Passage seek a return to glory days in part two of historic double bid

A potential double? Only one man could be involved, surely. Manager Teddy McCarthy

Terry Howard at Passage West GAA Club, Co. Cork. Picture Denis Minihane.

Passage won the City Division JFC final last week. They’re in the hurling final this weekend.

A potential double? Only one man could be involved, surely.

“Look, I had no involvement in the football at all, so there’s no credit for me,” laughs Teddy McCarthy. 

Thirty years after he made GAA history in a single fortnight, he's on the Passage sideline this Sunday.

“I’m working away with Eoin Griffin and Shane Barrett on the hurling side and we’ve a big task ahead with Brian Dillons this weekend in the final. They’re experienced, they’re a good side.

“There’s huge credit due to the footballers for their win last Sunday, but Passage always had a very good name in football. You just have to go back to that great team they had in the early eighties.” Good point.

McCarthy isn’t selling them short by describing that Passage side as a great team.

The men from the harbour were playing junior B in 1979 but they were eye to eye with St Finbarr’s in the semi-final of the Cork senior football championship by 1984.

How did they manage to slash their way to those heights, through the junior and intermediate county championships, in five years?

Terry Howard was there from the start.

“Hurling had always been the game in Passage and football had played second fiddle, really,” he says now.

“At the annual general meeting in Passage in 1979 myself and Brian Geary were asked to take charge of the football team. And yes, the team was playing junior B, though we won the league.” In 1980 Passage won the junior (A) championship. They repeated the dose in 1982.

“It was then that it really started,” says Howard.

We had a good group of players together and trained seriously in football possibly for the first time ever.

“There was a serious spirit in the group, great camaraderie - but we were also very fit. I always felt that if our fitness levels were high that we’d have a chance, and our fitness certainly improved hugely over those couple of years.

“After we won the City Division in 1982 we went on and won the junior county title, beating Knocknagree in the final. We decided to go up intermediate after that because the momentum was with us.

“We were winning, we were going well, so we thought, why not?” 

Passage didn’t rest on their laurels. Howard says they raised their fitness levels again, and the momentum generated by junior success energised the team:

“We found we could survive at intermediate level. Our confidence was high after winning a county title at junior level, and it’s funny how that fed into how the team played.

We probably punched above our weight at times but the confidence meant we never gave up.

"We always felt we had a chance, no matter where we were or who we were playing.

"A lot of that came from training. A referee's whistle was seldom heard at the sessions, every player had to fight his corner. That stood to us.

“Intermediate was different, though. Eye-opening. We had been playing in the city division but intermediate, you were playing out the country, as it were.

“I remember there was one particular game and it summed up playing intermediate game. We were playing Adrigole down in Ahiohill - a tight pitch, the crowd pressed right up against the wire, a long way from home . . . we won that game and it was memorable not just because we won, but because it proved to us we were up to that level.

“We were down in west Cork and up against a tough team but we were able to get over them.” It wasn’t their last west Cork scalp. At the end of the season they were in the intermediate county final against O’Donovan Rossa.

It took two games, but Passage turned the Skibb men over, and intermediate success duly opened the door to the senior grade.

Why not?

“The speed of the game was the big difference when we got to senior,” says Howard.

“We all noticed that immediately - the speed at which everything happened in a game.

But even something as simple as playing championship games in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, that was another adjustment.

“I remember playing St Nicks in the senior championship there and we won the game comprehensively, but a lot of our lads wouldn’t have been too used to that as a venue. The one thing that stood to us was beating Midleton at intermediate level there the year before.” 

 The fairy tale came to an end against St Finbarr’s in the senior semi-final of 1984.

“They were a star-studded team, in fairness. I only saw a picture of that Barrs team recently and there must have been ten or eleven inter-county players on it.

“The likes of Mick Slocum, John Allen, Christy Ryan, Dave Barry, Damien Philpott, they all played senior for Cork. And Jimmy Barry-Murphy for good measure.”

The latter was the man who eventually stopped their march: Barry-Murphy got the crucial goal that afternoon.

Howard recalls some of the names that served Passage so well.

“I brought Bernie Meade out of retirement and he was a key man for us at full-back, he was so experienced.

“‘Big Jim’ O’Sullivan was another huge player for us in the middle of the field.” O’Sullivan, who sadly passed away recently, was the archetypal target man in midfield.

“He was larger than life in every way,” says Howard. “He was around 6-6 and a massive presence for us - other teams feared him, really.

“He was a great fielder in particular, and his ability to win the ball was a huge part of our success in those years.

“He passed away unexpectedly a few weeks ago in Mexico, which was very sad news for us.” 

Passage declined sharply, but it wasn’t a case of a team getting old together as much as the economics of the eighties taking their toll.

“The work wasn’t there, as simple as that. A few of the lads had to emigrate - some of the main players among them, and it was hard to replace them.

To be fair, it had been a tough journey as well, and it was always going to be a challenge to maintain a senior team out of a small village, which Passage was at the time. But losing those key players was a big blow.

“Ciaran O’Reilly, for instance, got a few runs with the Cork seniors, and he was a big part of our success - he and his brother Kevin.

“Ciaran was very good at centre-forward, very strong, and Kevin was a great free-taker. Those are great assets at any level, but the two of them had to leave for work, and they were a huge loss. ”

Passage would drop back to intermediate and from there to junior once again, but last Sunday they collected another title.

Terry Howard was a selector with the Passage footballers last weekend, by the way. Shoulder to the wheel again, 40 years