Old acquaintances

WHEN Kerry and Tyrone last met in a championship game, the world was a different place.

Soccer fans remained divided on Diego Maradona’s place among the greats as the Hand of God still fresh in most minds. Garret FitzGerald was our Taoiseach, but people were still rising and following Charlie with reckless abandon. Gaybo and Glenroe gave comfort to our emigration-ravaged nation.

GAA was different too. Kerry swaggered up to Dublin, as they did at the time, expecting a third successive All-Ireland title. No question marks hung grimly over their defence, but there were light whispers that their performance against Meath in the semi didn’t evoke memories of better days.

All the same, they were heavily favoured to beat Tyrone. The Ulster county were appearing in their first All-Ireland final against the odds. Injury had robbed them of the legendary Frank McGuigan for all of 1986, and they weren’t expected to make a dent in a congested Northern championship that included a lively Down side and Sean McCague’s Monaghan.

Yet, the shrewd Art McRory led them all the way to Croke Park, dark and cavernous at the time, its rickety old stands redolent of a magical past. And Tyrone believed they could win. In the week before the final McRory said, “we are playing the greatest team ever to grace a football field. But as Carthage and Rome fell, so must Kerry.”

Empires fall suddenly and unexpectedly and the under-current of opinion that Kerry might be faltering led to the greatest ticket demand for a final since the hey-day of their Dublin rivalry.

There was an added bonus. The victorious team would be the last to lift the original Sam Maguire Cup. Fifty-eight years of travel, primarily to Kerry, had made the trophy badly worn and fragile. It would be replaced by a new trophy, with the same design and name, for the 1987 championship.

But where would it make its final journey? To Kerry for the 23rd time or Tyrone for the first?

Up North, they were hoping for heavenly help. John Lynch’s sister, Bridie had pilgrimaged to Lourdes two weeks before the final and brought back 15 St Jude medals the team wore on the day of the final. This was their big chance and they were looking for any edge.

Pat Spillane recalls people down south expecting a Tyrone breakthrough. “Of all the northern teams expected to make the break-through in the seventies and eighties, you would have put your shirt on that Tyrone team being the one. Like the current side, they had all come through successful U21 and minor teams.”

Eugene McKenna, the soul of McRory’s team, remembers things a little differently: “Art took over in 1980. I was working for the Department of Transport in San Fran at the time. He rang, asked me to come home. I said if Tyrone won the first round game, I would come back. They drew and I took a leave of absence. We reached the final that year, but were still green. It took Art six years to get the team right, it took us six years to become an overnight success.”

Three weeks before the game, McKenna trained with Kevin Heffernan’s Compromise Rules squad in Croker. At the time, the hybrid game was only finding its feet and training was dog-rough. McKenna arrived home with his Achilles tendon in bad shape.

In the Kingdom, there was also controversy regarding their most important player. The Kildare county final was played the week before the game and Jack O’Shea came on for Leixlip in the game.

“We had asked the county board to put the game back, but they wouldn’t. I stayed on the sidelines until 20 minutes to go, when I was brought on. Micko and the selectors were none too pleased,” Jacko recalls. In the following week, as he waited for that fire to burn itself out, the legendary midfielder got the flu and was doubtful until only hours before throw-in.

Tyrone’s ferocious support had travelled in hordes, claiming Hill 16 as their own. As Con Houlihan wrote in the Evening Press: “The Red Hill made Liverpool’s famous Kop look like a faint-hearted crowd of amateurs.” Tyrone’s full-forward Damien O’Hagan considers the moment he saw the Hill his abiding memory: “Running onto Croke Park, looking up and just seeing the Hill covered in red and white. There was so many supporters there that day.”

Among the biggest crowd for any football final in the eighties was Pat Jennings, then soccer’s most capped international and ex-Down minor keeper. What he and everyone else saw was Kerry win a penalty after only two minutes. The game seemed to be following the pattern everyone had laid out for it. Jacko stepped forward and ... “I never gave much thought to where I struck my penalties. I just put the ball down and hit it. Aidan Skelton dived one way, my penalty went the other, but it came off the crossbar and went out.”

The miss heartened Tyrone and the under-dogs controlled the first half. Plunkett Donaghy, his blond mullet flying in the strong Croker wind, lorded midfield while McKenna pulled all the strings up front. Mid-way through the opening period, McKenna released Mickey Mallon with a pass and the corner-forward buried the ball to the net. It was disallowed. The first of many objectionable decisions for the northerners that day.

McRory: “The wisdom of appointing a Cork official [Jim Dennigan] to ref an All-Ireland final between Kerry and Tyrone has to be questioned. If there was an Armagh referee, we would have won. There was a few decisions that we felt aggrieved at. The disallowed goal in the first half is an obvious one, I think it was disallowed because McKenna was adjudged to have pushed a Kerry defender in the back. And McKenna is adamant to this day that he never pushed anyone. He sent the ball in and Mickey Mallon managed to get it in the net, but the referee called play back.”

IT only seemed to make Tyrone more determined. Five times in that first half, Micko sprinted onto the field, issuing fresh instructions to his defenders. It made little difference. By half-time, Tyrone were leading by three points, 0-7 to 0-4. Their roller-coaster didn’t cease after the interval. Paid Quinn reacted quickest to Donaghy’s pass to get a goal two minutes into the second half. Then Damien O’Hagan was upended in the penalty area. Kevin McCabe came from wing-back to administer last rites to the great Kerry team. A stunned McCabe watched the ball float over the bar.

Mikey Sheehy: “After the game, people were critical of Tyrone for throwing it away on the day. I think Kevin’s penalty was crucial. If that had been a goal, it would have put them nine points ahead and we wouldn’t have come back from that. I think, too, the Tyrone side were in a state of shock being so far ahead and we just kept hanging in there.”

Sheehy: “Jacko’s penalty gave Tyrone a boost, but that came very early in the game. When McCabe missed, the timing was more significant. It was at the start of the second-half. Perhaps, Kevin’s confidence was affected by marking Pat Spillane. He was having one of his best games ever and that might have affected him.”

As if to emphasise that point, the game turned on the penalty and twisted on a piece of Spillane magic.

“That goal, you know, Spillane still hasn’t thanked me for passing the ball to him,” Ger Power laughs. “I just remember it vaguely, the ball came loose, Bomber went down to pick it up the ball and saw Timmy Dowd making a run for him. Timmy picked me out, I soloed across the square, spotted Spillane, and he just flicked the ball into the net. That was the start of our comeback. It has become a fairly famous goal, probably the last great goal of that team.”

The audacity of the flick is what has lived long in the memory. Spillane remains at a loss to why he did it.

“It’s funny, sometimes when you are asked why you do something on a pitch, you just can’t answer. It was not something I had ever practised in training sessions. I had never even attempted it in any training session or club or county game in my career. Every time I look at that goal, I see the logical thing would be to catch it and kick it, but my confidence was up because I was having a good game and you try extravagant things when you are in a confident mood.

“Fortunately, it came off because I could have ended up looking the right fool. A year later, we were struggling in a challenge game, can’t remember who we were playing, and I received the exact same pass and tried the exact same thing, only it went wide.”

Tyrone’s light was flickering as O’Hagan recalls. “To go seven points ahead of Kerry was a massive achievement in itself, but it was something we didn’t plan for. If we had planned differently, the game might have turned out differently. Perhaps too, we didn’t have enough firepower or strength in depth. I mean, we had nine or ten players who would walk onto any team. But after that, it got thin on the ground. And then, McKenna’s Achilles gave up on him.”

The injuries came. McKenna first, then John Lynch, who had kept Mikey Sheehy scoreless. O’Hagan: “We knew going into the game that Eugene wasn’t right, it was just a case of seeing how much we could get out of him. The injuries to McKenna and John Lynch came and then Kerry hit us for a few goals and points. And there was no other team that could do that - that could lift themselves to be so clinical when they sensed their opponents were in trouble. You have to remember how good this Kerry team were, to lead them by seven points in an All-Ireland final, Tyrone’s first final, was a fantastic achievement. McKenna was our captain, our natural leader, the younger players on the team would look to Eugene.”

John Lynch recalls the moment his final was over. “When I went down, I knew there was something badly wrong. But it was the All-Ireland final, it’s not a game you want to come off in. And I stayed on five or ten minutes too long. Until the injury, I kept Mikey Sheehy scoreless. Then, soon after it, he got a goal off me. But, the problem was there wasn’t much on the bench. I remember Art McRory being asked once why he didn’t make changes quicker and he said he stared at the bench and there was nothing looking back at him.”

After that, Kerry ran riot. Micko rates Kerry’s second half performance that day as one of their finest. And Spillane had his greatest ever day in a Kerry shirt. “It was probably the best game I ever played for Kerry in an All-Ireland final. It was just one of those days when everything went right, and because of that my confidence was high. But, I think it is accepted that Tyrone left it behind them that day.

“Tyrone’s performance was typical of a lot of northern teams against that Kerry side. At the time, Kerry were the second favourite team of everyone, particularly in the north, and I think northern teams were a little overawed. The same thing happened Tyrone, even though they went seven points up, they never had the belief that they could beat Kerry and it wasn’t a great Kerry team in ‘86, of all the Kerry teams in those 11 years, that was the worst I played on. It was just experience and savvy that carried us through, and naiveté on Tyrone’s part.

“And Tyrone were a positive footballing side, maybe a little too positive, the fact that they were so keen on playing football told against them.”

At the final whistle, Kerry had notched up 2-15 to Tyrone’s 1-10 for their 30th title. Micko: “When you consider it was a 15 point turnaround, it must rank highly with all that team’s great performances. To come back to win any All-Ireland is great, but to do it from that kind of position, incredible.” For players like Spillane, Power and Sheehy, it meant they had the privilege of eight All-Ireland medals.

Afterwards, Tyrone supporters bemoaned the refereeing performance, but McKenna is philosophical. “A few decisions went against us, but it’s natural to brood on that when you don’t get to Croke Park that often. Kerry had been there so many times, the good and bad decisions balanced out.”

Sheehy and Power retired to a pub in Drumcondra to enjoy celebrations with a few fans. At the end of the night the great Kerry forward realised his bag had been stolen. He is able to laugh at the memory now and it hasn’t tarnished the recollection of his eighth All-Ireland success. He even had an inkling the famine was about to start.

“I had a fair idea that might be the last hurrah. We weren’t getting any younger, and none of us were getting any faster,” Sheehy says.

Spillane, after his finest hour, was more optimistic about the future. “No sports person ever thinks this is the end, after we beat Tyrone, we were beginning to think of 4-in-a-row and 5-in-a-rows and everything. Nobody in the dressing room thought it was the last hurrah, but we were definitely a team on the wane.

“It was a special final for a number of reasons, a few of us got our eighth All-Ireland medal, it was special for me because I got the man of the match award in the All-Ireland final and this time I deserved it. After my knee injury in ’81, I think ’86 was the sweetest for me because we played so well and was privileged to join those in the elite bunch of eight All-Ireland medals.”

The next afternoon, Sam, and a few Kerry players, made a brief stop at Abbeville to visit Charlie, before that particular trophy made its final journey, fittingly, to the Kingdom. Kerry wouldn’t feast at the top table for another 11 years. Tyrone are still chasing their elusive prize, although McKenna thinks they should have bagged it three years later.

“We came back in ’89, and were playing a fairly poor Mayo side in the semi-final. Connacht football wasn’t great at the time, and those players who were inexperienced in ’86 were a bit older now. But, we didn’t do ourselves justice that and Mayo beat us in a poor game. That was the year we should have won the All-Ireland.”

Still, the people of Tyrone wait. Their passionate support have been waiting a little less longer to avenge ’86.

Sunday is their chance.