In a final he would always try to get a touch of the ball early on. In the 1979 All-Ireland final against Dublin he was marked by Dave Foran. All summer Foran had eaten up good corner-forwards for breakfast. How Sheehy would handle him had been the talk of the few weeks leading up to the final. Inside the first fifteen seconds, Pat Spillane cut through the defence and laid a pass off to Sheehy. He looked for the posts and nailed it. As the play resumed he looked at Foran. ‘I wouldn’t say he was shattered,’ says Sheehy. ‘But he was rattled.’
By the end, Sheehy had hit 2-6, and beaten Jimmy Keaveney’s record individual score in an All-Ireland final. Dublin had been despatched as a force for a generation and Mikey Sheehy was the standard by which boyhood heroes were measured. Now, he was up against Mick Fitzgerald – Mick, who had spent all summer smashing his own teammates to pieces in training and cutting loose properly during matches. He knew Mick would be tight, vigilant. It had been a good year, but he still needed to find a few breaks.
Four steps …
Offaly had always kept Furlong straight, but in the four years after Offaly’s last All-Ireland title, Furlong had lost his drive. He had nothing left to prove. He drank a bit. He wasn’t inclined to train as hard. His life lost its balance and for a year he disappeared into himself. He had his All-Ireland medals and his reputation was secure. Playing on with an Offaly team sinking steadily into obscurity seemed pointless.
When McGee arrived in 1976, one of his first tasks was to cut Furlong from his panel. ‘He was right, as far as I was concerned. You don’t see it yourself, but I wasn’t doing the right things. It was a wake-up call for me. I wasn’t putting it in and it probably showed in my game. I was partaking of a little drop of alcohol at the time. Being there as long as I was, I’d gotten comfortable.’
As time went on, Furlong started getting itchy. He needed challenges and big days. He needed football. To find a way back, he first needed to catch a break. In 1977 Tullamore won a county title with Furlong at full-forward. They were drawn against Longford champions Newtowncashel in the first round of the Leinster championship, and lost their goalkeeper before the game. Furlong stepped in and held Newtowncashel out almost on his own. The game went to a replay, and Tullamore won. McGee was in the crowd. The old keeper’s eye was tuned in. So was his mind. After the game, McGee asked Furlong back.
‘I’ll think about it,’ Furlong said.
The following day he went for a walk in Tullamore and called into Noel McGee’s barber shop. When Offaly won the O’Byrne Cup in 1954, their first ever senior trophy, McGee ascended the steps of the Hogan Stand to accept it. He had hurled with Offaly. His barber shop was a trading post for news and gossip. Furlong was unsure about returning. Offaly were going nowhere, but he had pulled himself back together as a player. Getting back on the Offaly team would be a nice statement to himself, but did he need the hassle?
‘When you get to my age,’ said McGee, ‘you’ll wish you never missed a day. If I were you, I’d go back and I’d never leave O’Connor Park again.’
Furlong went back, and stayed till he was nearly forty.
In 1982 he was the team’s Achilles: relentlessly brave and ruthless in battle. The week before games passed like a sleepless eternity. He was never at rest. His nerves quivered. In the dressing room he would keep going to the bathroom until he could only generate a dribble. He yawned incessantly, but he talked too. And when he talked, the room was spellbound. He could reduce the men around him to tears before the beginning of a championship game. Some days he could hop up on the table, his eyes flaming with intensity, chunks of fangs protruding behind his lips. On the field he berated backs and forwards without prejudice. When Liam O’Connor was in front of him, he cajoled and encouraged him. When Mick Fitzgerald was at corner-back, he threw abuse at him. ‘If he heard you giving him praise,’ says Furlong, ‘he’d say: Don’t say that to me! Tell me I’m no fucking good!’
If the players had to follow Furlong into hell, they would give themselves a middling chance of making it back to Tullamore.
Kerry had tormented him for years. In the era before the handpassed goal was outlawed, he would watch the Kerry attack string together a necklace of mesmerising passes while advancing towards his square, then wait till the whites of Furlong’s eyes were in full view, and dab the ball past him. He was helpless. One day Kerry put five goals past him in a League game in Tullamore in that fashion, but Furlong still came off feeling like he had played well. As he walked off the field, an Offaly supporter slung his arm around his neck. ‘Fair play to you, Furlong,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t stop laughin’.’
By 1982, things had changed. As the week drained down to the final, Furlong couldn’t understand people. Had they forgotten Offaly had scored 4-10 in 1980? That it had taken that goal from Jacko to beat them in 1981? People hadn’t seen the players on Clonin Hill a couple of weeks earlier after the Galway game, or felt the mood in the dressing room. Furlong knew it. This team was ready to win.
Five steps …
All day Mikey had foraged for a break. He wandered outfield. He switched wings with John Egan. He hung off The Bomber like a bird following an elephant to pick up scraps, but nothing came.
Inside the first minute Egan slipped a pass through to him, but Sheehy’s run took him too close to the endline and his shot flashed across goal. Next ball, same thing. He tried to get out in front, but Mick Fitzgerald was always there, snaking a hand to everything. Twenty minutes passed without even a free. The Bomber had a score. Tom Spillane had two. Páidí Ó Sé had sprinted up for a point. Mikey switched to left-half-forward, looking for some room. He looked around. Mick Fitzgerald was still there, right behind him.
Two minutes before half-time, he picked up a ball on the left wing and lofted a pass towards Liston. The ball bobbled. Liam O’Connor gathered it, but under pressure from Liston he hung on to the ball too long. Free in. Twenty-five metres out, Hogan Stand side. Finally. Mikey eased back to the left, ran up and bent the ball towards goal. Martin Furlong jumped, the ball brushed his fingertips but got over. A point. Relief.
Still, as Mikey prepares to take his penalty, the tension is there.
‘I didn’t have a great record at kicking them, but I didn’t mind it. I knew in 1979 [for his penalty against Dublin in the All-Ireland final], I was going to plank it into the top corner because I was playing well. But in ’82 when I put the ball down, I had a fear of missing it. I was conscious of the importance of the kick.’
He never believed in designated penalty kickers. Too much about a person’s mood could dictate the quality of their kick. Best to leave it to the day of the game. Now, as he looked around, he didn’t feel ready to take it. Neither did anyone else.
Furlong shakes his fingers loose. Years of facing penalties have taught him things. Players usually favour their strong side. Right-footed kickers aim at the left side of the goal as they see it. Left-footers at the right. At times during the week Furlong had thought about penalties. He remembered Sheehy taking one against him on an All-Star tour game in Gaelic Park, New York. He favoured his strong side, and Martin had saved it. He looked at Sheehy and screamed at Liam O’Connor and Pat Fitzgerald: ‘Watch the rebound!’
He believed it. This ball wasn’t going in.
Six steps …
Mikey’s foot is behind the ball. At the last second he has abandoned his theory on Furlong’s weak left side, and struck the ball to Furlong’s right. He hits it well. It feels good. It rises towards goal and levels off above waist height. But Furlong has seen the trajectory early. He takes two small bouncing strides forward and extends his arms to the right, feels the ball hit the wool of his gloves, and palms the ball away with both hands.
The crowd shrieks. The ball hits the deck. Furlong is prone on the ground. Someone must claim the rebound. As he looks up, Furlong sees Pat Fitzgerald collect it and drive the ball away. The crowd exhale together and a cheer rattles through the old ground like a hurricane. Everywhere Offaly players have li
fted their heads to find the game is still alive while Mikey Sheehy trots out with a weight on his shoulders that will never fully lift.
‘I still, to this day, have nightmares about it. You were staring history in the face. I often get slagged about it now. Fellas would be asking why did you kick it?! And now you have all the volunteers, but to this day, when the penalty was awarded, not one fella came and volunteered. The ball was thrown to me. I accepted responsibility.
‘I didn’t look round, but I’m sure if there was someone else interested, they would’ve come up. But the boys were great at kicking in training. It’s like a fella playing golf with no card in his pocket. It’s totally different.’
Kerry were still a point up, but all the bad vibes running through Mikey Sheehy were amplified. The rain was pouring down. Kerry hadn’t kicked away as they always did. Kerry players were falling back into defence. Offaly weren’t giving up. In the few moments when he held the winning of the game in his hands, when Martin Furlong sprang to his right and pushed the ball away, the ending had been decided in Sheehy’s mind.
‘I had this vision we were going to lose after that,’ says Sheehy. ‘I was shattered. I could see it.’
All the while, Martin Furlong was pumping his arms, screaming at his players and drawing on the inspiration of two decades of football to drive Offaly forward. The game was back on, and moving in another direction.
18 THE CALM
As Mikey Sheehy kicked the penalty, Liam Currams was preparing himself for the worst. ‘It had started slipping away. Then the penalty came. I says, “Aw Jesus, it’s gone.” Poor old Stephen [Darby]. He was a fierce nice guy. I felt so sorry for Stephen. That’s it, I says. We’re done. I was just resigning myself, thinking, “Ah sure, we’ll give it hell for what time is left anyway.” When he saved it, I couldn’t believe it. We still had a chance here.’
The entire team lifted, and for a fleeting few minutes Kerry shuddered. While they regathered themselves, Offaly had set off downfield. Although Páidí Ó Sé cleared the attack, his kick landed to Sean Lowry who returned the ball to Richie Connor. From there, Padraic Dunne looked up and saw Johnny Mooney near goal, in the first patch of space Paudie Lynch had allowed him since half-time. Mooney grabbed the ball, jinked past Lynch, and Offaly were level, 12-12. Twenty minutes to go.
On the line, O’Dwyer is back on his feet, making switches. Sean Walsh heads for centre-forward and Tom Spillane comes out to centrefield. Within minutes, Offaly have coughed up the ball and Sean Walsh is dinking a shot over the bar. Tom Spillane is winning ball at centrefield and the wobble inflicted by the penalty appears to have been steadied. Offaly are still there, lingering on their shoulder, but years of September Sundays have attuned the Kerry players’ minds to these afternoons. Offaly’s legs are wilting. Time to kick for home.
In eleven minutes Kerry hit four unanswered points. Jacko and Spillane seal up centrefield, Sean Walsh is blowing holes in Offaly’s defence and John Egan is still buzzing. Páidí Ó Sé finds the space to push forward and his final attack ends with a point. As the crowd rises to cheer, Páidí turns and races back towards his own goal. A smile is plastered across his face and thoughts of Jacko’s goal in 1981 are running through his head. ‘We have it now, boy,’ he says as he passes Paudie Lynch. Johnny Mooney is standing beside him, still believing, still defiant.
‘Ye fucking have not,’ he snaps.
With that, Kerry went to the ropes.
Ger O’Keeffe had spotted Mikey Sheehy drifting back towards goal from much earlier in the game. Pat Spillane always utilised his free licence to wander back, but now Ger Power was there too. Sean Walsh was coming back towards centrefield. Jacko was in front of his own goal. Out the field, McGee’s words were ringing in Tomás O’Connor’s ears: let Jacko go. Hold your own space in the middle. As Jacko cleared more ball from defence, O’Connor started to pick it up.
‘We were inside in the backs, telling them to go way up the field,’ says O’Keeffe. ‘We were under a lot of pressure and there was nobody to kick the ball to.’
They still reckoned they could cope. With so many bodies back, there wasn’t space to cause any undue trouble. Down on the sideline, McGee was with his selectors. Gerry Carroll had already swapped with Padraic Dunne and gone to centrefield, but they needed to do more. They needed to get Matt Connor and Brendan Lowry closer to goal. The game was slipping from their grasp, but they still had enough time to pull it back.
John O’Keeffe looked around him. The area around Kerry’s goal was beginning to resemble a crowded platform at a train station. There was no way Offaly could breach this. As the seconds ticked down, O’Keeffe allowed himself a moment. For thirteen years he had protected himself against what football could do to him. Nothing was left to chance. No injury was too severe to slow him down. Now he could see it. It was a few minutes away. History.
Five-in-a-row.
‘Something went through me that said we’re actually going to do it,’ says O’Keeffe. ‘It was like a confidence with about five minutes to go. We’re going to pull this one off. I had a feeling: we’re going to do this thing. We’re going to get there.
‘Then, bang!’
19 THE GOAL
With sixty-three minutes of the game over, John Guinan was running out of steam and looking at the sideline. If Offaly were going to make a switch he knew it would come in the forwards. He also knew he was most vulnerable.
Fr Sean Heaney: Eugene McGee had a stopwatch in his hand. I happened to be standing next to him. Paddy Fenlon was on the other side. We’re three points down. Eugene said: ‘There’s still time if we’re good enough.’
Eugene McGee: We’d have to be at our best in the last five minutes regardless of anything. I was absolutely definite about that. If Kerry were ahead with ten minutes to go, the tendency would’ve been to say, ‘That’s it.’ I had to go to extreme measures to say, ‘That’s not it.’ If they were close enough, we are as good as them, so there’s no reason we can’t get the last couple of scores. We went four points down with ten minutes to go. On all known criteria, that should’ve been it.
Sean Grennan: My mother and aunt had decided by then that this game was gone from us. With a young lad like me there they thought they might as well head away now, and avoid the rush.
John O’Keeffe: There wasn’t rhyme or reason to the way we were playing. Tactically our shape was totally gone. Mentally it was just a case of hanging on.
It was time for Offaly’s final substitution. McGee’s first instinct was to look for Martin Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick had shown good form all summer, but had never played in a championship game for Offaly before. The other selectors weren’t so sure. Seamus Darby hadn’t Fitzpatrick’s speed, but he had the experience to cope with the demands of the final few minutes. A discussion began on the line. With the game in the balance, the next move would be crucial.
Richie Connor: Eugene McGee wasn’t even considering bringing on Darby. Eugene Mulligan, who was PRO, called McGee aside, told him he was mad, that Fitzpatrick was only a young fella. You needed an old head whatever chance you had.
Eugene Mulligan: The game was very tight and the decisions wouldn’t have been clear-cut. I just made a comment, something like, ‘It’s an oul’ lad you want.’ Martin Fitzpatrick was an exceptionally good footballer but he was only eighteen at the time.
Eugene McGee: The main reason Darby went on was a communication problem. The full-forward line was drifting too far outfield trying to get the ball. We had no chance of getting scores on a wet day if they were 30 or 40 yards out. The first thing Darby was told was to go tell Brendan Lowry and Matt Connor to stay back on the endline, and he was to do the same himself. The rule was, I’d ask the four selectors what they thought on each subject, but the final decision was mine, even if the four said black and I said white. Two said Fitzpatrick, two Darby. On a wet day the older head would be best.
Fr Sean Heaney: John Guinan, who was marking Tommy Doyle, was taken off. Brendan Lowry, who
’d be very capable of playing wing-forward, came out and Seamus Darby was put in corner-forward. But Tommy Doyle was put in corner-back where he’d never played before.
John Egan: Tommy Doyle said to me after: ‘I looked around and Ger O’Keeffe is standing alongside me. He says, “Your man is gone in there.” So Tommy runs back into the corner-back position.
Richie Connor: Seamus Darby was the ideal man to bring on. He’d done it time and time again in training. It wasn’t that he was ramming in goals time and again, but he was a skilful player. Very accurate.
Eugene McGee: At that stage he [Darby] was just glad to be back on the team. The Rhode football ethic would take over in this situation. There was no time for acting the bollix.
63 MINS: Seconds before Darby enters the field, Pat Spillane tumbles over a ball 20 metres from the Kerry goal and ends up on his hands and knees with the ball beneath him. It rolls against his knee and bounces back off his hand. PJ McGrath whistles for a pick-up, and awards a free to Offaly. Kerry look stunned, but none of their players protest. Matt Connor narrows the gap to three points, 0-16 to 0-13.
Pat Spillane: Little things change games. I always remember the 1977 All-Ireland semi-final, getting my foot to a ball and it going off Brian Mullins’s foot over the sideline. Dublin got a sideline ball. Goal. That was the turning point in the game. It was weak refereeing by McGrath.
Ger Power: I think most Kerry people and players would think there were some light-hearted frees given away. But that’s the way.
Nelligan’s kick-out is broken at centrefield and won by Páidí Ó Sé. He finds Eoin Liston, who returns the ball to the onrushing Ó Sé. As he bears down on goal, Ó Sé taps the ball over the bar and turns with a smile on his face. Kerry lead by four, 0-17 to 0-13.
Kings of September Page 19
