The king of the hill

It started out as a joke but it became deadly serious.

Mayo turned Dublin’s greatest inspiration against them in one of the most famous — or infamous, depending on your county — moments in recent GAA history

It began with a joke, cutting enough to slice through the tension that was shackled to them all. There were less than 24 hours to throw-in at that point, and Alan Dillon and Peadar Gardiner had just opened the dividing doors that separated their hotel room from that of James Nallen and David Heaney beside them.

They all started shooting the breeze and were drowning out the ticking of the clock when talk turned to the next day’s semi-final. The first words were about Dublin’s pompous, arm-in-arm strut in front of Hill 16, while the idea of what might happen if Mayo made a stand was formed purely in jest.

They laughed it off as much as they laughed, and after sharing the notion with others, Heaney admits it was forgotten about as quickly as it crept up and the conversation soon drifted away in other directions.

By the following afternoon, it had reached David Brady who found it just as amusing. But when Heaney, as captain, was told in their Croke Park dressing room that Mayo were to take the field first and warm-up in front of the Canal End, he “threw Brady a look” as he puts it. “I threw him one right back,” recalls Brady and without so much as a spoken word, the plans had been laid for one of the more iconic moments in modern football.

It began with a joke but was turning into a marker as unlikely as it would be defining for a famous day and for several careers.

“We had the picture taken facing the Cusack Stand and we just got up and decided to turn left,” says Heaney with a victorious pride in his voice that’s too often alien to his county men. “When word spread about the idea the night before, some of the more mischievous guys on the team thought we might actually do it but in truth we really didn’t think we would. It was curiosity rather than reality. But then we just went on instinct and adrenaline and as we headed for Hill 16 the hairs were standing. It was electric. And the thing was we didn’t fear Dublin. They were no better than us and hadn’t achieved anything out of Leinster. We were ready for them and anything they might do. We fancied taking them and always did.”

These days, Heaney is living a different life and for much of the week he’s working as a quantity surveyor in England. With jobs running low here, a sacrifice needed to be made and he’s married now too, all of which fills in most of his hours. But it wasn’t just that which caused him to call time on his career. He’s only 35, but back in 2009 when Meath surged clear in the latter stages of the quarter-final, he felt the legs were gone as the game simply ran away from him. “I knew that was the end, but I haven’t missed it. I was never a great supporter and I’ve only seen Mayo three times since. I never loved the game. Playing it yes, even if there were plenty of bad days, but I’d never have watched it a lot before or since.”

In fact his first trip to Croke Park wasn’t until the 1996 final and the following year his ticket was taken care of as he lined out in the last four against Offaly. He remembers more of that than he does the final against Kerry, but looking back on it all, he now realises it was contaminated with the same layer of naivety that ran right through the middle of Mayo football during his playing days. It’s that which made that 2006 semi-final different and for just a little while they seemed new and determined and steely. In 2004, Liam McHale had noted the team lacked leaders but two years on, it was supposed to be the opposite, and that semi-final seemed the proof every Mayo fan need. That year, and not just that semi-final, was to be theirs.

“Dublin had made such a big issue out of the whole panel of 30, interlinked,” continues Heaney. “It made them look very arrogant, them striding towards the Hill and getting the cheer and waving to the crowd. Because of that, I think a lot of teams would have liked to do it and it was brilliant. I normally go behind the goals and kick the ball out but I was getting so much abuse, I didn’t stay there long. You could tell the tension was rising and the atmosphere was boiling. Dublin hadn’t even come out at that point and I genuinely thought they’d go down the other end. They should have. If they’d bitten their lip, gone down the Canal End and come at us harder, it would have been better for them. But it affected them at the beginning, we started much better and they were too worked up. They weren’t focussed from the off, even if they turned it around a little in the second quarter.”

But if Mayo’s new attitude of not just fighting a battle, but searching one out had appalled Dublin and their management, to the point their prickles were raised, if appalled a part of their own management as well. Mickey Moran was never made aware, since the players didn’t know themselves. But by the time he’d got up to the Hill after his runaway players, questioning their act, Dublin were laying the cones for a tackle grid and David Brady was right in the middle of it, warning opposition coaches that it was a boxing ring they’d need if they kept it up.

“I don’t think there were many verbals though,” laughs Heaney. “But there were balls being sprayed left, right and centre and the dietician got hit in the head. Pillar ran into John Morrison and then Mickey pulled us together and he said, ‘Do you think we should go back down to the Canal lads?’ David Brady was adamant. ‘No way, we are not moving.’ That decided it. Personally I don’t think Mickey was too happy though, he’d be very by the book but I think it worked to our advantage. The dietician was fine, just a bit shook, and John loved that physical stuff and was pumped up by it. He wasn’t expecting to be shouldered in the back but when he was, he was shouting, ‘You’ll have to hit me a lot harder than that’.”

Then there was the game. The game. At full-back and marking Conal Keaney, Heaney says he’s never been as physically tired as he was at half-time. “That 35 minutes? Manic.” By the finish he was mentally exhausted from praying. At first his words directed to the sky were that the clock might slow down and Mayo might come back. By the time Ciarán McDonald kicked what he described with understatement during the week as, “a big score, a good one, yeah”, Heaney’s pleading words involved the clock speeding up and Mayo hanging on. They did, but if there was his leadership on the field, it was there in the dressing room afterwards too and that day threatened to be a beginning rather than an end.

Noticing the joy bubbling over in Mickey Moran’s interview with the media, and knowing the hype the start and the finish would generate, he hauled his manager away and called a team meeting there and then. It’s what made everything seem so possible that year. Before the 2004 final, Heaney admits that amidst all the hype and hysteria in the build-up, there was no escaping its negative effects and it caught them out. But that win over Dublin was just part of the journey and this time things were going to be done right, and they were. Only it didn’t matter as that semi-final was still the exception to the blunt and brutal rule that proclaims each Mayo season finishes with a humbling loss.

“We thought when we beat Dublin, we could right the wrongs of 2004 against Kerry and that was why we called the meeting after the game,” continues Heaney. “We were so focused. But it doesn’t matter really when you come up against a better team playing better football. You get beat up in the end and we did. In hindsight, if we kept Kerry close to even half-time in 2006 by playing ultra-defensive, we might have had a shot. But it’s just... it’s just that it got away from us and it was over before it started and a few months after when you aren’t playing any football in the middle of winter, you would be sitting down at work or in front of the TV and you start thinking, ‘Jesus, why didn’t we do this and that?’ You don’t get over that, it never leaves.

“I’ll always remember John Morrison saying in 2006 Mayo were the Brazil of Gaelic football but Kerry couldn’t have cared less about that because we played too attacking a game and they knew it. We didn’t bring back sweepers and it was a mistake. We were naïve. Kieran Donaghy was the best full-forward in the game and anyone could have told you he needed to be double-teamed but we never did it. We were a better team in ’04 but we still played the same naïve game then. Every final. We never used tactics to our advantage. We went to play man-on-man and that was never going to work and when I think back, that’s the most disheartening. We never said it to a manager. We thought we could match-up but if that was Tyrone, they’d have brought two men back in front of Donaghy and another man in front of Declan O’Sullivan. Complete naivety from all of us. Then again, Mayo were probably too open year after year. Until James Horan took over, and they’re the better for him now.”

Which brings us to tomorrow and the latest dawn as yet again thousands from the county wait to see the sun peak the top of its head over the horizon. Back in the Morrison and Moran era, the management used to tell the panel stories to inspire. Before the start of that 2006 campaign, there was the tale of Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger in Alabama long before the Civil Rights Movement had begun. But in Heaney’s three finals, they always gave up their seat without even being asked and only now is there a feeling that they won’t budge. It makes Heaney smile because as a player, he says, “Horan wouldn’t exactly have been a hard trainer”. Yet it’s behind the scenes that this side has evolved, to the point it’s always about 70 minutes and not 61 years and counting.

Horan has been the leader, yes, but the facilitator and the delegator too, and surrounded himself with expertise he doesn’t have. That’s helped improve the problem areas he was more than aware of in his playing days. On Heaney’s first ever visit to Croke Park, Horan was angry with the technical deficiencies he believed cost the team that ’96 All Ireland. When the pressure was applied, they didn’t have the skill to hand pass with their bad hand so turned the ball over with their good hand and they didn’t have the ability to make a foot pass so instead got caught in possession. Horan maintains that’s always been the reason they lost that game down the stretch and why Mayo can learn from past mistakes.

“He was very laid back in his playing days,” adds Heaney. “I suppose that surprised me when I see him as a manager because he’s very strict in a good way and fitness and discipline and tactics are very important. Then again when we were on the field together, you could see tactically he was very smart. He could find weaknesses in players and could read a game so well. But he was always a good speaker before games. Like Andy Moran now because he’s more than a leader, he’s more like the conductor of an orchestra up front. He tells who to run, when to run and where to run. James was like that as a player.

“And he knows the mistakes that were there in the past. There’s always been this hype and you can’t blame the supporters and you know they love it but people talking about it brings pressure and you have to be able to handle that. Also in the past, Mayo’s problem in ’04 and ’06 was overachieving getting to a final. If we were losing in quarter-finals and semi-finals, I know that’s no good to us, but that’s probably the level we were at in those years. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. In saying that, ask me to call it, and while this Mayo team are very smart with a brilliant defence, a brilliant goalie, and brilliant midfield, up front is where I am worried. They don’t have someone who has proven consistently they are a good championship scorer, outside of Alan Dillon. I’m worried we don’t have enough firepower. I hope not but I think Dublin will win a close game by two or three. Even going down the Hill for the warm-up may not make a difference.”

Again he laughs. But this time it finishes with a joke because it’s time for a new start for his county, one Heaney hopes brings more glory than he ever had.