The odds Stacked against them

AIB All-Ireland Club SFC semi-final

If it wasn’t for a pair of fine days in February and March 38 years ago, Austin Stacks may consider tomorrow’s venue and opponents as ominous for their chances of victory.

O’Moore Park has been a graveyard for Kerry clubs in recent times. Dr Crokes (2012, ‘14), Dromid Pearses (2012) and Laune Rangers (1997) have all lost All-Ireland semi-finals in Portlaoise. Crokes also went down in an All-Ireland replay there eight years ago.

Facing Slaughtneil, Stacks may also be aware their county’s champions haven’t fared too well against Ulster sides in the All-Ireland stages.

Dr Crokes have lost twice to Crossmaglen (2007, 2012), Pearses were beaten by Tyrone’s Derrytresk three years ago.

It was in Portlaoise against Crossmaglen that the Killorglin men lost in ‘97. Then there was Finuge and Spa in the 2010 and 2013 intermediate finals, both defeated by Cookstown as were Duagh to Greencastle in the 2007 junior final.

If Stacks didn’t know better, the combination might be termed as a perfect storm but those of a greater vintage won’t be daunted. Those raised on the stories of ‘77, about that provincial and All-Ireland club campaign of comebacks, won’t travel with trepidation either.

Thousands will converge in Portlaoise just as they did when Stacks belied The Town’s home advantage all those years ago.

Centre-back Tony O’Keeffe remembers reading an annual report at the end of that year when it was revealed the game, watched by 10,000, was the fourth largest attendance in Leinster that year.

“When you consider Dublin were at their height that was significant. I was teaching in Galway at the time and there was quite a number of people at the match. They wanted to see the likes of Sheehy, Power, Long and Prendergast. There wasn’t TV at the same time either.”

Now the GAA’s Central Competitions Control Committee chairman, O’Keeffe’s other memory, apart from the relief at the final whistle, was his marking assignment on the aforementioned Tom Prendergast.

“There was a friend of mine living in New York at the time and sometime later he sent me a copy of the Sunday Independent in which there was a sentence like ‘Tom Prendergast won possession, leaving Tony O’Keeffe in his wake’. I never forget that.”

Just as it was for them in the Munster final against St Finbarr’s, Stacks squeezed over the line first. In that provincial decider in Tralee, Billy Curtin was brought down and won a late penalty.

According to a report at the time, there seemed confusion in the message directed to penalty-taker Mikey Sheehy. Instead of striking the ball over the bar to all but ensure a replay, he found the net.

“Grand larceny” is how one observer put it following the match. Sheehy wouldn’t go that far, but for the glittering team they had, he acknowledged Stacks were poor.

In Portlaoise, Prendergast score a goal in each half. Portlaoise led by one point at the interval and just as Sheehy had helped Stacks edge ahead, Prendergast goaled again.

Once more, Sheehy led the recovery only for Portlaoise to equalise. Substitute Paudie McCarthy turned hero for the Tralee men with a point, which was followed by a Timmy Sheehan goal in the last minute to end a topsy-turvy contest.

“We looked beaten for long periods of that game,” recalled Sheehan.

“I got the goal there near the end but Mikey Sheehy gave what you may call a Jonny Sexton display that day.

“The pitches that time, you were playing in fields of porridge. You could hear the squelching of Mikey’s boots as he was going up to kick frees. Anything inside their half of the pitch and with the old football, he was putting them on top of the net.”

The March 13 final against Derry’s Ballerin in Croke Park followed a slightly similar if more dramatic script. Ballerin struck for two early goals. After 20 minutes, Stacks trailed by 2-5 to 0-3. McCarthy found the net and they were four in arrears at half-time.

With the wind, Sheehy’s radar was deadly in the second half and Stacks were back on level terms only for Ballerin to go a couple ahead with 13 minutes left.

Fionan Ryan and Sheehy tied up the game once more when Ger Power took over, sticking over a point before winning a free for Sheehy to convert. And once more it was Sheehan who registered the last score, this time with a point from the right wing.

“Sean O’Connell was at the end of his career and was playing at full-forward for Ballerin,” recounts Sheehan.

“We looked goosed but we got a goal back and Mikey just started kicking points from O’Connell Street. I won’t say it was like Kerry last year, but in a season we weren’t expected to do it, we won.

“We played Thomond College the year after and we went to three matches and two extra-times down in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. They walked the All-Ireland after that. It was a kind of a Christmas present the year we won it because it was against all odds. Every game took a pattern that saw us having to come from behind to win it.

“In a way, we could have ended up like Mayo with people saying ‘You should have won an All-Ireland’. An Ghaeltacht had the Ó Sés, Dara Ó Cinnéide and Aodan MacGearailt and they never won it. The Crokes have been there for four years with the Gooch, Eoin Brosnan, Kieran O’Leary, Fionn Fitzgerald and Daithi Casey and they haven’t won it. When we look back we won the lottery that year.”

O’Keeffe didn’t join in the post-match celebrations after either game. Teaching in Galway in the time, he “had to go back both Sunday nights to teach the following day. I’ve no memories of celebrations other than the night there was a big dinner in Tralee shortly after.”

He thinks back to that day and his friend and Ballerin man Colum P Mullan, who’s since passed away, sitting in a wheelchair behind the goals after being involved in a car crash in 1973.

Eleven months later and O’Keeffe’s neighbour and Stacks’ corner-back Gary Scollard suffered the same fate as he tended to his engine coming home after a postponed National Hurling League game against Carlow.

“Himself and Colum got to know each other well in the national rehabilitation centre afterwards,” recalls O’Keeffe. “I’d have studied and played with Colum in Maynooth. For those reasons, that game would be poignant for me.”

Comparing Stacks then and now ends here. But just a few days short of 16 months since Dr Crokes sent them back to Tralee from Lewis Road after an unmerciful 16-point trimming, Stacks are within 120 minutes of lifting the Andy Merrigan Cup.

“We said to ourselves that we just had to it,” says Sheehan. “We had to win it once at least for all that was put in and for all the players we had. This team will see this for a lot of the players like William Kirby as the only chance they will have of winning an All-Ireland club. The same for Mikey Collins, Daniel Bohane.

“Will they put in the same effort next season? Crokes will be strong again so there’s no guarantee they’ll get where they are now again.”