Tyrone GAA round-table: Red Hand legends discuss finals past ahead of Sunday's clash with champions
Ahead of the All-Ireland final, sat down in the Silverbirch Hotel, Omagh, to talk with players that have featured in every All-Ireland final Tyrone have been involved in.
From the north of the county and St Eugene’s Castlederg was John Lynch, who broke his leg in the 1986 final. East Tyrone was represented by former county captain and Stewartstown Harps man Feargal Logan who played in the 1995 final.
Peter Canavan of Errigal Ciaran played in that losing final and also went on to captain Tyrone to their first All-Ireland in 2003 and scored a goal in the victorious 2005 final, while Joe McMahon, from the west of the county and Omagh St Enda’s was there for the 2005 and 2008 All-Ireland wins and only retired last summer from inter-county duty.
John, with Tyrone in the 1986 final, somebody told me that your team had to do a significant bit of fundraising. Is that right?
We were only learning and we hadn’t a clue what we were at, so we were going to functions where there was money raised. We did a sponsored walk from Omagh to Carrickmore (a 12-mile walk, the week before the final).
We went around the primary schools the week of the match, every morning we were heading to primary schools.
They came to St Ciaran’s the week before the final. I was a pupil. Some of the players came, Paudge Quinn, the McClures, Plunkett Donaghy. And the school was going mad, there was a lot of hype around it.
We didn’t have our feet on the ground at all. The preparation… It was eyeballs out at training. Like, every training session was three training sessions in one. That was right up until the final.
After the National League, we trained in Omagh. Art (McRory, manager) would have brought us out in his car to Gortnagarn (a suburb of Omagh) and dropped us off to run back into town. We used to run into the track, done 10 x 200-metre runs against the clock. Then we went and did a weights session.
Art was miles ahead of most coaches at that time. His training was brilliant, but we didn’t realise we were doing too much of it. It was all the stuff out of East Germany, but obviously we weren’t drinking the water they were!
When you are over-training, you leave yourself vulnerable to injuries anyway. We had a doctor in the changing room in ‘86 that morning and he gave, I think, six injections to us. I got one, Eugene McKenna as well. That was a problem.
Mickey Harte’s season diary of 2003 tells how he was in St Ciaran’s in the lead-up to the All-Ireland final and they had ‘The Boogie Men’ band in playing a selection of Tyrone songs, while his phone was ringing off the hook with people looking tickets for the final. Was that a factor for you?
We were inundated with people looking for tickets. I had aunts and uncles ringing me from everywhere. I think we got 10 tickets each. I had nine of a family so they were well sorted.
The week of the match, there was a man owned a sports shop in Omagh and an Adidas rep called him saying there were five lads wearing Adidas and they would send them down boots for the final.
We were training in Omagh the Friday night before the final and someone landed out with these boots, and Art says, “Fucking 30 pairs of boots, or no boots!” So away he went. We never got any boots!
What do you recall from the ‘86 final as a young fan, Feargal?
This was back in the days when you would have known and remembered every ball that had ever been kicked by Tyrone in Croke Park. It’s been opened up since massively of course, but a trip to Croke Park then was out of this world.
We went to those games on a bus. I was 15. It was the illegal bus — the Glencull bus!
My memories were of Hill 16 and all the people around me at the start of the second half saying, ‘fuck, we have nowhere booked for tonight’.
But, it was an anti-climax for these boys. The next day I broke my arm in two places playing football. I was in the garden jumping a fence to get the ball and broke my arm in two places.
The support was fanatical — ‘86, ‘95, ‘96 even, running out and seeing all the flags… Now, Tyrone supporters have become accustomed to playing in Croke Park and winning there. There is still the same demand for tickets, but I don’t know if there is the same appetite as there was when we were winning nothing.
Feargal, you twisted an ankle a fortnight out from the ‘95 final while on a training weekend. How was your own preparation affected?
Things were very busy leading into it. Every morning I got up and went into work. And then into Larne for lunchtime. I went to an oxygen tank five days in a row to try and get my ankle sorted.
Had Art tapered down the training for ‘95 and the final against Dublin?
'95 was a hot summer. Weather was very good for the most of the summer and any night we went to Drum Manor it seemed to be a lovely summer’s evening with the sweat pouring off us. We were glad to see the back of that place.
In terms of the set-up, there was a good vibe. Mentally, we seemed to be spot on.
But when you look back, Feargal had done the ankle. The Tuesday before, Cushy (Adrian Cush) who had came on against Galway and was brilliant, went over on the ankle.
Those two men carried injuries in. That was unheard of. It doesn’t happen now. There is an element of luck that comes into it, that’s before we even talk about the referee…
Let’s talk about the referee…
No, you’re alright.
You can read his book. He made a few pound out of it.
Was it a picture book?
The day after the 1995 final, somebody came onto a radio show, calling in to say they were Feargal Logan, and saying that everybody should get off Charlie Redmond’s back for not leaving the field after he was sent off.
It rings a bell. I think it was the Gay Byrne show. I have a transcript of it in the house.
The day after those matches was a bit messy, as you might imagine. I remember coming down the stairs in the hotel and people saying that they had heard me on the radio and others saying it wasn’t me. Somebody had took it upon themselves to do the interview.
At the time there was that tradition of the winning and losing teams having to sit down for lunch together in the Burlington Hotel. That must have been awful?
Maybe Peter and Joey wouldn’t worry too much about it because they have their Celtic Crosses, but I remember it well. I was sitting with the ankle that big (hands 10 inches apart), them coming in, and us getting onto the bus.
I remember it from ‘86. It wasn’t great. You could imagine the shape the Kerry lads were in when they entered.
What was the fall-out in the county like after the finals?
Well, the county final was the week after the ‘86 final. And our minor team (Castlederg) was in the county final curtain-raiser so I was helping out with them.
Coming back from the match we had a good time. At that time, the two Derry lads were training with us, Dermot McNicholl and Brian McGilligan, for the duration of the year.
They were playing the Compromise Rules. I remember those lads meeting us in Coalisland.
Hold up. Why would two Derry players have been training with Tyrone leading up to an All-Ireland final?
Apparently there was a relationship between Kevin Heffernan and Art. And he asked if he wouldn’t mind the lads training with us.
In 1995, We got a very good supportive reception when we came up through Aughnacloy, into Dungannon and then through to Paudge’s.
But the sad memory of that is Dr Austin Logan (an educationalist and fervent Tyrone supporter, brother of broadcaster Adrian) dying.
I remember going to his funeral on the Thursday and at that stage, it was a difficult week.
The 1995 final and the disallowed point to level the game. Does it keep you awake, Peter?
It certainly does. It cost us an All-Ireland and as Feargal will tell you, for a lot of men, my brother (Pascal) included, that was the only chance they were going to get to win an All-Ireland so it stays with you. The fact that we went on and did win it, you could imagine if that never happened we would still be talking about it.
We are still talking about it!
But aye, he (referee Paddy Russell) got it wrong. Simple as that. He got it wrong.
I felt that a draw was a fair result. The referee had made mistakes, the Charlie Redmond thing, it was the easy way out. You would have thought. But, the vibe back then was that Dublin needed an All-Ireland. More than anybody else.
Going back to a point that John makes about being over-trained in 1986, in 2003 it was a vastly different regime with Paddy Tally’s sessions lasting no more than 50-odd minutes?
The hard work would have been done earlier in the year, but coming up to it was all football, all lighter stuff. We had done the least amount of physical stuff in ‘03 than I had done in all previous years.
Most of the boys were in good shape anyway. They were all looking after themselves and coming in with good shape from their clubs and universities. So they were kept fresher and we picked up few injuries.
In ‘89, we got to an Ulster final and we had Benny Burns training us that year. John Donnelly was the manager and Benny was a teacher up in Omagh. He had been involved with his brother Declan, the Olympic canoeist.
We got to an Ulster final that day and drew with Donegal. But we had a training weekend in Donegal!
We ended up in a pub in Ballyshannon a week before the final and Shay McKeown from Powerscreen was sponsoring us.
He had a massive white BMW and about six of us got into it. He took us up to a wee poky thatched pub in Ballyshannon; Plunkett (Donaghy), (Eugene) McKenna, Sean Donnelly… I wasn’t drinking at the time but the boys were throwing pints of Guinness into them. A week before the Ulster final. The whole lot of them were full, boy!
I was the only one sober so I had to drive this BMW. Remember catching it going out the gate and ripped the whole side of it, and I was the sober one!
We landed in to have a meeting at training then. Sean Donnelly never spoke at a meeting in training in his life. And we couldn’t get him to shut up that night.
Eugene then started talking and voiced the opinion that we hadn’t worked hard enough and were not fit enough. The week before the replay! It turned out we stuffed Donegal in the replay and they were said to be one of the fittest teams in Ireland that year. It proved Burns’ point.
The build-up to the 2003 final seemed to be extremely relaxed. I have heard the story of a crew of players playing a card game called ‘Dropsies’ with an enormous pot in the middle and players being late for a meeting that morning…
‘Dropsies’ and poker. You have a lot of time, you could have an hour, two hours to pass if you are up early for breakfast to wait on a team meeting. Some boys go for a walk, some lads go to play tennis.
In the 1995 final, I was out that morning playing a few holes of golf with Art in Johnston House.
The day before 2003, we played three or four holes in the CityWest, Brian McGuigan had a buggy and he drove the buggy into the pond. The fact that ‘Hub’ (Kevin Hughes) was sitting beside him might have something to do with it.
In ‘04 I came in. And straight away, the card school smelt fresh meat. So I got the curly finger to come down to the back of the bus when I arrived to play a game in the McKenna Cup.
It was against Donegal in Ballybofey. A student on his first big day out. Maybe 10 quid in my pocket. But I was shaking by the time I got to Ballyshannon, the boys had me fleeced.
Joe, for a man only in his second season in the panel, how do you get used to everything changing around you, the suit measurings, all the trimmings and trappings in the weeks leading up to the 2005 final?
A box of watches landed in one night too, Storm watches I think they were. And it was like the Argos catalogue, hands were going in and swiping a few of them at the time.
Feargal, looking on from the outside, did you think there was a different vibe to the 2003 team than the team in 1995.
That team had won the National League. They were beating teams for fun. You sensed they were in good shape and the rivalry with Armagh was massive.
They had a lot going on and the way things develop, they had been in Croke Park so much more. In John’s time in ‘86, it was a novelty. Come ‘03, there was a lot more savvy about the whole thing heading down to Dublin.
What about yourself Peter, what were you trying with your own bad ankle, any oxygen tanks?
Poteen, stuff for putting on horses, charms, you were trying absolutely everything.
When 2003 did happen, was it just a relief or was it not as great as the pain of losing?
It was every bit. It was enormous. A huge relief.
It was a do-or-die situation for myself I suppose and it was the last hurrah. To make that breakthrough was seismic and I was aware of it at the time, how much it meant.
The fact that we had lost All-Irelands, and been at them, and knew how difficult it is to win one, it makes it more important.
It goes back to something James McCartan said when they won it with Down. He thought this was great but he took it for granted. He said he would have appreciated it a lot more if it had have been at the other end of his career.
So, you didn’t have to tell me. It was a huge relief. Now, the pain didn’t go away of losing an All-Ireland final.
Was your disappointment reduced any Feargal when Peter got there in 2003?
Marginally. Marginally at best. But again… no. Maybe not.
That’s a day that will stand out with a giant black mark against it.
As Peter said, we didn’t front up as well as we knew we could and Dublin weren’t brilliant either. That’s still burning with me. Maybe if I had have went on and done what Peter did it might have eased it.
You get older and a bit more philosophical about things in life, but in football terms that still stings.
Even though he has delivered all this success and changed everything about Tyrone football, Mickey Harte does not get the sort of respect within the county that outsiders would expect. Why is that?
Football managers, or managers in general, are subject to criticism. Because people are so passionate about football and it is a deep-rooted tradition around Tyrone you are going to carry that along with you.
The net point really is that Mickey has achieved, so it is impossible to say he does not have that capacity. He is unique, his contribution over the years is highly unique.
Obviously you are going to get cycles of players and in one sense I think quite often in football management you are as good as your players. We now have another cycle of players coming through.
We haven’t gone down, like some counties very close to us that were big competitors throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, and Mickey deserves credit for that. And everyone in the camp deserves credit for how they picked themselves up off the canvas from last year.
Believe it or not I played with Mickey. On my first year on the Tyrone panel was 1980 and Mickey was a big name then.
But at that age you don’t know much other than what is going on in front of you and I was looking at Mickey and he was an obvious future Tyrone manager at that stage.
When you sat in on team meetings, as a young fella I got fucking bored, especially when you are not involved in the starting team as a newcomer. But Mickey was heavily involved in talks prior to matches. You could just tell he might have gone on to do what he ended up doing.
But the credit has to be given to them. I might also give some credit to Art McRory. I have experienced what he done for Tyrone football. He was the man who set it all up. He brought Tyrone out of the doldrums and won All-Ireland Vocational Schools titles and whatnot.
He brought it to a certain level and Mickey took it on. It is just amazing what he has done for Tyrone football.
I think to his detriment, Mickey’s personality is one of those ones like the old saying; ‘I can’t stand that man, I need to get to know him’. That type of thing.
Mickey has that thing about him. He is not necessarily that approachable, so people don’t like him. That’s what I am thinking, I don’t know Mickey well enough. But that’s what I think about him.
It was claimed by one pundit that one Tyrone player said that the set-up and training was ‘depressing’. What do you think of that, Joe?
I would be depressed listening to that stuff!
No, I wouldn’t have said that. If any player had a problem, as a player you would go to the manager, voice your opinion and see how you feel.
From my time up to ‘05, it was far from depressing. Training was short, it was less than an hour, it was bang-bang-bang. You were less than an hour and generally, you were looking forward to it. Jesus, the craic! Unless it has changed dramatically from ‘05 Joe, you were never dreading going to training.
If you are not enjoying something, why would you do it?
You look forward to going to training, there is always a good buzz about it, a good atmosphere and it’s probably the way things have gone that the volume of what is going on has increased, but the fellas enjoy it. They enjoy the company they are in and the level they are playing at.
By 2005, was it all mapped out for you Joe, Tyrone were already comfortable in their skin as All-Ireland winners.
When you came in, there was an expectation you were going to get senior success. It was a given. I don’t think we had baggage.
I remember coming into the room in Paudge Quinn’s in 2004 having been invited into the panel. I walked into the room and thought, ‘Jesus…’ They were my heroes and the next thing this is thrust upon you to be in the team.
I wouldn’t say there was an arrogance there, just a confidence we were going to achieve.
They were my idols until I got to know them! In-house games in Clogher, there was myself and Mickey McGee in the full-back line and Peter and Stevie O’Neill as a two-man full-forward line.
There was no blanket defence. You had Davy Harte sitting in your half-back line mooching up to the full-forward line looking for a score.
You talk about movement from Peter and Stephen. You always felt you had them, and all of a sudden they were gone. With the quality there you knew you were part of something special and those in-house games were hot and heavy. There were times it cut up rough and you had the likes of Ricey and McGuigan who were always stirring it up in the background there if there ever was a fall-out. They would wind the thing up. The Clogher dressing rooms, you were on top of each other.
To beat Kerry in the 2005 final, was that the ultimate for what it did for Tyrone’s standing and esteem?
If you needed motivation, you didn’t have too far to go. You look at the group of players we had and Mickey, after ‘03 there were some quarters that weren’t giving us the credit that we deserved.
That was very evident to us. The fact that we beat Armagh in the first all-Ulster All-Ireland, we hadn’t beaten a Kerry or Dublin in a final and Kerry presented themselves. It was further motivation for us as a group of players because you look up to Kerry.
The key thing was that there was no chip on the shoulder or nothing like that. We knew we had won an All-Ireland and we were going into an All-Ireland final with that bit of confidence and that was reflected in our performance.
It was probably one of the better All-Ireland finals in terms of scores, fetching, tackling. That gave us immense satisfaction and it was the perfect answer to a lot of people who questioned if Tyrone were good enough.
How do you think this final is going to go?
I think the Dubs are sitting ducks. They are bound to be believing their own hype at this stage which has happened to lots of people before them in sport and otherwise.
Like Feargal, I think Tyrone have a fantastic chance because everybody is writing them off.
I think Tyrone have to play out of their skins to win it. And they played for 20 minutes against Donegal. We need them to play like that for an hour like that against Dublin to win it.
I would say most Tyrone games, Tyrone have a stronger bench with the exception of this one.
You have got to say Dublin have proven match-winners there of significance that would be starting in any other team and that has got them through the last number of All-Ireland finals.
So not only do Tyrone have to contend with a very good Dublin 15, they have to contend with 18 or 19 serious players. But the bookies’ odds are crazy, I think it will go to the wire.
As Feargal said, they are sitting ducks. How many times have you seen Tyrone in this position, given absolutely no chance?
I remember in 2008 in the quarter-final against Dublin, nobody gave us a hope in hell. We went down and blitzed them.
How much will the commentary and analysis feed into the players’ mindset?
It has been brought up in meetings, the perception out there about Tyrone, how they play, the particular style of football and how they carry themselves.
It is different media outlets, the backdrop of the RTÉ situation and maybe their agenda that is hurting the fellas on the inside.
It doesn’t really affect the players from that point of view and it doesn’t impact too much on how they present themselves. There have been times when things have been said and paper clippings have been shown and used as motivation for those fellas. I imagine there will be a few more quotes used between now and Sunday.
We have evolved and learned a lot of stuff to be winners at this level. And that’s the thing with this team as well, they know what has gone before them.
We have been so close to them this past four or five years.
There has to come a stage in any sport when you are playing against the top teams that there is a chance you are going to beat them. And I would be confident that we are going to beat them. I felt that way about the way we beat Donegal and Monaghan and I felt we have it to beat this team as well.
This team is going to get beat sometime and I feel we can do it.
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