'Seasoned travellers they were not' - Tales from Dublin football fans on tour
LUNCHTIME. August 4, 2001.
The Dublin team bus swings down the N75 into Liberty Square in Thurles, where they were due to face Kerry in the All-Ireland quarter-final.
Johnny Magee’s senses are assaulted by the greatest concentration of blue-shirted Dubs he’s ever seen, outside of Croke Park.
“And the place erupted,” he recalls now, his voice warmly recalling the memory.
“It was… I’m not joking, there were lads on the bus, including myself, that the hairs were standing on the back of the neck and there were a few tears. There were fellas that were experienced guys on that team bus that never experienced anything like that before. It was pretty special.”
This was a rare example of the Dubs on summer tour. The last time the suitcases had been required was back in the All-Ireland semi-final replay of 1983, with Cork eager to point out their drawn game represented a home game for Dublin and, as such, they deserved a home game for the replay.
Remarkably, and as a standalone example of how history occasionally does not repeat itself, the Dubs had no objection and so they took over the terrace behind the goals in Páirc Uí Chaoimh and christened it ‘Hill 17.’
It took 18 years before they next sat on a long bus journey, heading all the way down to the Horse and Jockey Hotel, just south of Thurles.
Seasoned travellers they were not.
Other teams used to the road had their ways of relieving tension while in camp. At the time, RTÉ had just begun broadcasting Bingo on the television on a Saturday night and it must have been quite the sight for the Thurles locals to see two dozen tracksuited Dublin footballers landing into the shop to purchase bingo cards, before they all crammed into the one room to play “Telly Bingo”, called out by the famous Drag Queen, Shirley Temple Bar.
If the weekend needed an extra lurch into the surreal, it got it the following morning when the burly forward Vinny Murphy parted his curtains and could hardly believe that Colm Meaney, star of The Commitments and the Star Trek series, was standing fiddling with car keys.
“Beam me up, Scotty!” roared Murphy, and with Meaney turning to see where the voice came from, got a full view of Murphy’s bare ass.
When the Dublin team bus makes its way across the border on the Moy Bridge through Aughnacloy today, it will be their first time playing Championship football in the north.
It’s only the sixth time they have played Championship outside of Leinster.
The last time they played in Ulster was against Derry in 2003, getting home by two goals.
“At that stage, some of the players they had were the boys you were watching on The Sunday Game, week-in, week-out. They had a bit of celebrity about them,” recalls Derry’s Conleith Gilligan, who came on as a sub that day to mark Magee.
Because he wasn’t starting, his slight detachment led him to notice things. In the Derry warm up shots, the Dublin fans stationed on the O’Duffy Terrace would cheer wildly the shots that went over, and let out an agonised ‘OOOOOOHHHHHH’ for the ones that tailed wide.
There was chanting. Michael Conlan was the Derry goalkeeper and when he went to take his first kickout he was met with a serenading of “The Derry ‘keeper, the Derry ‘keeper, the Derry ‘keeper’s going bald! The Derry ‘keeper’s going bald!”
“The targeting of players, it was probably the first time I heard Derry players targeted and verbally abused from sets of supporters singing,” says Gilligan.
“It was the first time I had heard it at a Gaelic match and to be honest, it was funny because it wasn’t aimed at you, but I would imagine it was very difficult for players to deal with that never seen that before.
“I can remember Big Geoffrey (McGonigle) getting grief over his weight at the time. As players, you could hear it!”
As much as Dublin would have enjoyed playing in Clones, Healy Park later this evening will be something unique. A total of 17,636 tickets were made available and for a time it looked like the Dublin support might outnumber the home fans, but uptake among Tyrone clubs has been huge.
In midweek, a picture was flying around WhatsApp accounts, showing that the sidelines in Healy Park were moved in tighter, to deny Dublin the width they like to attack with.
It brings to mind a stunt by Donegal in 2013 when they left the grass a little longer than usual to successfully scupper the long-range free-kicks of Tyrone’s new goalkeeper, Niall Morgan.
The relationship between Dublin and Tyrone has always been complex; all the country versus city hangups never far from the surface.
The two played a bizarre challenge match in the Toronto Skydome for a St Patrick’s Festival in 1990. Wearing chunky tennis shoes and knee and elbow pads, the surface was rock hard and the O’Neill’s ball behaved like a ping-pong ball. Referee Micheál Greenan admitted he should have sent six off.
An 18-year-old Peter Canavan got a punch on the throat. Sean Donnelly went to nail Kieran Duff.
“He went in for the ball and I took a swing with my boot and missed him. Then I took another swing at him and caught him the next time!” recalled Donnelly last year.
“But when it was over, it was over. I mean, we had good craic after it. I have a photograph of me in the hotel afterwards, examining Kieran Duff’s leg.”
Then came the 1995 All-Ireland final, Charlie Redmond refusing to leave the field, Tyrone’s late equaliser being ruled out.
By 2006, Tyrone were lording it over Dublin and delighting in doing so, telling them to their faces what a crowd of losers they all were.
When Dublin came to Omagh in 2006 for a league game, they had enough, and so erupted ‘The Battle of Omagh.’
Games between the pair have always had a sense since that the lava is always about to erupt.
Dublin football now is in a different, more sober, high-achieving age.
Just imagine. Back in that 2001 game, Kerry were eight points up with 12 minutes to go before Dublin hit them with a scoring blitz, leaving Kerry to rely on the shooting genius of Maurice Fitzgerald to earn a replay.
At the final whistle, Kerrymen trooped into the dressing rooms chastened. The Dubs? Well, they tore off to the Killinan End to bounce up and down in front of their support as if they had won.
What would Jim Gavin of now, made of the Jim Gavin of that day, sitting on the bench?
This collective are so much more assured of themselves.
For example, whenever they played here in the league in early February, it was Jim Gavin himself who requested a brush and a dustpan.
It has become cliché almost for teams to clean their own dressing room, a practise lifted out ‘Legacy’, the defining book on All-Blacks culture, but Dublin leave things better than new.
Those making themselves busy behind the scenes speak about Gavin’s friendly courtesy.
After Dublin placed two sweepers in front of Lee Brennan in that league game and pulled Tyrone’s gameplan apart, they took their time with Red Hand fans, mugging for selfies and signing autographs. Star defender Philly McMahon made his way to Carrickmore and delivered a passionate speech about the dangers of drugs in the local Patrician Hall, hosted by a sports collective in the town.
While the Dubs have disarmed Tyrone people in general, Mickey Harte will not like the feeling of being patronised in their own home.
All week long, hosting the game has felt like a Superbowl event for those in Omagh St Enda’s, the proprietors of Healy Park.
On Monday, a representative from Sky tv and Nemeton production company examined the grounds. Working out the co-ordinates and angles of the sun, they decided to build the studio looking from the Killybrack Road end down towards the Gortin Road.
On Thursday, the first scaffolding tower was erected.
The scale of the operation is serious. In terms of numbers, RTÉ or BBC cannot compare.
Sky want anything up to 11 cameras in action, whereas the others require no more than four. They have asked for 60 people to be accredited, up from their rivals who might take 25 at a push. Sky will have five statisticians alone working in the ground.
They will be using a super slow-motion camera on the sideline that requires extra light, so no matter what the weather, the floodlights will be turned on at half-time.
The capacity is set at 17,636. “This is the biggest demand since the Dublin match last year and far superior to any other match. We never would have had a match outside Croke Park that had this demand for tickets,” says Omagh St Enda’s secretary, Conor Salley.
In last year’s All-Ireland semi-final, the energy in the crowd evaporated once Con O’Callaghan’s shimmy put Ronan McNamee on the floor and space opened up for his goal. Tyrone’s challenge was killed in an instance.
It finished with 16 points between the sides. Mickey Harte has had it rammed down his throat at every opportunity since by his critics.
Only eight players that started that game, will start this one. They have blended and seasoned their team throughout the campaign and pose a different threat with Richard Donnelly as full-forward. They are set.
Time for another Battle of Omagh.
On the road again
Dublin 4-25 Wicklow 1-11, O’Moore Park
Dublin 0-19 Carlow 0-7, O’Moore Park
Dublin 2-21 Laois 2-10, Nowlan Park
Longford 0-13 Dublin 1-12, Pearse Park.
Dublin 1-17 Longford 0-11, O’Moore Park.
Leitrim 1-4 Dublin 0-13, Páirc Seán MacDiarmada.
Dublin 3-24 London 0-6, Parnell Park.
Dublin 3-9 Derry 1-9, St Tiernach’s Park.
Wexford 1-10 Dublin 0-15, Dr Cullen Park.
Kerry 2-12 Dublin 1-12, Semple Stadium.
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