County football supremo should heed the lesson of old battles lost
Claiming that the referee had not done Cork any favours seemed utterly puerile. Did he really expect favours? When Kerry beat Cork in the National League earlier in the year, Morgan denounced the winners: “People look at the northern teams and criticise them for their cynicism, but the most cynical team is down south”, he complained. “They tried to intimidate some of our players. I counted three or four times when a Kerry player came in with the straight elbow after one of our players had passed the ball away. That off-the-ball stuff has no place in the game”.
Such conduct should never be tolerated. Most Kerry supporters would agree with that, but then Billy Morgan does not have the record as a good judge as far as Kerry people are concerned. In 1994, two of the great gentlemen of Kerry football — Eoin ‘Bomber’ Liston and Denis ‘Ogie’ Moran — were having a drink in a Cork pub after the Munster final when they heard that Morgan had opened his own pub.
They decided to give him a turn. They were joined by one of the Kerry selectors, John Mulvihill, who had words with Morgan on the sideline during the game. They had just got their drinks when Morgan saw Mulvihill and ordered the three of them out of his bar.
In Kerry, there is a tradition that you don’t bring that kind of thing off the field.
When Kerry teams lose, they usually just take it and get on with life. Everybody saw the referee book Brian Mullins twice in the great semi-final of 1977, but he was allowed to remain on the field and help to rob Kerry of what could have been the first leg of a five-in-a-row.
Many people saw the push that preceded the winning goal that ultimately robbed Kerry of that five-in-a-row in 1982. Others saw the punch, off the ball, that took Colm ‘Gooch’ Cooper out of last year’s final, but there were no objections.
Maybe the 1982 team sulked for a couple of years, but the bulk of them came back to win three more all-Ireland finals in a row. This year Kerry people were aghast that Cork’s Anthony Lynch was not suspended after he was sent off in the drawn Munster final game, whereas Kerry’s Kieran Donaghy was unable to play because he was suspended after being sent off for a couple of innocuous ‘fouls’. Kerry people were shocked at the injustice of the whole thing, but there was no objection.
In the 1980s, the late Joe Keohane was one of the selectors of the Kerry team, and he was asked in a TV interview if the team he played on in the 1940s would have been able to live on the field with the team of the late 1970s and early ’80s. He replied that the latter team was much fitter and faster, but the lads of his day would have had ways of slowing them down.
During the week I came across a report that reminded me of Morgan’s and Keohane’s comments. When Kerry defeated Antrim in the All-Ireland football semi-final of 1946, Antrim lodged a formal objection that the Kerry players were “guilty of conduct calculated to bring the association into disrepute”.
The Antrim County Board protested that “members of the Kerry team continually indulged in rough play and repeatedly made deliberate and unwarranted assaults on our players during the progress of the match”.
The Antrim board wanted Kerry thrown out of the championship, adding: “The majority of these attacks, which resulted in serious injuries to many of our players, were made when they were not in possession of, or playing, the ball. Injuries, which we maintain were the result of deliberate attacks, were sustained by eight members of our team. We are prepared to submit evidence regarding the extent of their injuries”.
An Irish Times sports reporter noted: “I consider Antrim’s the fastest bunch of forwards that ever graced Croke Park”.
Joe Keohane was full-back for Kerry that day. Was that what he meant all those years later when he said they had ways of slowing down fast players. There were over 30,000 people at the game. Most of them were from the North. Kerry people stayed at home partly in protest at the price of a train ticket to Dublin — 27 shillings return!
OTHERS were just waiting for the final. As the Kerry players took to the field, the Antrim supporters roundly booed them.
The Antrim players were apparently ahead of their time because they were playing a new brand of football, using the hand-pass to move the ball down the field. “It was the most spiritedly contested semi-final I have seen in years”, according to a report in The Kerryman. “One team (Kerry) was playing Gaelic football, Antrim’s was a brand of football characterised by over-holding the ball and throwing it. To stop ball-throwing movements the Kerry backs pulled the ball-throwers down. This is the answer to these tactics”.
When Antrim protested, there was indignation in the Kerry press. The GAA Central Council met to consider the protest on the last Saturday in August and debated the issue for two hours before overruling the objection by 19 votes to 10.
“Antrim’s advocates defeated their own case”, according to The Kerryman. “Their autocratic bearing and dictatorial attitude roused the hostility of the southerners. The northerners were the self-appointed guardians of the association’s honour; its reputation was their only concern; they were charged with redeeming the good name of the GAA which the Kerry rowdies had done so much to besmirch. All of which would be highly amusing if it were not so disgusting”.
The central council chairman appealed to Antrim to withdraw the objection, which he depicted as the most unusual he had come across in his long experience. He seemed to suggest the Antrim supporters had roused the Kerry players, as it “did not make for good feeling that Kerry should be booed coming out on the field”.
Antrim produced nine medical certificates for their players. “Nurtured in an atmosphere of religious intolerance and bitterness, the northern Gael has a very different mentality from his brother in the south”, The Kerryman noted. “Thus we had the type of objection never heard previously in the 60-year history of the association”.
Various speakers used a tone that shocked central council members.
“If rough play were allowed to continue, the chairman of the Ulster Council reportedly warned, “they would meet force with force.”
Maybe this explains what happened to the ‘Gooch’ in last year’s final against Tyrone. He was essentially taken out of the game in an off-the-ball incident.
“Life is too short to bear these things in mind”, The Kerryman concluded its report of the central council meeting 60 years ago. “Let us forget them. Fare thee well, Antrim!”
Their footballers have not been back in Croke Park since. Billy Morgan, take note!
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