Kings of September

by Michael Foley

  ‘I remember saying to myself: I can’t brace myself on this leg. He hits me and he puts me about ten yards. I can still hear Micheál O’Hehir laughing.’

  The All Star was Walsh’s, but the day truly belonged to Kennelly. Within the Kerry dressing room, Tim Kennelly could be whatever the players needed him to be. When they needed a ringmaster on a night out, Kennelly would crack the whip and tell a few yarns. They called him The Horse, a carrier of men. When the team needed lifting, Kennelly would drag them up by the collars. Mikey Sheehy could remember talk wafting down from Listowel when he was a kid of a gigantic centre-back in white ankle socks and dreaded the day Austin Stacks Under-14s would be compelled to meet them. When they did, it took a while to find someone who would mark the number six.

  O’Dwyer pushed Kennelly hard in training, but Kennelly never surrendered against even the worst onslaughts. He had captained the team to victory in 1979, but the 1981 final was his day. Gerry Carroll struggled to manage him physically, and Kennelly roared into the game, sending raking dropkicks deep into the Offaly half. Whatever Offaly did, they couldn’t unsettle Kennelly. He stayed steady, and Kerry were safe.

  As a dull game drifted into the final ten minutes, Kerry were heading towards four in a row. Typically, they found a way to embellish the moment. At 0-12 to 0-8, the game was petering harmlessly out as Liam Currams launched a ball into Kerry’s defence. Jimmy Deenihan collected the ball near the endline with Jack O’Shea nearby to take the pass. It was an arrangement worked out over the years, but this time Deenihan twisted and turned away, kicking the ball over his shoulder towards the sideline. Tim Kennelly rose, caught the ball. He cleared to centrefield, where Tommy Doyle took possession.

  Now, Kerry picked up the pace. Doyle dropped his kick into a space in front of the Hogan Stand for John Egan to collect, sixty yards from the Offaly goal. Egan turned, and as Eoin Liston ran towards him, Egan flicked the ball into his chest. Liston slickly popped him a return pass. Offaly were marking tightly, but as the ball moved further upfield, their team was visibly getting pulled apart.

  Meanwhile, Jack O’Shea was jogging along the sideline on the other side of the field, slowly working his way towards the Offaly goal. Of all the attributes that made him great, people marvelled most at Jacko’s stamina. When Kerry were attacking, Jacko was there. When Kerry defended, he was in front of the 20-metre line, looking for a pass. His fitness was innate. When he stopped training during the winter, his weight actually dropped instead of increasing. He quit drinking when he made the Kerry team in 1977, while Mick O’Dwyer had stubbed a cigarette out on him years before and finished him smoking. By 1981 he was still a boy in a team of men, but already among their greatest.

  With Sean Walsh happy to hold the centre, O’Dwyer never tried to put the reins on Jacko. His style was a perfect mix of athleticism and skill, framed by an unconscious understanding of the game’s geometry. When Jacko talked about football he talked about circles, ellipses and triangles. Arcs of running. O’Dwyer had seconded Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh to oversee the Kerry players’ training regime in Dublin. At the end of every session with Micheál, O’Shea would kick fifty balls over the bar from inside the 20-metre line. He knew he had the leg strength to kick balls from long distance, it was the mechanics of his kicking style that always needed perfecting.

  He watched Dublin in the late seventies and sussed out a simple trend in their gameplan. It seemed that Dublin’s style was shaped around gaining possession within a triangle that had its apex thirty yards from goal, and stopping the opposition from gaining possession in the same area in front of their own posts. With the freedom to roam the pitch, he gradually worked out a way to make the best of his role. He watched how Down’s Colm McAlarney used the flanks of the field and created a style that merged brilliantly with his natural ability.

  ‘I used play in an oval shape all the time. If the opposition were attacking down one side, I’d jog back down the other. I always reckoned if the ball came to a goalkeeper or a defender, his first reaction is to come out the other way. I’d always try to be available. It wasn’t that I was breaking my hole to get from one end of the pitch to the other. When the ball was coming down one side, I was getting back.’

  Years of thought and practice were about to come good. As he loped along the far wing and looked across the pitch towards Egan, there wasn’t one Offaly player within thirty yards of him. As Egan cut infield and worked the ball to Mikey Sheehy, Jacko went from a canter to a gallop. Sheehy turned round to face goal. Years of matches and nights in Killarney told Jacko what was coming next. Sheehy popped the ball over his marker’s head, and into Jacko’s hands. He was twenty-five yards from goal. Nothing but glory occupied his mind.

  ‘I just went for it. I wouldn’t even contemplate kicking the ball over the bar from there. I never had any doubt I’d go for the goal. Instinct took over.’

  The ball flew past Martin Furlong into the top corner of the net. His arms were by his sides. For once, Furlong was powerless.

  Jacko turned with his fist clenched, and bounded outfield. In twenty-eight seconds a move involving seven players had embodied every gift and virtue O’Dwyer’s team had bestowed on football. It encompassed their speed and their mesmerising passing skills. Six years of relentless work had locked every component of the team together to create a team of near perfection. For a moment, it seemed their years of work had been rising to this moment of crescendo, a great cymbal crash after a thrillingly long drum roll.

  Eugene McGee looked at the ground. 1-12 to 0-8. The game was won. Four-in-a-row and greatness had been secured. As Jacko ran past Páidí Ó Sé, he smiled and shouted, ‘We’re off to Australia!’

  * * *

  That night Offaly gathered for their banquet. McGee was frustrated. Angry. His tactics had failed and the team hadn’t performed as he knew they could. The team was afforded a standing ovation when they arrived into the hall, but it rang hollow to him. He knew that criticism would inevitably follow. It had been a poor game, and he knew Offaly wouldn’t be spared. All the weeks of thought and preparation were about to be dismissed in the post-mortem. When it came to his speech, he couldn’t hold himself any longer.

  ‘We took a so-called super team and reduced their gods to human beings,’ he said. ‘We’re not clowns at a circus. We’re a team playing Gaelic football and if the public want to watch, so be it. We are not there to give a show. Every man gave his best and should not be maligned for it.’ Gerry Carroll, Tomás and Matt Connor, he said, were great players who hadn’t reached the required levels on the day, ‘but it’s indicative of the relationship I have with the team that I can say that without any embarrassment.’

  As Kerry launched themselves into another week of celebrations, Offaly returned to Tullamore that Monday night. Flames from a mighty bonfire licked the air. An open-topped bus edged through the town, where thousands had gathered to greet them. The reception was overwhelming. ‘I’m not an emotional man,’ said McGee, ‘but tonight you made me cry.’

  When they looked around at each other, every player had tears in his eyes. That night they promised each other one thing: they would never come home like this again.

  ‘McGee got it wrong,’ says Pat Fitzgerald. ‘We all got it wrong. When we won our semi-final against Down we thought: right, we’re in a final now. This is a whole new ball game. That was a big mistake. We thought: yeah, this is different. The Holy Ghost will come and he’ll elevate you a bit. To Kerry, the All-Ireland final was just another game.’

  After the final, McGee met with Tomás O’Connor and thanked him for trying to play. Now, it was time to get his knee fixed. Tomás met with his specialist who handed him a letter detailing the difficulties now associated with his knee. The last line was chilling.

  ‘This young man,’ it read, ‘should never play contact sport again.’

  A few days later O’Connor met McGee who asked him how the meeting had gone. ‘Fine,’ he replied.

  * * *

 
The Tuesday night after the final, Kerry captain Jimmy Deenihan brought the Sam Maguire cup to Finuge. Bonfires illuminated the cold night sky and nine of his teammates hopped up on the back of a trailer beside him. Down in the crowd he spotted Offaly’s Sean Lowry, Gerry Carroll and Brendan Lowry who had travelled to the Listowel races for the week. As the speeches began, Finuge chairman Martin Whelan plucked Sean Lowry from the crowd, hauled him on to the stage and gave him the microphone.

  Lowry touched the cup and smiled. ‘It’ll be back in Offaly next year!’ he shouted and the crowd chuckled. He congratulated the Kerry team and warned their mentors not to keep making promises about five in a row. Offaly had plans.

  That week, the cup travelled all over Kerry. From Finuge it went to Ballybunion. Then Kenmare and Dingle. Waterville on Friday for O’Dwyer’s annual celebration. Tralee and Killorglin the following week. The days were submerged in a blizzard of promotional appearances. Players posed for the cameras while picking up cheques from the Irish Permanent and the Imperial hotel, Tralee. Another cheque rolled in from the people at the Concrete Products of Ireland. Jimmy Deenihan modelled a new ensemble designed for the trip: a light blue jacket emblazoned with the Kerry crest, grey slacks, white shirt and white and blue tie. Four days before the team left for the boiling heat of Australia and Hawaii, they were presented with a set of Aran sweaters by Udarás na Gaeltachta.

  When the fundraising was over, the final tally reached IR£102,000, dwarfing even the the IR£60,000 Tom McCarthy had aimed at. Every man would receive IR£1800 spending money, with enough held back to top the players up for the final leg of the trip. Seven games were scheduled – in New York, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Sydney, but those would take care of themselves.

  Now, it was time to party.

  7 THE PARTY BOYS

  Páidí Ó Sé craned his neck as high as he could, but he could still feel the water rising against his chest, slowly drawing up close to his neck. Soon it would reach his chin and start to pull him down. He needed to move to higher ground. He stood on his bed and balanced on his toes, but the water kept rising. Thousands of miles from home, New York was being consumed by the sea and taking Páidí with it.

  The water had started to rise a day earlier. As the Kerry team’s flight to New York was delayed by almost eleven hours, a gang of players repaired to Durty Nellie’s near Bunratty Castle and lined up the drinks. Páidí set the pace, and the rest tried to keep up. By the time their flight took off, the boys had almost passed out. When he reached the Statler hotel near Madison Square Garden, Páidí struggled to bed. Now the gin was playing tricks. It was wrecking his mind, sweating out through his pores and making him mad. He was in the horrors so deep, there seemed no way out. He kept his head up, and slowly the waters began to recede. He climbed down and got under the covers, shivering. The trip of all trips had begun.

  New York held nothing new for any of them. All-Star trips had made them all intimately acquainted with the sights and unmoved by the sleazy glamour of the city. New York was old hat. They wanted Frisco. Australia. They played Galway in Gaelic Park in front of a huge crowd and lost by three points, but in their minds football had already been left behind till the new year. The party had already begun.

  ‘It was heavy belting,’ says Eoin Liston. ‘We were fit and in our prime. We just had great crack.’

  ‘People love to get into this thing: “Were ye drinking?” says John Egan. Of course we were drinking. We’d do what you’d do yourself. We weren’t professional when we were out on those trips. We were out on holidays. We were doing what any other man would do given the latitude. And maybe more.’

  ‘Some of us,’ says Páidí Ó Sé, ‘nearly came home in boxes.’

  Páidí took the tour by the neck and shook every ounce of crack he could from it. Life was good, and Páidí augmented his spending stash with IR£2000 of his own money. With cash on his hip, every day was merely another story waiting to be shaped.

  One night he went for dinner with Sean Walsh, Liston, Ogie Moran and Mick O’Dwyer, with devilment in mind. His plan was dependent on all the players retaining a sober façade regardless of the stress and pressure about to be imposed on their senses. As they sat down to dinner, the players ordered three bottles of wine. Twenty minutes later, they ordered another three. Twenty minutes later, another three. By the end they had demolished fifteen bottles of wine. The following morning, Ó Sé was coming down the stairs to the hotel lobby when he heard O’Dwyer, the teetotaller, explaining the evening’s events to a bewildered listener. ‘I was there! I saw those fellows doing it!’

  A few days later, the same group were invited to dinner at a local Kerryman’s house. As his wife prepared dinner, she placed two bottles of wine on the table: one red, one white. As O’Dwyer surveyed the scene and the calibre of guest, he couldn’t contain himself. ‘I don’t know where you’re going with that! That won’t satisfy these fellows!’

  In Melbourne a crew headed to the races on Bomber’s birthday where the champagne flowed, smoked salmon was passed around and the day passed like a dream. Páidí Ó Sé and Sean Walsh had a party arranged for that evening, and filled Liston’s bath with cans of beer. Then, as the party reached its raucous height, they produced a birthday gift.

  ‘They presented me with a colour television,’ says Liston. ‘It was a lovely gesture, but of course the television was from the room next door.’

  The players’ fame exceeded even their own assumptions. One evening, John Egan and a few others set out for an adventure in the bush near Perth. Later they wandered back to a bus station, slightly lost and slightly bemused by the prospect of finding their way home. An old man in a dusty hat stood at the bus stop. Egan sidled up to him.

  ‘Excuse me. Do you know what time the next bus is heading to town?’

  The old man looked him and up and down. ‘Is that the bus to Killarney you’re looking for?’

  They partied hard, but they handled themselves with dignity too. As captain, Jimmy Deenihan was interviewed on television stations across the country to explain Kerry’s presence in Australia. They attended functions and Irish societies wherever they went, and left memories that were treasured for lifetimes. They played some football, but not much. In Adelaide they played a game of football against the Western Bulldogs. By the end of the first half, Kerry had annihilated them. To even things up, the Bulldogs suggested they play the second half using the oval ball.

  ‘I remember Jacko threw it out to me at one stage,’ says Páidí Ó Sé, ‘and I soloed up the wing with the oval ball. And Dwyer shouted into me, “Kick the thing! You can’t even solo the round one!”’

  ‘We ran at them like a rugby team,’ says Liston. ‘As soon as they’d come to tackle you, just pass the ball away along the line.’

  But mostly they kicked back and crammed as much fun into their days as they could. On their last day in Sydney, Liston and Sean Walsh did a quick tot and realised they hadn’t visited a single landmark. They took a trip into the city and ascended a tower. They saw Sydney Opera House, sitting like a sailboat on the waterfront. That’s that, they said. Next city.

  In Melbourne, Páidí Ó Sé, Paudie Lynch, Tom McCarthy and his wife, Kate, piled into a car and took a drive out of town. Their first stop was Geelong, a dusty outpost on the road to Adelaide. When they went for a walk downtown, they found one off-licence open, and one restaurant.

  ‘It was the biggest ghost town I ever saw in all my life,’ says Ó Sé. ‘So I rang all the lads back in Melbourne and told them to get into cars straight away – there was massive crack in Geelong. When they arrived in Geelong, we had moved on.’

  Jack O’Shea had vague memories of an aunt coming to visit from Perth when he was a boy in Cahirsiveen. Her name was Sr Mary Alban, and she lived in a convent in Subiaco. Her bedroom window looked into the mighty Australian Rules ground across the road. Jacko was the only member of his entire family that had ever been able to travel out to see her. Football had given him this opportunity. No
w she wanted to give something back.

  Every morning she called to the team hotel and became a familiar face during their stay in Perth. One day, she asked Jacko if the boys might like to come to the convent for a meal.

  ‘But, Mary, there’s over a hundred in the party,’ he said.

  ‘Well, bring them all,’ she replied.

  One evening they arrived up to the convent to tables laden down with food. Over a hundred guests feasted on five courses. Irish music provided the soundtrack for the evening and for years afterwards when Kerry footballers thought of Perth, they asked after Jacko’s aunt.

  Hawaii was their final stop, and their most memorable. They went to Pearl Harbour. Tom Spillane went surfing. Others went snorkelling and windsurfing in the warm Pacific Ocean. In the hotel pool, Jimmy Deenihan and Mickey Ned O’Sullivan tried to teach Jack O’Shea to swim. Others relaxed on Waikiki Beach and absorbed the natural splendour of the scene around them. A few more kept on keeping on.

  One day Páidí Ó Sé spotted a cruise that charged $15 a person and gave them access to food and beer for the duration of the cruise. The boat owners didn’t see the flaw in their plan, but the Kerrymen did. They piled on board and drank the boat dry. A guitar player hired for the cruise was quickly made unemployed and as the sun went down ‘The Rose of Tralee’ and ‘An Poc Ar Buille’ resounded across Waikiki Beach.

  On their way home they stopped in San Francisco and stayed in Geary Street where pimps and pushers mingled with Kerry footballers. That Sunday they played a game of football against a local selection and packed their bags to head home. As the plane descended through the murky grey skies into Shannon Airport, Páidí Ó Sé borrowed IR£20 from Paudie Lynch for his taxi back to Dingle and the players handed Australian Rules footballs and boomerangs around the cabin for their friends to sign. The holiday was their reward then. The friendships and the memories that endured since were their ultimate reward.