The Big Interview with Mark Foley: 'I joked that I should have spread that 2-7 over a couple of seasons'

Mark Foley recalls the 1990 Munster final and one of the most remarkable scoring displays in the famed decider

Mark Foley of Cork in action against Gerry McInerney of Galway during the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Final between Cork and Galway in 1990. Picture: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

In the summer of 1987 Mark Foley and Tom Kingston hit for Slane and David Bowie. They didn’t have tickets but so what? The Cork youngsters, a couple of years out of minor, felt the atmosphere up in Meath would make the trip worthwhile.

They dropped in on another gig on the way back home. The atmosphere was pretty good there, too.

“Whatever about Bowie, we had tickets for the Munster final,” says Foley now.

“Old Stand in Thurles, good seats, Cork and Tipperary.

“The first puck-out of the game landed down between Pat Hartnett and Donie O’Connell. Pat pulled out and Donie pulled in, and when I say ‘pulled’, I mean full force. Leathering. I remember saying, ‘we’re at a match here’. Brilliant.” 

 Foley had collected a colleges All-Ireland (with Farranferris) in 1984 and a minor All-Ireland in 1985: he was on the fast-track to senior success.

However, he qualified as a dentist in 1989 and moved to England to work. Cork senior coach Canon Michael O’Brien kept in touch, though there was never really a danger of losing the big man from Timoleague.

“England was just for experience. I knew I was coming back to Cork - and back to west Cork. And I came home that March to work in the dental hospital (in Cork).” 

 He’d kept training with a rugby team in England so even though the sessions with Cork were “fairly severe” he was up to the pace: “I had a good cut off it. I’d finish work around 4, 4.30 and have a nap before training. There was no social life for a couple of months, so it was gathering pace.

Cork’s Mark Foley scores against Tipperary on the stroke of half-time in the 1990 Munster SHC final. Foley finished the day with 2-7. ‘You’re hitting the mark you aim for every time,’ he recalls of that day. ‘It’s all going your way.’

“Heads were down after the Wexford game in the league. The defeat made us question ourselves, but the training kicked onto another level then. The weather was warm and the sessions in Ballinlough were terrific - I’d have been just trying to get the better of John Considine, but those sessions brought us all on.

“To be perfectly honest, I was there or thereabouts, but I’d have struggled to make the team if Tomas (Mulcahy) hadn’t broken his finger.” 

Mulcahy picked up the injury in a challenge game with the Cork U21s and was out for the Munster final. That meant a vacancy at centre-forward against Tipperary.

Foley can recall the size of the challenge. The All-Ireland champions were waiting for them, after all. Much the same cast he’d watched on the way home from Bowie.

“Tipperary were terrific. (Pat) Fox, (Nicky) English, (Cormac) Bonner, Bobby Ryan - these guys were household names.

“They’re great lads and we’re all friends now, but the rivalry was such that you didn’t want them getting carried away at the same time. It wasn’t as bitter as the footballers and Meath, but we were all competitive with each other and keen to win.

“Our backs were to the wall. It was Tipp in Thurles, which Cork love, but there was pressure, certainly.” 

Foley experienced that pressure first-hand. In the opening stages of the game he had the ideal opportunity to settle any nerves.

“I was on frees the same day but early on I missed a free from about 30 yards out.

“I nodded to Kevin (Hennessy) and he took over. We had a great bond and that helped to give us that freedom, that he could take over the frees like that.

“It’s a great experience, to play in a game like that, and there’s massive noise from the crowd, but you’d be surprised - you can hear the odd thing coming out of the terraces, the odd comment.

“I can still hear the moan when that free went wide, for instance. You’d hear that in Thurles, though, but not in Croke Park - the whole experience is completely different in Croke Park.

“I found the flight of the sliotar a challenge in Croke Park as well - the ball would be on top of you all of a sudden. In the All-Ireland final later that year, one ball landed between me and the late Tony Keady, God rest him, and I was all wrong technically - on the wrong side of him - and I pulled, then looked to see where the ball was.

“I’d lost sight of the ball completely. He didn’t: he fielded the ball and took off, dummied Cashie (Jim Cashman) and put it over the bar.

“And they all destroyed me after - ‘he bate you down the field and bate you back to his own position then after as well’.” Back in the Munster final, however, Foley had to put away the gnawing sense that the game was passing him by.

There was a period after 15 minutes when I thought ‘things need to start happening here’.

“The difference was that in the following year’s Munster final I thought I played reasonably well but I didn’t score - I’d have been old school enough in believing the centre-forward was doing his job if the scoreboard is ticking over, he doesn’t have to be scoring himself.

“People tend to forget, by the way, just how good Nicky was in that Munster final (1990). He was on fire that day and got a terrific goal, a one-handed flick. They were coming right into the game at that stage.” 

Then Foley struck. Kieran McGuckian cut a superb line-ball into the Tipperary square and Foley batted home from close range.

“If I tried it ten times . . . it came in from an angle and I batted that way (across) and just caught it on the sweet spot.

“It’s easy to bat the ball backwards but I got it at an angle. I knew if it was on target Ken Hogan (Tipp goalkeeper) hadn’t a chance because I got it just right.

“And in the dressing-room at half-time we knew we were on a roll.” 

'The game couldn’t have gone on long enough'

 No-one more than Foley. He finished the game with 2-7 and recalls the feeling at stages in the second half.

“Were you ever in the back garden as a young fella or ball alley and felt on top of your game?

Cork Hurling Headshots 1990 Mark Foley. Picture: Inpho/Billy Stickland

“You’re hitting the mark you aim for every time, you can catch the ball behind your back - it’s all going your way.

“In the second half of the game the crowd at the Town End, which is a great Cork end, were just on a roll, and you could feel it. The game couldn’t have gone on long enough.

“If I went on a loop around Kevin or Sully (Tony O’Sullivan) I knew the pass was coming, the chance was coming. Everything was going my way.” 

 There was a legacy to hitting those heights, mind.

“Going back then to play junior hurling with Argideen Rangers - expectations were a lot higher, no doubt about that. Nowadays it doesn’t matter but at the time it could be challenging. You’d be getting closely marked by a couple of lads in a junior game, but in retrospect, if it was a choice between scoring 2-7 in a Munster final and not doing so . ..

“The one thing I used to joke about was that I should have spread that 2-7 over a couple of seasons, but I enjoyed it.

“My heroes were the likes of Jimmy Barry-Murphy or Ray Cummins, I’d be pretending to be them in the ball alley, so doing it in a Munster final in Thurles against the All-Ireland champions, that was fantastic.” 

The conversation ranges around and over - Foley recalls names that were golden in the colleges game forty years ago (“When we were in Farna the likes of Tony O’Sullivan, John Drinan, Robbie Allen - those guys with the Mon were like Gods to us because they were winning Harty Cups,”) and compares the training regimes of different eras.

Time is funny. One of the regrets I have is that I didn’t have the ability to carry on during the nineties, working in west Cork and getting up to training in town.

“The level of training we did even then necessitated living in Cork, or near Cork. I don’t know how a guy like Ruairi Deane can do it in the modern era: the commitment is so frightening.

“It was great to be part of the era. In 1984 I was at the Munster final with my father, and it was some experience - the Tipperary fans roaring when they thought they had Cork beaten, and Seanie O’Leary popping up with the late goal.

“To be out there with the lads six years later, it was a dream come true.” 

Heroes. Not just for one day.