Flynn were neighbours from home and he waved back. For a second he thought about the hype and the noise, and the Artane Boys’ Band and the thousands of others in the stands and terraces, and amid all the madness, he had heard a familiar voice. There was comfort in that.
The Kerry boys knew the track better and the noise and ceremony melted into a background hum. Charlie Nelligan brought Jacko in to take a few shots on him. Mikey Sheehy practised some frees. Grey clouds squatted overhead. The oncoming rain heavied the air with foreboding and mingled with the growing tension around the ground. The moment was upon them all.
Kings of September Page 16