by Donal Keenan
One can only imagine the stories that would be told.
James McHugh and Derry’s Johnny McGurk exchange pleasantries after the rain-soaked Ulster final of 1993. © Ray McManus/SPORTSFILE
The O’Connor Brothers
Gentle Giant: George O’Connor finished his illustrious career with Wexford by winning his only All-Ireland title in 1996. © Ray McManus/SPORTSFILE
George O’Connor’s eyes are ablaze in wonder. Those big, gnarled hands are gesticulating animatedly. The story he is telling is about hurling in Buenos Aires. He has just arrived back in Ireland after a ten-day trip to the Argentine capital where he conducted a coaching course for a few hundred schoolchildren. ‘I was invited by a guy, a man named Mendoza, to visit his children’s foundation while I was over there. He looks after disadvantaged kids. There was this one kid there from a deprived background. He hadn’t talked for two years. He watched me with the hurley. He didn’t understand a word of what I was saying. But when I gave him the hurley and ball he came alive. He took off, just belting the ball with the hurley into the back of a soccer goal with a big happy face on him. That’s the power of hurling.’
If hurling ever needs a super-salesman then George O’Connor is the perfect fit. Now in his late forties, he looks as lean as he did when he wore the Wexford jersey for seventeen eventful years. His passion for the game is palpable; he admits he can talk all day about the properties of the game, the advantages it brings to young people, the possibilities for development. He works as a full-time coach now. ‘I have the best job in the world,’ he declares happily.
He will talk about his long career as both a footballer and hurler with his club St Martin’s and with Wexford that ended shortly after George and his younger brother by three years, John, achieved their ultimate ambition of winning an All-Ireland senior hurling title on a memorable day in 1996. But every chapter leads to a diversion. His passion is evident; he cares for society and how the youth of today are being readied for the future. Any sport, but especially hurling, is the proper preparatory tool. Don’t get him started on PlayStation and Nintendo or the excesses of the Celtic Tiger years. ‘Bringing kids to their Holy Communion by helicopter,’ he says in exasperation. ‘Were we stone cracked? How stupid it was. We lost all sense of place.’ More of that later.
John jokes: ‘I don’t know what you were talking to him about hurling for, sure he knows nothing about it.’ And George doesn’t disagree. ‘John had far more skill than I had,’ he says readily. ‘I was an athlete or footballer playing hurling. I could run up and down the field all day. John had great technique.’ It was an invaluable combination of attributes, however, that contributed hugely to one of the most emotional Championship experiences of the modern era when Wexford bridged a twenty-eight-year gap to bring the Liam McCarthy Cup back to the county.
It had been the dream of the O’Connor boys when growing up with their older brothers Arthur and James on the family farm in Piercestown to one day emulate the great heroes of their childhood like Tony Doran, Dan Quigley and Séamus ‘Shanks’ Whelan from their own club who had triumphed in 1968. But they had to experience more than a fair amount of despair and dejection – to the point where they believed the dream would not be realised – before salvation arrived.
Their father Paddy, who won a Leinster Junior Championship medal with Wexford in 1940 alongside a young Nicky Rackard, was a GAA enthusiast who was in possession of something priceless – a ten-year ticket for the All-Ireland football and hurling finals. Each year he would bring two boys to the hurling final and the other two to the football final. ‘There wasn’t much by the way of holidays then, so that was our big excursion,’ George remembers. ‘The day of the final always created great excitement. I remember the Sunday Press would lay out the teams on the back page in colour. It was the only colour you would see in a newspaper at the time and it made the men look huge. I remember Jim Treacy from Kilkenny, the great Cork players and of course Tony Doran. Going up to Croke Park on that day holding your father’s hand you dreamed that one day you would be out there playing.’
Paddy had played a lot of sports in his youth ‘all below the radar,’ according to George, because of the ban on GAA members attending or playing ‘foreign’ games. Cricket and hockey had strong followings in that part of Wexford and Paddy played enthusiastically. So too would his sons. Athletics was also popular and the boys would apply the skills learned on the track and field to their hurling and football.
There were signs of early promise at the local St Martin’s club. George won county Under-12 Hurling and Football Championships in 1971. ‘I found football much easier,’ he says. ‘If you are athletic at all you automatically have the flexibility for football. There are a few basic skills – the catch, the kick and the hand pass. In those days there wasn’t much running off the ball, so catching and kicking were the important skills. Hurling is so different; there are nearly 150 different skills in hurling. People said I was a better footballer and that was because I had the skills from athletics. And I brought some of the football skills to my hurling. I loved catching the ball in hurling. There’s no better feeling than bringing the ball down through a forest of hurley sticks. The adrenalin courses through you. The only problem was that sometimes I would forget to bring the hurley up to protect my hand and I took a fair bit of punishment.’
As the 1970s progressed, hurling and football became more and more a way of life. Patricia O’Connor played golf and had a handicap of thirteen. A year or so after she stopped playing the game a friend asked why. ‘I have a new handicap,’ she replied. ‘It’s now five – a husband and four sons.’ Her support for her sons was unconditional. She watched as fourteen-year-old George won a Wexford Minor Hurling Championship in 1974 with St Martin’s, the club going on to win three successive minor titles.
In 1977 George played with Wexford in the Leinster minor hurling final when they lost to Kilkenny; the following year he played in the provincial minor football final when Wexford lost to a Dublin team that would produce future All-Ireland winners like Pat Canavan, Kieran Duff, Barney Rock and Dermot Deasy. In 1979 he enjoyed his first taste of success when Wexford won the Leinster Under-21 Championship, beating Kilkenny after a replay.
John’s under-age career had taken a similar trajectory. He was a substitute on the minor hurling team that lost to Tipperary in the 1980 All-Ireland final, he was on the St Peter’s College team that lost the Leinster Schools final in 1981 to Kilkenny CBS (who went on to All-Ireland success), and was part of the Wexford minor team beaten in the provincial final by Kilkenny (who went on to All-Ireland success).
George’s senior hurling debut with Wexford was in the final of the old Oireachtas tournament in October 1979. The once-prestigious competition had lost much of its lustre, so when Wexford beat Offaly many of the contestants were underwhelmed. ‘I remember proudly climbing the steps of the Hogan Stand to collect the cup and I know John Fleming was with me. But when I looked down on the pitch I saw that most of the lads didn’t bother coming up. I couldn’t understand that because it meant everything to me. I always wanted to be on those steps. I suppose I thought I would be there every year. Little did I know.
‘I was so in awe in those days of just being on the Wexford team, just to be able to go back to your home place and say you played for Wexford. I was in awe of lads like Tony Doran, Mick Jacob, Colm Doran, the Butlers, Ned Buggy, Christy Kehoe; these were household names all over Ireland so for a nineteen-year-old to be asked to go out and play with them was something phenomenal. I thought it was only a matter of time before we would start winning things.’
George was also called into the Wexford football team and was a dual player until 1984. They enjoyed relative success, beating Meath in the Leinster Championship in 1981 and gaining promotion from Division Three in 1983. ‘Although I enjoyed the football and we had a decent team, it was always playing second fiddle to hurling. We didn’t have proper structures and the game was never going to be taken as ser
iously as hurling.’
His performances for Wexford in the 1981 Leinster Championship – they lost by two points to Kilkenny in the provincial final – earned George his first All Star award. The future looked rosy. ‘I would suggest we were naïve not to realise that Offaly were about to make the breakthrough; we thought it would always be Kilkenny or Wexford and that every few years we would get to a final. We’re an easygoing people in Wexford; we have the sun and strawberries and it took us a while to accept what was happening, that there was a change in Leinster.’
Wexford’s John O’Connor, of whom his brother George said in tribute, ‘John had far more skill than I had’. © Ray McManus/SPORTSFILE
John, meanwhile, was mastering his craft in Cork as a student in UCC. There he came under the influence of Fr (later Canon) Michael O’Brien and won three consecutive Fitzgibbon Cup medals between 1983 and 1985 alongside players like Nicky English (Tipperary), Richard Browne (Cork), Seán O’Gorman (Cork) and Pat Hartnett (Cork). ‘It was a great experience for me because I got up close and personal with the Cork people. You could see the swagger, why they were so successful. They don’t suffer from a lack of confidence down there and I learned a lot,’ he says. The lessons would prove valuable later in his hurling career.
He laughs when you mention his senior hurling debut for Wexford. It was in a tournament organised to celebrate the centenary year of the GAA in 1984, structured on an open draw basis. Wexford were given an away game against Roscommon. They had just lost a National League final and some of the players, including George, were not required for what was regarded as a routine trip. ‘Wexford caught in a spider’s web’ is how John recalls one newspaper headline that reported one of the biggest upsets in hurling history. ‘I think John was one of the few lads who got to bed the night before and he was one of the first taken off,’ laughs George.
They did reach the Leinster final in 1984, where they lost to Offaly. They were back in the final again in 1988 and lost to Kilkenny. George explains: ‘There were days when we were really downhearted; they were horrible days. You couldn’t speak for a week. The hurt when you woke up in the morning in the week after losing a big game was terrible. In the early years just playing for Wexford was enough. But the longer you play the more you strive for. You realise your career is moving on. Every year we felt we had a chance. That kept us going. When Christy Kehoe was our manager we were so close, always at the top and competing well.’ Wexford lost the National League finals of 1990 to Kilkenny and 1991 to Offaly. They were taking punishment and coming back for more year after year. Then came 1993.
Wexford reached another National League final. On 9 May in Semple Stadium they played Cork, a star-studded team that had lost the previous year’s All-Ireland final to Kilkenny. A crowd of 21,900 were well entertained as the game entered the final two minutes and Wexford trailed by just one point. Larry Murphy snatched the equaliser with a splendidly taken point from the left-hand touchline. Wexford won the puck-out and Martin Storey got possession and was fouled. John O’Connor stood over the ball. ‘I was directly behind him,’ George remembers. ‘His trajectory was spot on. But as the ball lost a bit of speed, a crosswind took it wide.’
In the replay, which also ended in a draw after extra time, John recalls missing a ‘70’, now a 65-metre free. Cork emerged as victors in the second replay. It was a heartbreaking defeat for Wexford, one of the most difficult to stomach. It had an effect on John, though it wasn’t long-lasting. ‘I did lose a bit of confidence in my free-taking for the next few years because of those misses,’ he says. ‘But I don’t carry around scars. Those things don’t bother me too much. You can’t beat club hurling to build your confidence back up and by 1996 I was taking the frees again.’
There was more pain ahead in 1993. Wexford met Kilkenny again in the Leinster final. It was a rousing game in which the Wexford players produced one of their greatest efforts of the period. They were a point up as the game entered its final moments, but Kilkenny’s Éamon Morrissey scored an equalising point with virtually the last action of the afternoon. ‘Psychologically we had no chance the second day,’ John says.
When they lost the 1994 Leinster final to Offaly George began to ponder his future. ‘I was thirty-four. I had lost something like thirteen finals. I think when Éamon [Morrissey] scored that point in 1993 that I doubted we would ever get a break. We had been so close so often only to see victory snatched away. I was hoping and praying that day for the referee to blow his whistle. I thought it couldn’t happen to us again. It was the final straw for me and I started questioning myself. I suppose I had decided that I wasn’t going back for more. It was time to stop.
‘I got so much encouragement at the time from the people around me, my family and friends. My dentist, Adrian Rogers, had a lot of work to do with my teeth at the time and he told me I should give it at least another year. He wasn’t a big GAA man but he knew what it meant to me and gave me the push I needed. My family were also quietly encouraging me. And then Liam Griffin was appointed as the team manager. We spoke. I told him about my doubts. He said I couldn’t retire. I had to give him a chance and the decision was taken to give it one more go at least.’
O’Connor had always admired Griffin, a cousin, and wondered how he could be enticed into the Wexford setup. His eventual arrival would have a massive influence, though there were tough times initially when Griffin sought to impose his authority on the squad and had to take unpopular action that would affect everyone – including the O’Connor brothers.
‘He dropped John and me,’ George says, mockingly incredulous to this day at the apparent audacity of the man whose appointment he had lauded. ‘We had tested him and he didn’t back off. He had told us not to play a club game. We played anyway and he dropped us. He took the captaincy off Liam Dunne for the same reason. Any time a new manager comes in he will be put to the sword and if he survives then he is right forever. We didn’t get away with things that we had done with other managers. Griffin could hear the grass grow. He knew everything that was going on. He laid down his marker and we realised how serious he was and we bought into it eventually.’
‘Griffin was ahead of his time,’ John agrees. ‘He was just so organised. His management embraced everything. We had some good managers before him. Christy Kehoe was brilliant in terms of skills and fitness. But Griffin brought something new to it. He worked on the psychology of it all, he brought in experts and he changed everything.’
George adds: ‘He [Griffin] used to get up at 6.00 in the morning to plan the evening’s training session. He had thirteen or fourteen people in the backroom team. He was so professional and we didn’t realise it. It was done with a minimum budget. If we did something special in training we got our rewards, a pair of boots or a T-shirt. And we appreciated them and we knew we had earned it. People said at the time that there had been better teams than ours in the 1960s and 1970s. But they were missing the point. There might have been better individuals but there wasn’t a better team. We were a better team. This was a great team, guys who knew exactly what they were doing, who were tactically very aware, were very fit. Griffin said he could make us the best blockers, the best hookers, the fittest team; they were the attributes he said no one would match and he did it. We were properly conditioned, but he didn’t take away our ability to make decisions for ourselves. We could make snap decisions on the field, we could adjust.’
It took Griffin the entire year of 1995 to create the environment he wanted. Results were poor and he had his critics, but the manager had a plan and he was sticking to it. When Wexford beat Kilkenny in the first round of the Leinster Championship by 1–14 to 0–14 on 2 June 1996, the first signs of what was happening on the training pitch were becoming apparent. It was the first victory in the Championship over Kilkenny since 1988 and a county starved of success began to believe that there was potential in this team. The next victory over Dublin was marred slightly by a hand injury sustained by George which meant he was unable to st
art in the provincial final against Offaly.
John made his first start of that Championship in the Leinster final at left full back alongside Colm Kehoe and Ger Cushe. Wexford and Offaly had played six times in the Championship in their previous sixteen seasons and Offaly had won them all. Offaly had been All-Ireland champions just two years previously and the team was laced with players of great talent. They led by 1–5 to 0–4 after less than twenty minutes. The Wexford players were clearly nervous. They needed a tonic. It came in the form of a penalty which goalkeeper Damien Fitzhenry converted. What followed was a pulsating contest that tested not just the skill but the character of the Wexford team. They showed just how much progress they had made by taking control and scoring a total of two goals and twenty-three points to win by eight points. It was a defining victory.
George was on the bench for the All-Ireland semi-final against Galway but came on after twenty-eight minutes as a replacement for John, who had suffered a head injury. It was a typical semi-final, dour but laced with some good scores from Tom Dempsey and Rory McCarthy. Wexford won by 2–13 to 3–7. They had qualified for the county’s first All-Ireland senior final since 1977. The dream was alive.
John was fit for the final against Limerick. George thought he might not start. But when Seán Flood was ruled out through injury George was selected at midfield alongside Adrian Fenlon. The game was a tough, tight affair. Griffin had talked a great deal about the character of his team. That was tested when Éamon Scallan was sent off before half time. ‘That was when Griffin’s preparations shone through. He had talked about the importance of decision-making on the field, the responsibility of the players,’ says George. ‘We had to think for ourselves when Éamon went off. We had to react.’ They responded positively. Wexford 1–13, Limerick 0–14. Cue wild celebrations.
