Kings of September

by Michael Foley

  The joy in football was always in the simplest things, not in the claps on the back and the medals but in excelling yourself as a footballer. It was in kicking a sweet free or shooting a goal. Setting up a score or out-running a defender. For years I used to spend time on my own, working out ways to shimmy past a defender. Maybe throw my hip to the right and swing around to the left, try and leave the defender behind.

  It was the nights inside in training trying to beat Martin Furlong.

  You were always proving yourself. Whenever McGee brought a new player on the panel, he always seemed to single me out for a hard time. I never liked it. I always thought he picked on me. Maybe he was trying to make a point about no one being bigger than the team. I never thought I was bigger than anyone, but I wasn’t going to answer back anyway.

  You dreamed of winning All-Irelands, but it was only afterwards I realised that wasn’t really what I was dreaming about. Winning the All-Ireland never quite felt like I thought it would. The final whistle goes, you cheer and whoop and shake hands, but then there’s a fella in a blazer dragging the captain away to make sure he gets to the podium. RTÉ are organising to get you into studio later on. Nothing stops. People have jobs.

  Life goes on.

  Mick O’Dwyer (from his biography, 1989): After [1982] I was inconsolable for months and months, but it was only fitting that Matt Connor should win an All-Ireland medal. He was a brilliant footballer and if he had been playing for Kerry we might have won ten-in-a-row.

  Tomás O’Connor: It had a serious impact on me. I haven’t seen Matt a lot since that. I don’t think I ever really handled it that well. I didn’t go see him that much in hospital. Maybe it was a fault of mine. I regret it a bit.

  I didn’t ignore football. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. The first match I went to was Walsh Island’s first game in the county championship against Edenderry. When I came in, people clapped and cheered. People were very good, but at the time it was all a bit much for me. I didn’t want the attention as a footballer, and I didn’t want it now. I’d have preferred to be away from it all, but you have to go through that.

  At times the wheelchair got me down, but you have to endure those times too. That’s what helps you recover. Eventually you have to accept there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. If there was even a sliver of a chance I could have recovered, maybe I’d feel different. But from the moment they loaded me into that ambulance, I knew.

  I missed exercise. I tried getting involved in wheelchair basketball, but you had to go to Clontarf to play, which meant a day’s travelling to play a bad game of basketball. Maybe if I hadn’t played football I would’ve kept it on, but it was too much for too little.

  I started doing a little coaching. In 1986 I took over the Offaly minor footballers. It energised me again. I took it so seriously. When I played football, I practised my kicking every single day. After I took on the minors I didn’t miss an underage game in Offaly for ten years. I went to club matches. I was at colleges games. Any new talent that was coming through, I knew of them.

  In 1989 we got to an All-Ireland final. We worked with hundreds of players and over the years a few came through that started getting Offaly back on track at senior level. Years later, John O’Keeffe got me involved with the Irish International Rules team that played Australia in 2002 and 2003. I worked as a selector when Gerry Fahy was in charge of the Offaly seniors in 2004.

  Was getting involved in coaching a form of therapy? I wouldn’t think that way. I liked it. I had an interest in it. Getting around and travelling to training sessions and matches was hard, but the satisfaction in getting teams to perform and watching players develop into something special was something else.

  Football and sport go on. You gear up to achieve something. Then you move on. Whether you’re standing up or sitting in a wheelchair makes no difference. For twenty-three years I’ve tried to live a happy life. That much I’ve done.

  Fr Sean Heaney: I always think of the way the Greeks commemorate their heroes in ancient times. If you see any of the statues of their greats, even the gods, they’re always depicted at their peak, the moment of their greatest deed. They’re immortalised in that. I always think of Matt scoring one of his goals. That is Matt.

  23 THE THREE-MINUTE MEN

  Back in Boston, as 1985 began, the same dreams haunted Gerry Carroll over and again. As he drifted off to sleep, a showreel of Matt Connor’s greatest moments ran through his head. He could see Matt catching and kicking. Matt sliding out of tackles and jinking away. He saw Matt walking. He couldn’t sleep nights. The only way for Carroll to carry on was to leave the game behind for a while.

  He lost interest in every sport. He stopped playing football. When he started again he was rooted in America with no desire to return home. At twenty-five years of age, his time with Offaly was over.

  ‘I had no problem leaving. It was a good time for me to leave. It was when I had lost interest in playing for McGee. I probably played some of the best football of my career in Boston and New York. The final here in 1984 went to a replay. One team brought on two subs: John Kearns [Dublin] and Ambrose Rodgers [Down]. It was All-Star stuff. I played with John Egan. That was class. Every ball I got, it was: Here, John.’

  The memories from 1982 still warm him. The day after the 1982 final, Carroll called into a bookies’ in Edenderry. Having laid IR£20 on Offaly at 5/1, he was there to collect. Later that week, he left the celebrations behind to take part in the latest round of the Superstars TV show with Seamus Darby, doing squats and dribbling a football through traffic cones for a day. Later that winter, he agreed to take part in a charity race around a dog track along with some other Offaly players. He remembers running a 1050-yard race around a greyhound track for charity that winter with some other Offaly players, including Pat Fitzgerald, the King of Clonin Hill. To stand any chance, the rest of the boys needed to find a way to hold Fitzgerald back. The race amounted to two laps. Gently, they convinced him to take it easy for the first lap.

  ‘I was a pretty decent sprinter in my day,’ says Carroll, ‘but if it got too long I wasn’t very good. I went to Belfield the week before to see what time I’d run 1000 yards in. I didn’t even finish it. I talked to my boss at the time who played for Shamrock Rovers. He said: “You fucking eejit, when you run a race like that, save something for a sprint at the end. At least you’ll finish the race”.’

  With Fitzgerald already agreed to a gentle first lap, Carroll had reduced the chances for humiliation. That night, everything went to plan. As they rounded the track and began the second lap, Fitzgerald stepped on the gas. Carroll was still running. With 100 yards to go, he was still there. With 50 yards to go, he was on Fitzgerald’s shoulder. At the tape, he had passed him out. Chariots of Fire music in his head, and bragging rights for all eternity.

  In time, his grief over Matt’s accident left him, and he began to remember better times. When he married in 1996, Matt travelled from Offaly for the wedding. And when Matt suddenly turned up in New York a couple of years later to get married, Carroll and Martin Furlong were the only Offaly players there. The frustration about how his time with Offaly had ended dissolved, too.

  ‘I wouldn’t say I ever fell out with McGee. I don’t know if people think I did. I wasn’t the easiest player to deal with. I guess I was young and reckless at times. When you’re young you think it’s so good – you don’t think about it ending. I had my disagreements with him. But I’ve had them with a lot of people.’

  He remembers picking up an Irish newspaper in New York one Sunday containing an article about Offaly’s decline. In the middle of the piece, Brendan Lowry was asked what he missed most from the old team. ‘I miss Gerry Carroll landing the ball into my chest from forty yards,’ he replied. The line touched Carroll. He turned the page. Those days were done.

  Back home, the team was drifting apart. Sean Lowry had moved to Crossmolina in 1985 and was persuaded to play one more year with Mayo. They started him in the Connach
t final, and he picked up a medal before retiring that autumn.

  Tomás O’Connor’s life was getting busy. He had a young family to rear and a career to deal with. Matt’s injury haunted him. He retired in 1987 with a mind to return in a year or two, but he never did.

  ‘It just didn’t seem right any more. Offaly had gone down with Matt there in 1983 and 1984, so we can’t say the decline came because of Matt’s crash, but what hope we had of coming back was largely dependent on Matt. Once he was gone a few people started to drift away. It just seemed too much hassle to get back into it. It died away a bit. Things just didn’t seem as important.’ His brother Liam’s life became troubled and complicated. By the mid-eighties he had finished with football. His marriage had broken down.

  Others hit problems too. With Offaly in decline, Johnny Mooney struggled to knock any fun from the games any more. In 1987 he headed back to America for a couple of years, then rejoined the Offaly panel in 1990. He lasted a few months. ‘It was terrible,’ says Mooney. ‘We were at nothing. There was only a handful turning up for training. It was unbelievable. What was worse was, it was accepted. It was considered the norm.

  ‘With respect to anyone who came in to train Offaly, the bar had come down an awful lot. It was accepted that Offaly were in the wilderness.’

  Mooney couldn’t settle. In 1989 he sold the pub he had bought in Geashill on the wave of optimism triggered by 1982, and hopscotched between England and Offaly for the bones of a decade. He trained teams in England and worked different jobs. Eventually he came home to Rhode, alone. His marriage had ended and his family had grown up. Recently he started building a house. A home.

  ‘Starting for the second time,’ he smiles.

  Other players were cursed with misfortune. Having torn ankle ligaments in April 1983 and started the Leinster final without a training session or a game behind him, Liam Currams blew his knee out in 1984 during a game with the ESB. By September 1985 he had recovered to make the Offaly hurling panel that won the All-Ireland, but at twenty-five years of age, playing football had become too much for him.

  ‘I had gotten awful tired. I was mentally tired from playing matches. The fun had gone out of it. I wasn’t able to compete. My ability as a footballer was running and athleticism. I thought I was a pretty handy hurler and I liked it. But when I couldn’t run properly, the edge went off my game. Then my confidence went.

  ‘Maybe I had too much done too soon. I was burned out. When I injured my knee, I didn’t want to play in that match. I was physically tired. My last football game for Offaly was against Waterford in Dungarvan. I went on a solo run, but I couldn’t solo the ball. We were all muscle bound from the training in Rhode. I remember McGee giving out shit to the lads. I was so mentally tired. I wasn’t at the races.’

  Around the same time John Guinan’s knees gave out, while the Fitzgeralds drifted quietly out of the scene. By 1985, Martin Furlong was thirty-nine years of age. When he finally let go at the end of the year, the timing felt right. A year later he was suffering. He needed his fix.

  In 1988, his brother Tom rang home from New York with an invitation. He had a bar in upstate New York that needed a manager. Furlong was forty-two. His kids were growing up. His football career was behind him. They had a day to decide. He and his wife stayed up all night talking. They sat by the fire, looking into the glowing embers. ‘Martin,’ his wife said, ‘we could be here in twenty years’ time doing the same thing. We’ll do the worrying after. Let’s go.’ They never came back. America had claimed the last of the Furlong boys.

  By then, America was teeming with the young Irish. The football teams were packed with stars that had emigrated, seeking a living. At the weekends more players flew over to play matches for badly needed envelopes filled with dollars. Padraic Dunne worked on building sites with Larry Tompkins in Dublin during the eighties when Kildare were struggling, but Tompkins was already a star. In 1985 Dunne headed for New York to play football for two weeks, and he and his wife stayed five years. Tompkins was on the same flight.

  They shared a house for a while: part home, part boot camp. Tompkins’s devotion to fitness was maniacal, and Dunne was forced to endure alongside him. ‘You don’t stay with Larry Tompkins unless you want to stay fit,’ says Dunne.

  They were just two stars in a vast constellation. One year, Dunne returned home with the local GAA club in New York for a summer tour. They played Laois, Mayo, Donegal and Cork, and stayed unbeaten. Only a draw with Donegal blemished their record.

  ‘All the footballers were over there,’ he says, ‘I drove around looking for work here. There was none. I know now if a good young lad in Offaly, or anywhere, was leaving for America someone would say to him, why aren’t you staying around? I was working on a building site. I was starting to learn a trade in blocklaying. Not one person ever came to me. I’ve only thought of that in the last few years. At the time I didn’t think of it.’

  Dunne kept returning to play with Offaly during the summers till the early nineties, but the thrill was gone.

  * * *

  A bank holiday Monday morning, and the gentle aroma of frying sausages wafted through the Greyhound Bar in Toomevara. The night before had been a good one. Seamus Darby had sung a few songs. The place had crackled with people and business was good. The morning brought a tinge of a headache, but he could live with that. This was his life now. Simple. Happy. Content.

  Seamus Darby always loved pubs. It was the people, the warmth in their company, the yarns, the banter. When he spent the night before matches in Paddy McCormack’s pub, it was for the company, not the drink. He knew pubs and he knew people. Pubs gave him a living and good friends.

  Con Linehan had emigrated to London from near Scartaglin in Kerry years before Darby. Football was Con’s link to home. Darby’s pub in the Elephant and Castle was his local. Con and Darby were close.

  ‘Are you fit?’ Darby would ask him.

  ‘I’m training all the time.’

  He referred to Darby as ‘The Three-minute Man.’ Darby always chuckled. ‘Ye were lucky I wasn’t on all the time.’

  Con died young from asbestosis, a chronic inflammatory

  condition that results from prolonged exposure to asbestos at work. When they brought him home to Scartaglin, Darby said a few words at his funeral. Con’s death hit his old friend hard. They were close in age. The Three-Minute Man was Con’s greatest line, and promised to be Darby’s epitaph.

  All of the players will carry 1982 with them for the rest of their lives, but none was as profoundly affected by the game as Darby. Three minutes suddenly defined how the world saw him. People from all over the country visited his pub. Reporters still call to record his story. When the anniversaries of the 1982 final popped up, the same old pictures and yarns were rolled out and he politely retraced the goal again. People still wanted to be near him, to hear his stories.

  The goal was never a curse on him, but it changed his life for good. As the cup travelled around Offaly during the winter of 1982, Darby was its most regular companion. Weeks were built around his social engagements. He couldn’t move for backslaps and free pints. He loved company and good humour. He was living the dream.

  ‘I didn’t have a routine. That’s probably where I got this reputation of being a drunkard, or a fella who followed his beer. I would’ve been out every night of the week. No matter where I went, people would mean well and buy you a drink. I don’t regret any of it. In the seventies I was only a boy; Tony McTague and Willie Bryan, Paddy McCormack – they were the people that people wanted to know and meet.

  ‘I didn’t really enjoy the seventies. I was married at twenty years of age the Saturday after the 1971 All-Ireland final, which was too young for me, and my wife. The world then just opened up. I thought I’d seen it all, but I hadn’t.

  ‘I would’ve missed a lot in terms of being here and there. There was an awful lot of people in Offaly who wouldn’t even know I played in 1972. I always said if it ever happens me again, I�
��ll fucking enjoy it. Suddenly I went from there to being half top-dog, the person people wanted to see.’

  The months since the end of 1982 had been a riot. Winning the All-Ireland had brought fame and recognition beyond anything he imagined. For years his life had been Edenderry and the hardware shop. Veronica and the kids. Another world was starting to tug at his arm, and life was getting complicated.

  By the beginning of 1983, late nights were backing into early mornings and Darby was growing tired of the grind. His hardest work had gone into proving his point in 1982. There was nothing left for him to do.

  ‘It [1982] left a hangover for me. I’d have found training hard enough to get back to. I probably shouldn’t have bothered, and left it at that. I trained hard and all that, but I would still have been out and about. It was well into 1983 and I was still going to dinner dances. I’d have been out maybe five nights a week. It’s a lot if you’re having a jar yourself. It’d be different if you weren’t drinking.

  ‘I kind of felt this was it. I’d done it all at that stage. I wasn’t really that bothered. I felt I’d proved to myself what I had to prove. I felt good about it, and I probably should have packed it in.’

  His fame brought him recognition, but times were hard. His hardware shop had been a prosperous business, but Edenderry was beginning to fall apart. Factories all round the midlands were shutting down. Inside a few years almost a thousand people in Edenderry were made redundant. Money was scarce. Darby’s hectic schedule was starting to burn up his energy.