Facing a League final with one eye on summer

When we played Cork in the 1998 league semi-final, what I remember most is that we wore white togs and yellow socks. We had never worn white togs before in our lives, not even as minors. I don’t know where the yellow socks came out of it, they were dire. We were worse. We were cat.

There was all this talk afterwards that we trained for two hours before the match. We didn’t. Ger Loughnane just wasn’t bothered that day. He never blew the whistle to call us in for a pep talk below in Templemore, he just let us off. He knew what he was doing. He was thinking of our potential meeting later that summer. After we won the All-Ireland in 1995, Loughnane had no interest in any league so he didn’t want us qualifying for that final.