When hurling's back door was pushed ajar: 1997 and the winds of (reluctant) change
That was then: Ollie Baker of Clare in action during the All Ireland Hurling Final match between Clare and Tipperary at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo: Ray McManus/Sportsfile
In Wexford they’d spent the winter partying like it was 1968. In Clare they’d spent it brooding. One of the myriad differences between being All-Ireland champions and being former All-Ireland champions.
If Wexford had celebrated a first MacCarthy Cup triumph in three decades long and hard they did so partly for the best of motives. “We felt we had a duty to bring the cup to every school in the county, to do the PR end of it properly,” Tom Dempsey recalls. “It was non-stop up to Christmas. Colm Kehoe came out with a great line one evening. ‘We often imagined what it would be like to win an All-Ireland but we never imagined what it would be like afterwards.’"
Rory Kinsella had replaced Liam Griffin and "he did a tremendous job. We didn’t do well in the league. But when the championship came around we were ready.”
Over in Dál gCais they were still thinking of the 1996 Munster semi-final and Ciaran Carey’s winning point. “Roy of the Rovers stuff,” Fergie Tuohy acknowledges, possibly through gritted teeth. The really painful bit was not that Clare had been mugged in the last reel of the movie but that they’d left themselves open to be mugged. They were determined they wouldn’t be caught a second year in a row.
“That was the drive for ’97. Proving ourselves. Not being one-hit wonders. We to win a second All-Ireland.”
Winning that All Ireland, well, it was going to be hard. For everyone. There was a new game in town. This was the summer of the first back-door championship. The innovation was not universally welcomed.
John O’Grady, Cúlbaire of the , asserted that the GAA had “gone off the gold standard”. In Wexford at a county board meeting Tony Doran outlined the doomsday scenario for a horrified audience. Imagine, he posited, beating Kilkenny in a Leinster final only for the sides to meet again in the All-Ireland final and the tables to be turned. Eeek.
The installation of the back door made the provincial semi-finals bigger affairs than before. Win and the All-Ireland series beckoned - and who knows what might happen then? In Tipperary’s case the semi-final was more important even than that. They were facing Limerick, who’d disposed of them in both 1995 and ’96. A third successive defeat was unconscionable.
They had a new manager in Len Gaynor, someone who made an instant impression on Michael Ryan.
“A great guy. I hadn’t known him personally, obviously I knew his history, but there was a wonderful groundedness about him. So passionate about hurling, so passionate about Tipperary and so decent. And when we beat Limerick we knew we had extended our summer.”
It was off to Páirc Uí Chaoimh for the Munster final. A sunny day and the great bowl, as Tuohy puts it, “like a colosseum”. Clare were the better team, ought to have won with something to spare but drove ten first-half wides and were grateful when John Leahy miscued a late chance to equalise. It would not be Leahy’s last act of the championship.
Late drama was all the rage in Croke Park too. Damien Fitzhenry made a diving save at the death from Billy Dooley in the semi-final to put Wexford through and three weeks later, in front of a new record crowd for a Leinster final, they emphasised again their new and glorious ability to find a way to win. The holders fought back from a five-point interval deficit in a tense, claustrophobic arm wrestle that remained in the balance til' Billy Byrne came on with seven minutes remaining. He promptly kicked a Liam Dunne free to the net before adding two points. Just because he could. Kilkenny beat and the hay saved.
An hour or two after the final whistle Dempsey found himself in a bar on one of the upper floors of the Hogan Stand, high above Croke Park and high on the joys of life. All Ireland champions, double Leinster champions, seven wins on the bounce, Kilkenny at last put to the sword and any number of bad memories thereby effaced. This, he reflected, was as good as it gets.
“And it was…”
*****
We pause for a few personal memories.
The two-mile tailback into Fermoy at 10pm the night of the Munster final. That’s how much of a draw the event had been.
All the times Clare struggled to reach the 20-point mark before eventually getting there. It was exhausting to watch but, this being the 1990s, it was always enough. Given their dearth of natural scorers it looks even more of an achievement now.
The turnaround in Thurles. Galway nine up at half-time, DJ Carey finishing with 2-8.
Numerous midweek trips, or so it appeared, to Ennis. The gates of Cusack Park were locked for training but afterwards Clare repaired across the road to eat in the Sherwood Inn and admittance was never a problem. They were all great fun, generous with their time and still enjoying the ride. Their manager was holding court and having the time of his life.
A first and last visit to Clones for the Tipperary/Down All-Ireland quarter-final and organising the logistics thereof. Where exactly was Clones? Cavan? Monaghan? Ireland? Northern Ireland? Greenland?
Were there drumlins? Was there stony grey soil? How did one get there? How did one get back? I have many memories from the summer of 1997. I have absolutely no memory of who I travelled to Clones with, what route we took or what time we got back.
The match report I do remember. I rang it in on my very first mobile phone, yowling down the line to the copytaker. Readers may well have been confused as to the identity of “John Raheen” in next day’s . So was I for a moment. It was John Leahy. Still popping up.
*****
Clare and Wexford had five weeks of thumb-twiddling between provincial decider and All Ireland semi-final. Their respective XVs picked themselves. Tipperary in contrast required invasive surgery. Gaynor did not flinch from the task.
In came a bunch of big, uncomplicated young lads like Liam McGrath and Brian O’Meara. The teenage Liam Cahill, a current All-Star, kept his place before losing it next time out.
In getting back on the horse they weren’t impressive against the Ulster champions. Anything but. “It was a typical Tipperary fall-over-the-line performance,” Michael Ryan contends. He didn’t hang around to check out the fleshpots of Clones, having missed a gig as groomsman at a friend’s wedding in Templemore earlier in the day, but he departed south satisfied that a fresh start had been made.
Clare didn’t make their post-Páirc Uí Chaoimh hiatus look the slightest encumbrance on reaching Croke Park. They made the running and had the game in safekeeping when leading by ten points after 45 minutes. Kilkenny’s comeback, which featured a typical Careyesque goal, fell short and though they’d lost their full-back and full-forward that morning it was a stretch to hold that the presence of Liam Simpson and Michael Phelan would have made a material difference. Clare were that superior.
A Clare/Wexford showdown would have been the hottest number in hurling history, or at any rate the hottest number since Ring and Rackard faced off in the mid-1950s. In the event the anticipated stampede for All-Ireland final tickets never materialised. Wexford were floored by Tipperary.
Early injuries to Rod Guiney and Rory McCarthy hampered them and goals by Leahy and O’Meara put the challengers in the driving seat. The first back-door showpiece would be an all-Munster affair. Cue lots of witticisms – today they’d be memes – about Tipperary’s circuitous route. The hilarity of it all.
The formline from the Munster final held. Barely. Leahy had another 11th-hour opportunity, this time to be denied by Davy Fitz. Clare had won that second All-Ireland. Mission accomplished and their Gaelic Grounds ghosts banished.
In seeing off Cork, Kilkenny and Tipperary twice they had, Tuohy says, “done everything we needed to do and more. The candles on top of the cake when it’s your birthday.”
For the losers there was consolation to leaven the disappointment. “Every player craves appearing in Croke Park,” Ryan observes. “The jokes about back doors, side doors, whatever – we didn’t care. It was a cracking contest and Clare were brilliant, better than in 1995. But after six years, with what we’d always believed was a strong core panel, we were back at the top table. That was what beating Limerick in the Munster semi-final had led to.”
Wexford weren’t so sanguine. When they’d needed a back door there wasn’t one; when it was finally installed they became its first victims. The ghastly irony of it all.
“We never got any benefit from the back door,” Dempsey groans. “Had there been one from 1985, when I started, to 1995 I’m convinced we’d have won another All-Ireland, maybe two. Particularly in 1993.”
At least Tony Doran’s appalling vista didn’t come to pass, mind.
Inevitably over time the back door was widened. An expansion in 2002 led to all of the early casualties receiving a second chance. Once that particular Rubicon was crossed the introduction of a Champions League format was inevitable, the only surprise being it took until 2018 to materialise.
The summer of 1997 was where it started. It was a glorious championship, not despite the back door but because of it, and it was won by patently the best team in the land. For excitement and controversy there was no way the 1998 championship could possibly live up to it.
Right..?
Read our exclusive 32 page GAA Championship supplement in Saturday's Irish Examiner. Featuring expert analysis from Anthony Daly, Éamonn Fitzmaurice, Derek McGrath, Liam Sheedy, Eoin Cadogan, and Gary Brennan.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
