The Double 30 years on: 'When Paddy Russell blew the whistle, the roar was ferocious'
The Cork and Meath teams walking the Croke Park pitch prior to the 1990 All-Ireland SFC final.
In the Cork dressing-room at half time in the 1990 All-Ireland SFC final, Billy Morgan instructed his players to go back out and win the game for Colm O’Neill, who’d been sent off for a dig at Mick Lyons.
The players were keyed-in and left any consolation of their dismissed colleague for later.
Captain, Larry Tompkins, who’d had two pre-game injections, got another shot into his calf at the break in the dressing room for a muscle injury.
Across the corridor, Seán Boylan decided to stick with what he had and backed his fifteen men to beat Morgan’s fourteen. In the river of reasons that flow towards Cork’s ninth Senior football title, the Meath manager’s misuse of the spare man in the second half is surely a tributary.
Lyons had the run of Croke Park in the second half but made little impact. He populated an area around the centre half back position – or ‘limbo’ as it was referred to in the press the following day.
One of the most effective players in the country was almost anonymous for the second period.
"If that happened in today’s game they might well have replaced Lyons and brought on a more attacking player," reasons Mick Slocum.
"But they just left him there and basically what we were trying to do then was find the likes of [Paul] McGrath and the corner forwards, and Paddy Hayes came on and [John] Cleary and these boys. We were just trying to make sure the ball going in was the right kind of ball.’ Lyons was bypassed and the Meath sideline just let the traffic from Cork flow. Though Colm O’Neill was watching anxiously from the bench, Tompkins reckons his impact was felt throughout the entire game.
"Do you know how many kicks of the ball Mick Lyons got afterwards and he the loose man?" he asks.
"He never touched the ball because his head was gone, because he knew himself he was destroyed. That’s hard to believe, isn’t it? I was centre forward and Mick was in behind me more or less minding that area, and he never touched the ball."
In a game that isn’t remembered as a classic, Cork got on top.
At one stage Liam Hayes was storming through, trying to exert his will on a game that was slipping through the fingers of the Meath midfield, in particular. Right on cue, Barry Coffey arrived to crease him.
With Hayes prone on the ground and the stakes and tension higher than ever, the TV cameras picked up Michael Slocum saying something to Coffey and the pair descending into a fit of giggles.
"Is he dead?" was the question the Barr’s man, who’d be voted man of the match by Cork supporters in The Cork Examiner’s telephone poll and indeed by Mick O’Dwyer, posed to his friend.
"Now, there was a free given in," shrugs Slocum. "But we had a good laugh alright."
With fourteen men against their biggest rivals and a legacy on the line, Cork were laughing.
The second half was not pretty. Referee Paddy Russell, who by common consensus did not have a good game, decided to let nothing go. The game would have a free a minute, more or less – sixty-nine in total.
Tompkins popped over four of them, while Michael McCarthy scored two from play and Paul McGrath chipped in. Fahy’s four efforts from downtown were crucial, clearly.
Alongside him, Culloty was working brilliantly too and the Cork defence was holding firm, with Conor Counihan, Niall Cahalane and Slocum rock solid. Tony Nation, who was under pressure to pin down his place in the lead-up, held the dangerous Bernard Flynn to a single point over the course of seventy minutes. The triple threat of Flynn, Brian Stafford and Colm O’Rourke would score just three from play – though Stafford notched up another four from frees.
After a hugely important John Kerins save - like that of his clubmate Ger Cunningham a fortnight earlier in the same goal for the hurlers - Colin Coyle was sent on by Seán Boylan. He began to cause trouble immediately.
David Beggy pointed, thanks to work from Coyle initially, to make it a one-point game again. Then Cork put some daylight between the sides.
Larry Tompkins sent over his third free after John O’Driscoll was bundled over. Then the Castlehaven skipper shipped a free cleverly to Shea Fahy rather than shoot; the midfielder knocked it over. Moments later, when the livewire Paul McGrath was fouled, Tompkins converted his fourth free. Cork were suddenly four points ahead, 0–11 to 0–7, with time running out.
Brian Stafford clawed back two points with frees, but when he missed one with two minutes to go, Cork were in touching distance of history.
When Paddy Russell blew the whistle, the roar was ferocious.
"The Double has been achieved," said Ger Canning in the commentary.
The supporters on the Hill sang, ‘We just won the Double’, to the tune of the fifty-fifty cashback song from the gas company TV ad which was popular at the time.
And for those on the pitch in red, they had beaten Meath at last in an All-Ireland decider. And they had done it with one arm tied behind their backs.
"You wouldn’t beat Meath with sixteen players, not to mind fourteen, on a good day," says Denis Walsh, who, along with Teddy McCarthy, was one of the history-making dual stars of the 1990 season.
In the days before Croke Park’s Plan B, supporters streamed onto the pitch and embraced their heroes.
Larry Tompkins’ speech in the Hogan stand was so long had to abandon its custom of a dressing-room interview with the winning side. They were forced to issue a statement when Cork supporters, even without the megaphone provided by social media, registered their annoyance.
In a heartfelt speech, he evoked those who couldn’t be present, Irish emigrants watching the game on satellite around the world – as he’d done in New York. He paid special tribute also to the Cork hurlers and Fr Michael O’Brien, who, he said, gave the footballers the confidence to perform.
But he reserved the most telling mention for Billy Morgan.
"I’ve never met a man with more self-belief, commitment and determination, and that is why we have been in four finals in four years and why we will be back next year to win the three in a row," he said.
Meanwhile, hurler Kevin Hennessy made his way out of the Canal End, where he was spotted by a group of ecstatic Cork supporters, who picked him up and carried him shoulder-high out of the stadium, singing as they went.
Dinny Allen – a nervous wreck next to Des Cahill in the RTÉ Radio commentary position – was ecstatic. The knockers got their answer, he said, describing the performance as the best ever from a Cork team.
"That was the icing on the cake really," says Cleary of the win over Cork’s archrivals.
"It was a case of, unless we get over Meath, the team would be regarded, maybe, as a flash in the pan with just winning one. I think you have the seal of approval; it was such an achievement to win two in a row. Particularly beating Meath and particularly with just fourteen men for three-quarters of the game."
Denis Walsh wouldn’t pick up a second All-Ireland medal of the summer. Still, he was part of an historic season and one of four members of personnel, along with Teddy McCarthy, John ‘Kid’ Cronin and Dr Con, who spanned both panels.
Larry Tompkins had played with a calf problem thanks, again, to various injections and other short-term fixes; his commitment to line out reflected a wider focus across the panel.
Sometimes a group of people are in sync and completely aligned in their goals. In the weeks leading up to the Meath game, the Cork footballers knew the job they had to do.
"I’ve said it and I’ll say it again, that was the most focused team I’ve seen from Cork going into an All-Ireland final," says Tompkins.
"I think everyone realised that the ’88 one was one of those days when we were done. Done in a big way.
"And 1990 was a massive climax for that whole team. But you know I’ll give one thing to Meath – and it’s amazing as time goes on – Meath know that their best-ever games were against Cork because they knew Cork were serious. And likewise we knew by beating Meath, we were serious. But if we had beat Mayo and some other team, would we have thought that this team was as good as that? We just needed to beat them.
"If Meath didn’t arrive at that time, we could have won five or six. Meath likewise."
No one was more relieved than Colm O’Neill. In the dressing-room afterwards he congratulated his teammates, while Dr Con told him he’d have had to go to South Africa if Cork had lost.
"He said," recalls O’Neill, ‘You know what now... somebody stood up to Mick Lyons and Cork won the All-Ireland. It’s a great day for Cork.’
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