‘What Meath showed us was that you do whatever it takes’

JUST over three months ago Ciaran ‘Dinky’ McBride was busy preparing his Omagh CBS side for the final of the Hogan Cup against their Christian Brother counterparts from Tralee in Croke Park.

Co-manager of the side along with Noel Donnelly, another former Tyrone player, he decided to use his personal experience of Headquarters to good effect in preparing his charges for what lay ahead.

With it’s huge stands, giant TV screens and even greater reputation, the stadium could get under the skin of the most experienced of players and McBride’s message was simple: with it’s white lines and two goalposts, it was just like any other pitch they had ever played on.

“I went into that game with my experiences of Dublin in ‘95, but particularly Meath in ‘96, in my mind,” he says. “I made damn sure that, if we came out of Croke Park a beaten team that day it would be because we were beaten by a better team and no other reason.”

Omagh took the title but it was a different story 11 years ago against an inexperienced Meath team that they expected would settle for the Leinster title they had just won after five years in the wilderness.

Instead, Meath bloodied their noses — literally — defeating the Ulster champions and All-Ireland favourites by nine points and the manner of the defeat was a lesson painfully learned for McBride.

An uncompromising side at the best of times, Meath showed no quarter to Tyrone that day — Peter Canavan spent most of the game hobbling on one leg while Brian Dooher and McBride finished it swathed in bandages. Art McRory bit his lip at the final whistle but the storm broke two days later when the Tyrone joint manager vented his anger in the papers.

McBride too was quick to apportion blame. “I was personally disappointed with myself afterwards because I made excuses and pointed fingers at the referee and others that were unfounded and uncalled for,” says McBride.

“What we should have done was gathered ourselves together and said ‘listen lads, we weren’t good enough, regardless of all the antics. Get over it. Let’s train even harder this year’. Instead we looked for others to blame.

“What Meath showed us was that you do whatever it takes. There is a fine line there that Meath crossed over now and again.”

Three nasty incidents, intentional or otherwise, stand out from the game. McBride himself took a smack to the head which he is adamant was an accident while Dooher was left bloodied and needing attention after Martin O’Connell’s boot struck his head.

The incident involving Peter Canavan and John McDermott had the greatest impact on the result and, though the Meathman was heavily criticised for his part in it by some, McBride comes down on the side of the defence.

“I will tell you now that, if I was a Meath player and there was a 50-50 ball between John McDermott and Peter Canavan, I would hit Peter Canavan. And another thing, had the roles been reversed, Peter Canavan would have hit John McDermott.

“People criticise Sean Boylan but were Tyrone not doing the same thing in 2003 and 2005 with the blanket defence?”

Seamus McCallan remembers well the knock-on effect those injuries had. What had been a close contest morphed into a nightmare for the Tyrone centre-back who recalls the swarm of green jersies that descended on him in the second half.

The furore over Meath’s muscle obscured the side’s superb performance going forward.

Mayo manager John Maughan, who side would have their own issues with Meath the following month, was asked for a comment by journalists after the game and he responded with just one word: “awesome”.

Though Meath had beaten Dublin in Leinster, it had been a poor game but the Tyrone victory confirmed their return as a real force. It was also the day when Graham Geraghty announced himself as one of the modern game’s great forwards after a lengthy spell at wing-back.

“Geraghty did break loose and, up until that point, Ronan McGarrity had been a pivotal player for us,” says McCallan. “He found his form that day. The way the game panned out, it was relatively close for a while and suddenly, it was almost spontaneous, things happened. There were a few unfortunate incidents, a few of our men had to go off and they were our playmakers up front.”

While the injuries were offered up as Exhibit A for the reasons behind their downfall, others claim the seeds for their defeat were sown long before that Sunday afternoon. Legendary Fermanagh coach Peter Ginnity had worked tirelessly on the side that year but he spent the week before the Meath game on holidays and McBride for one feels it robbed the side of that extra edge. Overconfidence, he adds, was another contributor. McCallan disagrees but both admit that, with an average age of 24, the team should still have been capable of returning to Croke Park in the immediate future.

“I can recall sitting with Gerard Cavlan on the way home that day on the coach,” remembers McCallan. “As you can imagine there wasn’t much talk. Art was sitting in front of us and he turned around to us and said: “well boys, if we get back to Croke Park next year we’ll have run out of mistakes”.

That team never did make it back. It took another five years for them to emerge from Ulster again and two more to claim the county’s first senior All-Ireland but McBride doesn’t feel any bitterness towards Meath for ending his dreams.

“I have nothing but respect for Sean Boylan. He had identified that Tyrone were naïve in a certain way. He went for it and got it. Unfortunately it got dramatised and blown out of proportion but it was no worse than the Dublin-Kerry clashes in the ‘70s.”