After the League final win, the celebrations went on for a bit, but I remember I was in the midst of doing college exams starting on the Monday so my involvement in the revelry was limited.
There were a lot of people who were emotional because it was 17 years since Galway had competed in anything of significance. Along the way, we had taken out some of the big guns. We beat Cork in the quarter-final and that was a great game, a typical game of two halves. We were playing with a gale in the first half and led by 2-8 to no score when Cork got a point.
Now we were facing the gale in the second half. There is no doubt, that day I think was the arrival of the bit of steel that Galway needed.
We were playing a Cork team that was expected to win. They had all the big names and they were keen to bury us, but we were resolute and we fought like tigers. The entire second half was played in our half of the field so whenever we got the ball, all we could do was run with it as far as possible.
We were in the zone throughout that second half once we realised we could beat them. And we did. In the league semi-final we defeated Kilkenny, a major skin, on a day when Padraig Fahy gave an exhibition.
Then, we battled hard to defeat Tipperary in the final.
In the championship the good money was on Limerick to come out of Munster as they had played in the two previous All-Ireland finals. I remember going to watch the Munster final against Cork in Limerick to experience the atmosphere and see what it was all about.
The Munster final was a great occasion but it was one-way traffic as Cork got three goals and won by nine points. The Cork centre-forward Willie Walsh was playing very well and after getting one of the goals, I turned to my brother Michael and said, ‘Oh Good Jesus!’ But Michael is a shrewd analyst of the game.
‘Don’t worry... you’ll manage that fella alright... just play from the front,’ he told me.
Cork, like ourselves, are passionate but we felt they would let us hurl and if our forwards could stop their backs clearing the ball, that would be a big plus.
We knew we had good forwards, headed up by PJ Qualter and Frank Burke.
Marty Barrett inside was an opportunist, Gerry Coone and PJ Molloy likewise. Padraig Fahy was one of the unsung heroes of Galway hurling. We were ready for Cork and our game plan was simple... attack from the start, and keep attacking.
On the morning of the game, I casually came home from early Mass and had a very large breakfast before heading off to Ballinasloe to get the train. We met up at the Aisling Hotel before the game and then off to Croke Park by bus, quietly confident this would finally be our day.
Right from the off we threw caution to the wind and, quick as a flash, goals from Frank Burke and John Connolly had us 2-2 to 0-0 ahead inside the first seven or eight minutes.
Even after that, every time Cork got a score we seemed to be able to come back and nail them with one of our own. Half-time provided a welcome break. The intense pace and heat left many with weary legs.
We were ahead by seven points, but we weren’t being told to consolidate; instead we were told to keep going, keep scoring, keep it moving because the one thing we didn’t want to do was pull the handbrake and get caught.
We knew that Cork only needed a couple of chances because they had great forwards and were strong throughout the team. We had to be ruthless.
Galway supporters are just extraordinary.
I suppose they had seen their team beaten so often and there were a lot of pessimists who didn’t believe that Galway could deliver on a big day. In the All- Ireland final in 1953 and ’58 Galway came up short, and there were other years they could have ... should have, might have won.
I thought in 1975 there was a new resolve and a fresh approach.
We began to realise that we were just as good hurlers as a lot of the players in other counties. We had no medals to show for it but we were evolving and we were confident in our own ability. We were able to make decisions on the field.
That time, players played in their set positions, but lads like Iggy Clarke and Joe McDonagh had no fear of speeding up the field, while John Connolly had an engine that meant he could keep going all day. The weight of history might have been against us but I think for too long we had been defined as losers who accepted defeat on the big day and that wasn’t a true representation of the way we as individuals felt as confident players and young men.
During the second-half, Ray Cummins came out to centre-forward as pickings were poor inside on Joe Clarke, and he caused me huge problems because he was taller than anybody I had ever hurled on before.
All of a sudden, instead of being seven points up, the margin came down to a couple... and then to one. The next thing we got a fairly standard 21-yard free and Cork lined their goal. Maybe they were rattled, but Gerry Coone’s free dipped under the bar and the net shook for a goal.
It was a very welcome tonic and a huge lift.
Cork came down the field. They got a point and in the next attack Jimmy Barry Murphy soloed in and was ready to let fly when Iggy Clarke hooked him.
That was immense.
The difference in the second-half was John Connolly. He was really in his prime in the mid-70s and he was captain and leader of the team, always encouraging lads and very dominant in the middle. Alongside him, Sean Murphy was exceptional and had his best ever game for Galway.
Joe Clarke was the essence of coolness, out-hurling a series of Cork forwards who had given such terrific displays in Munster. Alongside him both Niall McInerney and Pat Lally were invincible.
No matter what was thrown at them they got it out one way or another, and once they got it out towards Joe McDonagh and Iggy... they were off on their horses.They sent great ball into the forwards and at vital times in the second half we got scores that hurt Cork.
With a few minutes to go we began to realise for definite that this was doable, but Cork had a habit in the past of stealing games in the last couple of minutes and we were a bit concerned about what might even happen in injury time.
Mick Spain from Offaly was the referee. We were hoping he would blow it up.
There was a passion and a frenzy towards the finish to make sure that we blocked out Cork and Joe Clarke threw himself at a shot, while Big Mike Conneely in goals was superb throughout.
It took a few minutes at the end to realise the significance of our victory, that instead of being a spectator at the All-Ireland final, that year we were going to be participating in it. In some ways, people were saying coming into the semi-final that we were in bonus territory but I think we were where we should have been because we were good enough to be in All-Irelands in the early 1970s but, for whatever reason, our team didn’t click or blend together.
That year we were very fit, we had a brilliant trainer in Inky Flaherty; we had good hurlers and I think on the day things happened.
And they happened very quickly.
Napoleon once said that the best general he ever had was General Luck ... and I think that we had luck on our side that day.
After the game we got a bus back to the Aisling Hotel for a bite to eat and it was only when we got into the hotel that the significance of what we had done began to hit home.
Inside there were a lot of supporters, but I remember meeting Sean Meade, Seamus Leydon, and the Keenan brothers from the Galway football three in-a-row team. I had never met anyone of that sporting significance in my life.
They reassured me that we had taken out a big name and we needed to take confidence from it and go on and win the final. Some time later, I visited Maynooth College where I met up with a great friend from Beal na Blath in Cork and he would be known as an unbelievably passionate Cork supporter, like all Rebels.
He was crying that night when I met him; he cried the next day and for a few days after that. He in some ways reflected the huge disappointment that Cork people felt, that they almost felt entitled to win.
This was Cork’s first semi-final loss, a further cue that things were changing.
Cassius Clay once said that he got his strength from the people, and I think we got a lot of encouragement from our supporters after that — some of it was realistic and some wasn’t. But I always think that John Connolly’s contribution to Galway hurling at that time was not unlike Cassius Clay’s contribution to the way boxing evolved.
He shaped our generation of players and many since.
It was at that time that I began to believe that the key thing was... ‘The ball is king’.
If you get the ball, your opponent can do nothing.
I knew I was reasonably fast so I could get out in front and get possession, and there were times in that first half when I told myself ... I’m enjoying this.
We were spreading the ball wide and making Cork do the running, rather than a military-style of play up and down the middle. As a set of backs, we were very secure in our own skin. I think we tuned into each other well and we knew when Iggy or Joe went for a ball we intuitively knew the outcome.
Back in 1975 one of the big hit records was Glen Campbell’s ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ and in some ways we were all cowboys.
We were all trying out something new but we had a great passion and we loved hurling. We began to look at lads like John Connolly, Padraig Fahy, PJ Qualter and some of the older brigade who had served Galway well and we knew if we could do our bit, that they had done it previously and would do it again.
And they did. I think the fact that we understood each other so well was one of the big factors in that victory.
All of that era was a building process because it took Galway a little bit longer than other teams to become successful.
We had teams capable enough after 1975 to win an All-Ireland. The following year, 1976 we lost a semi-final to Wexford after a replay in a great game.
We were always hurting about the way it happened and some of the refereeing decisions. We felt that if we had got to Croke Park to play Cork, who came along and won three in a row from 1976 to ’78, we were definitely good enough to beat them.
Joe McDonagh and Frank Burke, in the drawn game against Wexford in 1976 in Pairc Ui Chaoimh, illuminated the place. Iggy gave an exhibition the second day. It was just a pity the All-Ireland win was postponed until 1980 because there were teams before us who wore that jersey and although collectively they might not have been as good a team, individually some of them were better hurlers.
The fact that so many of the hurlers in the 1970s were playing right throughout the year in college was a huge advantage and we regularly met some of these players like Kieran Purcell and Pat Delaney, and some of the Cork lads, by either playing alongside them or against them in Fitzgibbon or Combined Universities matches.
We got to know them, and realise that they were human, too and even though some of them had greater achievements than we had, fundamentally we were comparable hurlers. We began to believe that and to realise that Seanie O’Leary might be a good hurler but Padraig Fahy or PJ Molloy were equally as good.
I think there is a very important human component to it all though and in the aftermath of all those matches the hair was let down and we were able to enjoy ourselves. We had a lot of good singers like Niall, John Connolly, Frank Burke and his hit Ernie, Sean Murphy and his Suitcase song, PJ Qualter and, of course, Joe McDonagh, who entertained everyone after the All-Ireland final defeat to Kilkenny in 1975.
The Kilkenny lads had just won the two in a row for the first time in over 40 years and that was being celebrated in a tamer manner than it would have been had we won it. There was almost a ‘business as usual’ theme.
When we were watching the match on the Monday, a singsong started close to the bar and the next thing McDonagh took the microphone and started to do a Micheal Ó Muircheartaigh commentary in Welsh — as he had picked up the language while doing his postgraduate over in Wales.
Joe was an extraordinary kind of person with the gifts he had for music, for singing, for knowing people’s names, and I think he definitely helped to heal the wound of losing the All-Ireland final in 1975.
All the time though there was a quiet resolution that we needed to get back there and we needed to win an All-Ireland because we really believed that we were good enough.
Most of us could never imagine life without hurling, it was our passion and will likely remain so.
It has helped bring out the best in us by nurturing a determination to learn and improve by giving us feelings of competence and autonomy.
Sport in general also helped us form lifelong friendships among fellow players and also among the opposition. It was our constant companion on life’s journey and while it definitely tested our endurance to the limit, it magnified us with skills in the areas of team-work, and character building, and it enhanced our self- esteem.
Finally, sport and especially hurling taught us about life’s values and anointed each of us with that unique sense of engagement and, most especially, belonging to something bigger than ourselves.
- ‘Galway: Game of my Life’ (€20) is published by Hero Books and is available in all good bookshops (and in print and ebook on Amazon).
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