‘That year ended up like Eastenders really, one drama after another’
Fergal Ryan: “It was 1995, that game, the Munster championship semi-final, that was the first time I ever came across you and I’ll never~ forget it. I had been on the panel since 1993 but that was actually the first year I got a championship game.”
Ollie Baker: “It was my first year also.”
FR: “You came on against me, in midfield.”
OB: “That’s right, Stephen Sheedy went off injured. I started on you at midfield, then I was moved to wing-forward, and finally to full-forward. It didn’t go particularly well for me that day but the three subs had been used so they couldn’t take me off!”
FR: “It was the same situation with Seánie McMahon, wasn’t it? He had done his collar-bone but they had no more subs so they threw him up corner-forward. With time almost up, Clare trailing by two points, Seánie won a line-ball, you got the goal, the rest is history.”
OB: “Yeah, Fergie Touhy took the sideline — he never took sidelines! The ball came across and hit off my hurley and into the net. Ger Cunningham was the Cork goalie, a real legend — remember the save he made against Galway in 1990, off his head against Martin Naughton? Probably won the All-Ireland for Cork. He was considered nearly unbeatable at the time and to get a goal against him then was fantastic. Ger’s first reaction was to shout at the referee — ‘He’s in the square!’; my first reaction was to look down and yes, I was inside the white line so I jumped back out over it again before the referee saw me! Most people forget though what happened after that — Cork went up the field from the puck-out, Alan Browne hit the post, Kevin Murray won the rebound and looked certain to goal but Frank Lohan just got back to flick the ball off his stick. It was an unbelievable feeling. We had already been beaten heavily in the Munster finals of 93 and 94 and I think if we’d lost to Cork that day it would have been the end.”
FR: “Ye probably wouldn’t have gone on to do what ye did?”
OB: “We had put in a massive effort but I think a lot of players would have thought, ‘ah here, I’ve given my time, I’m not giving any more — it’s not worth it’.”
FR: “It’s amazing how little things like that can change everything, not just a game but the whole course of events — it just pulls everyone together. It happened to us in the club a few years later in 1998, we were playing the Barrs, a couple of points down and I got a goal with the last puck of the game, in injury-time — funnily enough against Ger Cunningham as well! We went on to contest that county final then won three titles afterwards, while the Barrs went backwards. One score had an amazing effect on both clubs.”
OB: “That’s it, one victory can set you up for the year. The next thing everyone is in tighter, buying into the whole thing and when you have that everything takes off. As a manager that’s the situation you’re trying to create all the time but so often it happens just by pure luck, maybe one character on the team who just refuses to be beaten, one action that can suddenly gel everything together. You never know when that will happen.”
DO’F: Was that your only goal for Clare?
OB: “My only championship goal, yes — not a bad one I suppose! ! When I went to full-forward the Cork full-back, John O’Driscoll, gave me the customary full-back introduction, the hurley straight down on my back!”
FR: “Ah yes, ‘welcome to inter-county senior championship hurling’!”
OB: “There was no lying down on the ground or expecting the umpires to draw the attention of the referee to it and save your bacon — you took it, waited your chance and got him back. After I got the goal that’s exactly what I did, waited until the ball was pucked out and at the other end of the field, then gave him what he’d given me — he was owed it, that’s how I looked at it. And he took it too, no lying down there either. If it happened today of course there’d almost be another Spanish Inquisition! But that was the hurling back then.”
DO’F: “That wasn’t the end of the drama for that Clare team, the twists and turns — Offaly in 1998?”OB: “That year ended up like Eastenders really, one drama after another, all side-shows distracting from what we were supposed to be doing. We were just in the middle of it, we had no say in it, no control over it, no hand, act nor part in it. But it was distracting, there is no point pretending otherwise. The Munster final was bad but it got worse after that, the whole Colin Lynch affair, the conspiracy theories. After the first Offaly match we all thought it was over, were having a few drinks with the Offaly players afterwards and they were resigned to the fact that they’d lost, were wishing us the best of luck in the final. In our own minds too we were already preparing ourselves for an All-Ireland final. But whatever deal was done in the back rooms to try and get our suspended players back, Clare agreed to a re-fixture. I don’t think we should have done that — we took the GAA off the hook. The referee had blown the final whistle, the game was over, we had won, that should have been the end of it. There was no provision in the rule book to have the game replayed but once we made the offer that was it. In my view that was a mistake; instead we should have turned up for an All-Ireland final against Kilkenny. Whether we’d have won that game or not no one will ever know, and Kilkenny weren’t going to just roll over for Clare, but at least we’d have had the chance. . Psychologically we went from a situation where we had won the game, to a situation where we were back again where we had started. From being out of the All-Ireland Offaly found themselves with another chance and no better team to take advantage.
DO’F: “And still ye came so close, Stephen Byrne the difference?”
OB: “He made two unbelievable saves that day from Danny Scanlon. Danny didn’t do anything wrong, they were bullets, but Stephen managed to get down to both of them — miraculous saves is the only way to describe them. If either of those had gone in we might have won the game but it wasn’t to be — those are the margins between winning and losing. The other side of that though, is that we were part of history and that in its own way is also a privilege. I think that’s the only incident in the entire history of the GAA where a referee’s decision was overturned, the Offaly supporters doing their sit-in on the pitch achieved that. But there was another outcome too. There was an All-Ireland U21B final to be played after our game, between Kerry and Roscommon — Paul Galvin, the footballer, was on that Kerry team. Because of the sit-in their game was postponed and those teams didn’t get to play in Croke Park which was a pity. I don’t feel any bitterness over it, certainly no bitterness against Offaly or Jimmy Cooney.”
DO’F: “Loughnane swears there was a deal done?”
OB: “Oh there was. There’s no hard evidence of that so it can’t now be proved, but it would be pure folly to suggest that Loughnane volunteered to agree to a replay without a deal being done. Whether that deal was reneged on, whether it was offered without having the backing of those who could see it through, we don’t know. I suppose it would have been much more difficult to accept if we hadn’t won the All-Ireland already, in 1995 and 1997, and it would have been grand to have another one, but it wasn’t to be.”
DO’F: “I’ll never forget that day in Thurles after ye lost the replay to Offaly, the reception given to the Clare team afterwards.”
OB: “Ah it was brilliant, but there was another backdrop to all that, the bombing in Omagh had just taken place also. We were fighting for our sporting lives but that was real loss of life in Omagh, no comparison. That helped to keep things in perspective for us too — there were far greater problems in the world. But you know Offaly were a seriously good team as well. There’s another team forgotten in all this too — Kilkenny. They had beaten Offaly well in the Leinster final but they were caught as well in that All-Ireland final — who is to say we’d have beaten Kilkenny?”
DO’F: “Ye also suffered at the hands of that Offaly team Fergal?”
FR: “We did yes, 2000. I was captain that year, we were All-Ireland champions and won the Munster title again, beat Tipp in the final. It had all happened so fast. I came on the panel in 1993, didn’t play championship, just getting a few league games, the south-east league, while the established players were taking a break. We were beaten by Clare in the Munster championship, beaten by Limerick in the first round in 1994, then Clare in 1995, walloped by Limerick in the Park in 1996, then beaten by Clare again in 1997 and 1998. When the new lads came on though, young lads, that brought new life to the set-up — a lot like the Clare team of today. Those guys were used to winning, they had no hang-ups and they gave that bit of a spring to the older lads, though there weren’t too many of us left at that stage. ! Then you had a great management team in place, Jimmy Barry-Murphy in charge, and things started to happen, just as they’ve happened again this year. In fact while you have the parallels with Clare this year and Cork in ’99, I think there’s also a lot of similarities with the current Cork team. They play with no fear.”
OB: “It’s total naivety, you don’t know the dangers, you see only the positives so you hurl with total freedom. I think both these teams tomorrow have that and that’s what makes this game such an exciting prospect. They both go after it, they both play from the front. There’s no fear, they’re going at it at 100mph, no question even about missing it. It’s brilliant to watch.”
FR: “We went on to play Offaly then in the All-Ireland semi-final of 2000, but that game was a reverse of the previous year. In 1999 we went up as underdogs and won, in 2000 we went up as hot favourites and lost. We probably didn’t treat them with the respect they deserved — sometimes that gets into a team’s head, almost unnoticed to themselves. We had beaten Offaly the previous year, we had a very young team while they had a few older fellas, John Troy and all those fellas, and we were thinking, ‘we’ll run the legs off these lads handy enough’. Offaly were still a hell of a good team, fantastic hurlers. Then you had another twist again in 2002, all the trouble. Obviously it was a disastrous thing to happen but there were positives from that as well. It certainly galvanised the team, brought great unity of purpose; it also meant that Donal O’Grady came on board — would that have happened otherwise?
DO’F: “And yet by the end of 2003 you were gone — why did you finish when you did, only 31 and still playing great hurling?”
FR: “2002 was a difficult year with the strike and all that went with it. We came back in 2003, Donal O’Grady now in charge, the training panel was formed and I was on it but had an injury, had hurt my a/c joint in a challenge game — Blackrock against Cork — for the opening of the new stand in Páirc Uí Rinn. We were at a training session one evening, going down to Rochestown Park afterwards for the announcement of the final panel and for players to collect their gear for the year. Alan Cummins was also injured, funny enough another Blackrock man — Donal came over to us and said, ‘lads, ye’re not needed down at Rochestown Park’. That was enough for me — I packed up me gear in the middle of that training session and left”
DO’F: “Do you regret it?”
FR: “You would, yes, I’d have expected to get another couple of years out of it at least — I’m still playing now like and that was 10 years ago!”
DO’F: “What happened with Wayne Sherlock, another corner-back many in Cork felt was gone too soon?”
FR: “Wayne was there for 2004 and 2005, won the two All-Irelands. He got injured as well, 2005, didn’t make it back onto the team but I think the final straw for him was that he wasn’t getting any game time with Cork, but still he was being told he couldn’t play with his club either — none of the subs were allowed play with their clubs. Wayne went away and played a Blackrock game, was reprimanded — his attitude was, ‘look, all I want to do is play hurling and if I’m not playing with Cork and ye’re not allowing me play with my club, I’m just going to pull out’. And that’s what he did. But you’d always have regrets, in sport, in your career, in life but it certainly didn’t hold me back, I’ve fully enjoyed my hurling in the last 10 years with Blackrock. It’s something special again to be playing with your son, and I’d give as much for the junior team as I did for the senior team. I don’t have a junior medal, it would be a great way to finish up my career
nSince this interview, and playing alongside his son James, Fergal won a Cork City division junior A title with Blackrock, fate again intervening in the form of two late goals to defeat Nemo Rangers.
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