The Double 30 years on: 'If we kept 15 on the field we would have tarred them'

The Cork team that beat Meath in the 1990 All-Ireland SFC final

Niall Cahalane reckons Cork would have beaten Meath by up to 15 points in the 1990 All-Ireland football final had they not been reduced to 14 men.

Cork completed the All-Ireland double on this day 30 years ago, the county’s footballers overcoming Meath to claim Sam Maguire despite being a man down for the entire second-half - full-forward Colm O’Neill was sent off for striking Mick Lyons approaching half-time.

Cahalane, who was given a man-marking role on Meath's Colm O’Rourke for the decider, is steadfast in his view that Cork would have won by far greater than two points - 0-11 to 0-9 was the final scoreline - if they had had their full complement for the 70 minutes.

“If Colm [O'Neill] had stayed on the field, I reckon we would have tarred them. We would have absolutely wiped the floor with them, genuinely,” Cahalane told a special Irish Examiner podcast to commemorate Cork’s 1990 double win.

“[The sending-off] just made it a tighter game, a different game from our point of view. Forwards had to work a lot harder, scores were hard to come by.

“I am fully convinced we would have beaten them by as much as we beat Kerry in the Munster final (Cork won the provincial decider by 2-23 to 1-11). The whole thing was so right.”

Cahalane says he cannot remember the half-time atmosphere in the Cork dressing-room, the interval break arriving as it did just minutes after O’Neill’s dismissal. But what he does recall is being in no way worried that Cork would suffer for having only 14 men on the field.

Looking back at it, was I worried at the time? No. I still believe we were bankers.

Cork 1990 winning captain Larry Tompkins believes most of the players were so focused on turning over Meath in an All-Ireland final that they didn’t even realise O’Neill had been sent off.

“When we went into the dressing-room after Colm was sent off, I don’t think many of the players sat down. They were just so anxious to get back out on the field and I think, at the time, people didn’t even realise Colm had been sent off.

"It was just a matter of going out there, finishing the job, and proving ourselves as an outstanding team."

According to Cork centre-back Conor Counihan, another motivating factor this day 30 years ago was the fear of coming up short to the Royals in a third All-Ireland final in four years.

“Sometimes you are driven by the fear of failure. There are times when it comes into your head, ‘oh my god, no, not again, this can’t happen’. It can make or break [you]. It worked out well for us, as the man said.” Cahalane recalls his every thought in the lead up to the game and the match itself centring around Colm O’Rourke and attempting to keep quiet the Meath talisman.

“The nerves on the week before the ‘87 final, were they totally different to 1990? Absolutely. For 1990, I would have found out at an early stage that I wasn’t going to play full-back, even though I wore number three, that I was [instead] going to be picking up Colm O’Rourke.

“So I was driving around for a whole week and all I was thinking about was Colm O’Rourke, or how I was going to deal with him, or how he was going to deal with me. That was it.

I didn’t worry about Conor Counihan, Larry Tompkins, Billy Morgan, or anyone else. My whole thing was about Colm O’Rourke and that was it. I was nearly counting the steps my man would do.

“My whole attitude that day was I really didn't care if I hadn't handled that ball once, once O'Rourke didn't put the ball over the bar or once he hadn't contributed in some way to making a goal. Because for a number of years he had hurt us.”