The last of the cut-throats: The 2000 Ulster SFC remembered

A win and the season goes on. Lose, and nobody has any idea when they will next play for their county again. Ulster knows it all too well - by 3pm tomorrow, Donegal or Tyrone's season will be over

Michael Murphy of Donegal ahead of last year's Ulster SFC semi-final. Picture: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

At some point on Sunday evening, Derry manager Rory Gallagher and Armagh manager Kieran McGeeney may spot each other on the sideline of Celtic Park and be transported back in time.

Two decades ago to be precise, the last summer the All-Ireland Championship was staged as a straight knock-out tournament.

Gallagher was the 22-year-old creative hub around whom the Fermanagh attack flowed. As he took his position that day, the grizzled 28-year-old Armagh captain McGeeney jogged over to begin a day of invading his personal space.

“I had done my medial ligaments against Donegal by running into Stevie Maguire and I had a fairly old-school big bandage on my knee. And Kieran wasn’t long in letting me know about my injury if you know what I mean!” recalls Gallagher.

“He was an unbelievably imposing footballer. He had some phenomenal years from 1999 to 2005 or so, he was as good a player as there was in Ireland.” 

Reflections of that time reveal so much of the desperation that knife-edge knockout football produced.

There were no group of players as desperate as Antrim by 2000. They hadn’t won a single Championship game since turning Cavan over in 1982. Goalkeeper Sean McGreevy was a sales rep in his ninth year with the county. Work took him all over the north and he would wince when driving through neighbouring counties, noticing the flags fluttering off lampposts and out of windows.

“And it would get me down, why would I never see saffron and white flags? I always felt really hard done by that way,” he says.

It took a sense of humour to soldier with Antrim so long. There was always the craic though. One day McGreevy found himself swapping shorts with Declan Browne of Tipperary after a game when it slowly dawned he had nothing on underneath. That one has been told a few times.

By 2000, they were sick of defeat. Down were coming to Casement Park having been routed in the previous year’s Ulster final. Manager Brian White had routinely challenged them to think differently and went for the gut with his players, lobbing in insults to stoke their pride.

With all the prep done and marking jobs assigned, he threw in one final act just before they left the dressing room.

In shuffled former Antrim minor selector Dessie Reynolds. Terminally ill and with tears in his eyes he said, ‘Look lads, my name is Dessie. I am a friend of Brian’s and I want you to go out here and believe you can win. Do it for me. This is the last Antrim game I am likely to see. All I want to know is that Antrim have won a senior Championship match before I go up.’ 

McGreevy’s throat was catching. Beside him on the benches was clubmate Kieran Killyleagh and his grip got tighter and tighter.

They won. McGreevy saved a penalty from Gregory McCartan and won man of the match. Afterwards, Martin McHugh working for the BBC tried to nab McGreevy for a few words with his mother and sister hanging off either arm.

"Seanie McGreevy, how does it feel?" asked McHugh.

"It’s the best fucking feeling I have ever had!" he replied, McHugh’s eyes widening and urging with a hiss, "You’re live on TV!"

“I remember being in that changing room, physically and mentally drained. And I sat down and thought of Dessie Reynolds smiling. I wanted to see him and find him. And then Whitey (Brian White) came over and kneeled down, putting his big hands and grabbing my head, telling me, "you made history today". 

And that’s all we done. We just won one game of football in the Ulster Championship.

It was different up north

Around other provinces, things were ho-hum. Safe and predictable. Up north, every team came with the spurs sharpened on their boots.

Such as Fermanagh beating Donegal in Ballybofey. They had already shown their worth in a preliminary round win over Monaghan, Paul Brewster delivering a post-match interview with a young Mark Sidebottom, wearing a South Park sweater.

In Ballybofey, that man Gallagher produced the most delicate of lobs to put the ball over Tony Blake’s head and propel Fermanagh on. Their first win over Donegal in the Championship since 1936.

After the game, Declan Bonner stepped down as Donegal manager bringing an end to three seasons in charge.

In such circumstances defeat was devastating. Little vignettes of that season stick in the memory. Such as Armagh’s Oisín McConville spinning points over from all angles in Clones in front of 30,000 for a first-round win over Tyrone. Or John Donaldson rugby tackling a teenage Brian McGuigan who had to be replaced soon after.

A year later, Sean Teague would lift the Anglo-Celt Cup for Tyrone after beating Cavan in the final, with his left hand, his right arm being in a sling. The contrast to a year previous couldn’t have been more stark.

“I can remember sitting in the changing room and looking around the room, thinking, ‘That’s a tarra. All that work we done and that’s it,’” he recalls.

We would have trained just as hard back then as they do now. It was good, it was tough and every man was hard to go.

“But for it to end, the sweat running off you in there and you thinking, ‘I’m going home now and I won’t be back…’” 

Without a backdoor, some players weren’t prepared to serve long apprenticeships.

Derry played Meath in a drawn league final a week before they opened their Championship against Cavan. Eamonn Coleman used five substitutes and teenager Paddy Bradley wasn’t among them. He sulked around the house before his father instructed him to call Coleman up and speak his mind.

“I had taken the portable phone up to my ma and da’s bedroom, I didn’t want them to hear me,” Bradley says.

As soon as Coleman recognised the voice, he started laughing to himself. The gall!

“He couldn’t believe that I had called up. ‘What do you mean? What are you ringing about? Do you honestly believe you are worthy of a place?’

“And I started blowing to him that I should be starting. I said I was the best forward in Derry. I am good enough to start and I am going to be your main attacker here.

“I sort of put down the phone and thought, ‘Jesus, what am I after doing here?’ But confidence wasn’t a problem for me.” 

The next week, Coleman named him to start. He set up Enda Muldoon for a goal in the first few minutes and hit three points. A star was born.

But they had a euphoric Antrim bandwagon in their way for the Ulster semi-final.

30,000 poured into a sun-bleached Casement Park that felt more like a carnival than a football match. In the cramped dressing rooms, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, wearing wristbands the colour of their respective counties, wished both teams good luck.

"Hope Antrim beat you boys," said Adams, to knowing smiles from Derry players. And in the end, it came down to a 55 metre free from Sheeny McQuillan.

Bradley watched the flight of the ball and couldn’t believe his eyes.

“I was thinking, ‘Jesus, they are knocking us out of the Championship here.’” 

And then Anthony Tohill hoisted his 6’4” frame into the air and caught it above the crossbar. Draw.

The players repaired across the road to Hoppy Dobbins’ Bar afterwards for beers and when they got into the bus to go back to Derry, Coleman cursed the hierarchy of Sinn Féin and vowed they had been in their last Derry dressing room.

Derry won the replay, and Armagh closed out the final.

Already, there were stirrings and discontent about the shape of things.

Before the year was out, Special Congress was held in mid-October and passed a two-year trial period for a new structure to the All-Ireland Championship with a qualifiers system. It was expected to drive up revenue by £5 million per annum.

There was no looking back.

“The biggest thing of that time thinking back was that we didn’t question it,” says Oisín McConville.

“My first five years in the county team, we just kept getting beat and you were gone for the rest of the year. There was no chance to build morale and camaraderie.

“When you were put out of the Championship you wouldn’t socialise together, you just parted and went your own way. ’99 changed all that, we got a bit of a run, hanging around a bit more.

“But there was a real fear of getting beat. If you talk to sports psychologists about the fear of getting beat you are not going to get much of a hearing in this day and age.

But that would have driven us on a lot of the time, the fear of it ending. The next time seeing each other would be six months later.

And so to this weekend. A win and the season goes on. Lose, and nobody has any idea when they will next play for their county again.

All on the line. Every ball counting. Just like old times.