Kings of September

by Michael Foley

  McGee listened to the announcer work his way through the team: ‘Charlie Nelligan, Ger O’Keeffe, John O’Keeffe, Paudie Lynch, Páidí Ó Sé, Tim Kennelly, Tommy Doyle, Jack O’Shea, Sean Walsh, Ger Power …’

  McGee braced himself.

  ‘Tom Spillane, Ogie Moran …’

  Yeeeesssss!!!!

  McGee’s emotions came tumbling out. He roared and cheered. He banged the steering wheel. He stopped his car and leapt out. He punched the air with delight and relief. Ogie was on the wing. He could feel the Sam Maguire cup tickling the edges of his fingers. Everything he could control was in control. Everything beyond his reach was falling into place, too.

  Training ran like clockwork for the rest of the week. Sometimes McGee simply stopped the session when the intensity of the action got too much. No point in burning them out now. One evening he stopped a practice game and gathered the players in the middle of the field. He had one question for them. Could any of them see their fellow team player being bested on Sunday? Could Brendan Lowry see Mick Fitzgerald being destroyed by Mikey Sheehy? Could Michael Lowry imagine Paudie Lynch holding Johnny Mooney all day? Could Tomás O’Connor seriously see Sean Walsh coping with Padraic Dunne? Would Richie Connor allow Tim Kennelly the run of the field? Players shook their heads. As McGee sent them to the dressing rooms, they could feel the confidence starting to race through their veins.

  In the three weeks before the All-Ireland final, Offaly trained nineteen nights out of twenty-one. Some nights they concentrated on running drills and passing. Others were devoted to marking. To disrupt Kerry’s systems, they would need to mark their opponents with rigour and supreme discipline. Kerry’s flowing style was based on one-twos – laying a pass off to a colleague before receiving it again, leaving the marker caught out. Stop that, and Kerry wouldn’t be able to tear their defence apart.

  McGee and his selectors had built little tripwires and traps into their line-up. With Mooney, Connor and Lowry as his full-forward line, McGee had stumbled on a stunning combination of skill, speed, strength and unfathomable genius. The options at his disposal were now endless. From training games, Matt Connor sensed that McGee had decided to use him as a decoy. McGee encouraged him to drift away from goal, leaving room for Lowry and Mooney inside. It was something McGee used to do with his Under-21s back in the seventies and with UCD before that, but it carried a steep element of risk now. Offaly had fêted and relied on Matt Connor for years. Now, they would mask their best punch and hope Matt would tug the strings from deep. When Kerry dropped their guard, Lowry and Mooney would provide their winning combination.

  Aside from the need for Richie Connor to keep Tim Kennelly occupied all day, the management also thought about Jack O’Shea. Given his mobility and endless thirst for hard work, Padraic Dunne usually seemed more suited to following Jacko about the field. This time, Offaly would try something different. If the rest of the team disrupted Kerry in the manner McGee had planned, much of Jacko’s running would be in vain. Dunne’s movement might be something that could bother Sean Walsh. Walsh would probably expect a physical challenge like Tomás O’Connor, but O’Connor was vulnerable. His knee was still troubling him. He worked on the fourth floor with Bord na Móna, but had to take the elevator to work every day. Sometimes people joked with him about a super-fit footballer taking the lift. He smiled back, and wondered what they’d think if they realised he couldn’t even manage one flight of stairs.

  One evening Paddy Fenlon had taken O’Connor aside to talk to him about his fielding. ‘He had noticed I was dropping quite a few balls,’ says O’Connor. ‘He said it to me, and I thought, he’s right. “You’re doing everything right,” he says to me. “You’re jumping, you’re catching. But when you catch the ball, you’re looking down to the ground to see where you’re going to land.” The minute he said it, I knew he was right. It was because of the knee.’

  How they used O’Connor would be crucial. They needed him to mark Jacko. Don’t chase him, they said, just hold the centre. ‘Wherever he goes,’ McGee told him, ‘stay calm and stay where you are.’ The plan went against everything O’Connor believed in. It hurt O’Connor any time his marker ever got the ball. It made him question himself. He knew that every time Jack O’Shea would get the ball praise would be showered upon him and questions asked about O’Connor. He had seen the abuse heaped on Aidan O’Halloran after the 1981 final when McGee had sacrificed him from the forwards to sweep around as a defender, allowing Páidí Ó Sé to rip Offaly apart as an extra attacker. Would he be made the scapegoat this year?

  Otherwise, the team was flying. Every night they finished up with sprints and their jerseys stuck to their backs from sweat. Every night Sean Lowry came home with news for his wife, Nuala. ‘It’s getting better,’ he would tell her. A week before the game, he started talking about winning.

  McGee worked relentlessly on their minds. The Thursday night before the game, the players were gathered in Edenderry to collect gear for Sunday from Fr Heaney. McGee had organised a video for them to watch. When he pressed play, the 1981 All-Ireland final illuminated their screens. There was no commentary, and no interruptions from McGee.

  For seventy minutes, the players watched the screen. They sighed and shook their heads at the wayward passes and the missed chances. The room bristled with annoyance. When the tape was over, McGee turned the television off, and wished them good night. He sensed the fury in his players. They knew they were better than that. If they were better than that, then they were ready to beat Kerry.

  * * *

  In Kerry the hype had got louder and louder until it started to give Mick O’Dwyer a pain in the ear. Another problem loomed. The jerseys.

  No team, apart from Dublin, had ever caught the public’s imagination like Kerry, yet the rewards for their hard work and dedication were modest. When he was a child, O’Dwyer’s mother worked as head chef in the Butler Arms hotel in Waterville, and after dinner her son would collect leftover tomatoes from the plates to sell on. The money would pay for footballs and other luxuries, and his ability to spot opportunities hadn’t diminished through the years. Kerry were a marketable asset. O’Dwyer knew how to work the angles.

  The Kerry jersey provided fertile ground to generate money, but also formed the backdrop for years of battles. The GAA’s rules said only Irish-made sportswear could be used by its teams, but as the markets opened up, foreign manufacturers took an interest. Kerry had first taken tracksuits and boots from Adidas in 1972, and by 1977 a formal arrangement was in place. Although Adidas was a foreign manufacturer, McCarter’s of Buncrana, Co Donegal, carried the contracts for making Adidas jerseys and sweatshirts in Ireland, while Three Stripe International in Cork distributed the products. Although Kerry couldn’t line out with an Adidas label, or take any payment for using their gear, they used their boots and jerseys while supplying posters of the team bearing the Adidas logo for sports shops around the country. When the press descended on Killarney, the players were regularly kitted out in Adidas shirts. O’Dwyer was rarely seen without an Adidas tracksuit.

  The entire business had always made sections of the county board uneasy. Before the 1980 All-Ireland final, a mild spat arose between O’Dwyer, the players and the board about wearing Adidas boots for the game. In 1981 a contribution of IR£5,000 towards Kerry’s world tour appeared on the accounts. No firm officially claimed the money, but Adidas were considered the likely donors. The 1982 All-Ireland final and another clash of colours with Offaly provided an opportunity for Adidas to provide a new design. They had big plans.

  The new jersey was mint green with pencil-thin gold pinstripes. The Kerry players were happy, but the county board were edgy. ‘It began to surface about a week or two before the final,’ says Sean Kelly. ‘People weren’t too happy about it. It [the Adidas deal] used be mentioned on and off, but things like that were never really tackled.’

  The first tremor had been felt around the Munster final. Before the drawn game, county chairman Frank King had thr
eatened to resign over a dispute between the players and Croke Park over the origins of their shorts and shirts. Now, Croke Park was objecting again. The Friday before the final, word was sent to Kerry that the GAA was preventing the team from wearing the newly-designed jerseys. O’Dwyer was stunned. With two days to go, Kerry had no jerseys.

  That night, McCarters in Buncrana received a call from Three Stripe International looking for a set of replacements. Taste or design concepts went out the window. Kerry needed something green with a hint of gold. Mild panic gripped the factory. They needed to find material for the jerseys, and staff to sew them together. The jerseys needed to be in Dublin by Saturday night. They pooled together what resources they could, and set to work.

  That Saturday afternoon the Kerry team caught the train to Dublin, rolling north through the footballing heartlands they had conquered over the years. After weeks of talk and hype, the only place they could escape was here, among each other and those who understood the pressure they carried, but the frenzy around the team that had capsized the entire county’s faculties was never far away.

  As Mikey Sheehy and Sean Walsh stepped on to the platform in Heuston Station, the mania had come to meet them. ‘Make sure ye’re down on Monday night with the cup,’ said one official, conscious that the players might make their own arrangements for the celebrations. Sheehy and Walsh bristled with annoyance. ‘Will you give us a break,’ replied Sheehy. ‘There’s a game to be won first.’ No one was listening.

  They reached Malahide and disappeared to perform their own rituals. That night, they regathered in the pitch dark on the beach, with aeroplanes droning overhead and nothing to illuminate the space in front of them but a cloud-covered moon. The players stumbled along before O’Dwyer brought them to a stop. His speech was an annual staple, never altered but consistently spellbinding. The instructions were simple: Sean Walsh was to stay in the middle when Jacko roamed, and while Jacko could roam wherever he wished, he was still required to win his share of ball around the centre. Bomber was to drift out from goal, allowing Sheehy and Egan to switch corners. The rest were to play their own game. O’Dwyer had them fit and believing in themselves. Quietly he worried to himself that his defence was beginning to creak badly without Deenihan, but there was no more he could do.

  On these nights before he headed to bed, Jack O’Shea usually shared a pot of tea and a plate of sandwiches with O’Dwyer. They exchanged local gossip from home in south Kerry and lulled each other into a relaxed state of mind. O’Dwyer had watched Jacko grow from a ball-boy into one of the greatest players the game had ever seen. They had travelled together to Jacko’s first training sessions, when Jacko would sit by his front window peering out, waiting for O’Dwyer to arrive. Some nights he came in a racy Ford Granada. Other nights he could pull up in a hearse borrowed from his undertaking business in Waterville. Some evenings on the way back to Cahirsiveen, they might be forced to make a stop to collect a corpse.

  Now, Jacko was miles away in Dublin, grown up, with a wife and children, and for all the slagging and prodding Dwyer gave him, he knew he could trust him to the marrow.

  They would talk on as the clock ticked past midnight. The hotel was silent. Mikey Sheehy was tossing and turning. Eoin Liston had switched off the greyhound racing on television and drifted off to sleep. John Egan slept the sleep of a contented man, one day away from delivering Sneem the greatest gift he could ever bestow on them. Their nerves were quelled. That night, as the players headed to bed, the new jerseys had arrived from Donegal and the intrusion on the players’ evening was minimised. The jerseys and the songs and the squabbles over homecoming had drifted away into the background noise of All-Ireland weekend. Now the team were together, and alone. They would leave their mark on the day to come for all eternity.

  * * *

  Friday, 17 September 1982

  The cars were pulled up on the ditches and kerbs outside Paddy Edwards’s house as the evening drew in around Moate and the last of his relations, neighbours and old friends filed their way through his house to pay their respects. His mother, Rose, had died, and even the furthest branches of the family tree had travelled to mark the evening.

  Paddy saw his first cousin arrive with his wife, and shook Sean and Nuala Lowry’s hands. They sat together for a while. He was pleased to see Sean, especially this week. They talked about Paddy’s mother and the family. It was hard. Sean had lost his own father four years before and still missed him, but you get over things. You move on.

  As Paddy greeted more visitors, Lowry found a quiet corner and cradled a cup of tea in his hands. He could have done with his father this week. When Ned Lowry came home to Ferbane from Manchester in the fifties he brought a small platoon of children with him. Years later, people would say Offaly football’s gain was Manchester United’s loss.

  For ten years Lowry had played for Offaly and seen every stage of the team’s mortality: peak, decline and now regeneration. Lowry had earned this Sunday. At thirty years of age, time was starting to catch him, but he trained harder and smarter. He had cajoled his gifted younger brother, Brendan, away from soccer and into the team. Another brother, Michael, was there too. When Michael started getting his game with Offaly, people used to slag Seanie that it was great to see his son getting a run on the team with him. He was like an old oak tree in a team of saplings, sturdy and unshakeable. He understood Offaly and grasped the meaning behind Sunday’s final. There would never be a final like this again. Of all the people he knew, his father would have understood that feeling best.

  People recognised Lowry and shook his hand. He could read their smiles. They wished him well, but their faith was shallow. When Offaly met Kerry on Sunday, a vision of the team’s mortality would surely pass before their eyes. Offaly would visualise their last hours: the avalanche of scores that would bury them, the crushing sense of powerlessness in the face of a vastly superior opposition. Lowry thanked each person for their interest, and wished the time away, waiting to leave.

  A man came and sat by him. He introduced himself as Declan Carolan, an old friend of Paddy’s. He talked softly about nothing in particular at first, but he knew Lowry and he knew something about sport. This weekend, of all weekends, Declan had a story he needed to tell him.

  As a young boy, hurling had been Declan’s game. Tipperary were his team and Pat Stakelum was his hero. When Tipperary won All-Ireland hurling titles in the forties and fifties, Stakelum was a vision of heroism. The radio at home sat on the window sill and as Micheál O’Hehir described the games, Declan imagined Stakelum at the centre of the whirl of action, dominating like a god, infallible and untouchable.

  In time, Declan grew up and Stakelum retired and the memories were despatched to a corner of his memory, but sometimes he wondered where Pat Stakelum was. One afternoon in Athlone Golf Club, Declan was eating lunch and idly talking hurling with the man at the next table. His companion nodded towards the bar. ‘Do you know who that fella at the counter is?’

  Declan looked up at the stooped, grey man.

  ‘That’s Pat Stakelum.’

  Declan froze. The longer he looked, the more the years fell away and the same features he had memorised from the pictures in the newspapers regained their vitality in front of his eyes. It was Stakelum all right. He had to meet him. He made his way to the counter, and tapped Stakelum on the back. ‘Are you Pat Stakelum?’

  Stakelum turned around. ‘I am,’ he said.

  ‘You played for Tipp?’

  ‘I did.’

  They talked a while. They remembered games and players, and for a few minutes they were both young again. Now that he was older, everything about what hurling and Pat Stakelum meant to him was clarified. Players could never know their impact on the people who watched them, but Declan did. He leaned in towards Lowry.

  ‘Remember that. When you go out on Sunday, you’re going to be playing for people that you’ll never see. People you’ll never meet. You’ll have people in Australia and New Zealand who’ll have
their chest out Monday morning if Offaly beat Kerry, but you’ll never see them or have the feeling they’re feeling.

  ‘There’s two days people take off in the year: the Grand National and the All-Ireland final. They’re the two events people watch all the time. There’s old women living down lonely roads in Tyrone and Fermanagh and these places, and they’re rooting for you on Sunday, but you’ll never meet them. You’ll never realise the lift you’ll give them if you beat Kerry on Sunday.’

  Paddy Edwards looked across, thinking his cousin was cornered, but Sean sat with the man and talked with him for an hour. He had heard speeches of every tone and tenor in dressing rooms all over the country. He had heard them before Offaly won All-Irelands and when they were in decline, but he had never thought about his footballing life like this before. That night he thought about the All-Ireland final. This was a game for the ages. This game could change lives. He would remember that story on Sunday.

  On the same evening, Eugene McGee had called into Peter Clarke’s pub on Dublin Street in Longford for a drink and sat down with his evening paper. At the other end of the bar, a customer had struck up a conversation with the barman about Sunday’s game. They didn’t take long to get to the point. ‘Offaly haven’t a chance,’ said the man. ‘They’ll be beaten out the gate.’