Mick Fitzgerald was nursing a pulled hamstring. Half of Offaly’s defence should have been ruled out. Seamus Darby had regained the weight he had lost on Clonin Hill in 1982, and a winter of turkey-and-ham dinners and porter hadn’t been shed by many of the rest. A few weeks before the Leinster final, Offaly travelled to Enniscrone to play Sligo and ripped them to shreds. Donegal would win an Ulster title that summer, but Offaly had taken them apart too. At the functions afterwards, the players remember McGee laying out his theories on how to achieve All-Ireland victory. Six years of trial and error were now being condensed into one easy-to-swallow pill.
The week before the Leinster final, McGee and Leo Grogan had travelled to Cork for the Munster final. O’Dwyer had pulled himself and Kerry back together for 1983, but, like Offaly, cracks were showing. John Egan and Jack O’Shea had won another county title with South Kerry, and this time Jacko was captain, but the team was creaking as they headed to face Cork.
Jimmy Deenihan and John O’Keeffe had pulled hamstrings. Sean Walsh was gone from centrefield. Ger O’Keeffe and Paudie Lynch had approached this year as their last. Cork had given them frights in 1982, but nothing that had Kerry quaking in their boots.
That morning, the rain came again. Haunted by more piseoga, Páidí Ó Sé spotted McGee negotiating the deep pools of water in his wellington boots as he entered Páirc Uí Chaoimh. ‘McGee is here,’ he said. ‘We’re not going to win again.’
With two minutes left, his omens looked like being shattered for good. Kerry were two points up and the sun was out. Their rehabilitation looked complete. Time was almost up when Cork’s Denis Allen sprinted for a ball in centrefield with Páidí on his tail. Allen gathered the ball, felt contact on his back and went sprawling to the ground. The ball was sent in long, where Tadhg Murphy was waiting. He had time to let off a shot. The ball slithered beyond Charlie Nelligan and rolled helplessly to the net. Cork were a point ahead. Nine years of relentless defeat and humiliation evaporated.
Kerry were beaten. Another last-minute goal. Losing to Offaly had hurt them badly, but to Cork? ‘That was worse than ’82,’ says Sean Walsh. ‘Cork is Cork. No Kerryman likes to lose to them. They were the one crowd I found it hard to lose to.’
Defeat to Cork brought some kind of closure for others. The previous winter had passed like an age for Mikey Sheehy. For nights he had lain awake in bed, thinking about Furlong and the penalty. When he slept, the sudden jolt of missing the shot often woke him again. People could see it in him.
And while O’Dwyer wrestled his own demons, he also took Sheehy’s on. Forget about it, he told him, it’s done. By 1983, Sheehy was worn out. A short summer gave him a chance to draw breath.
‘I won’t say there was a sense of relief, but the level of disappointment was very little in comparison to the previous year. The jokes were going round then that Kerry are never beaten till the last minute. Tadhgie Murphy and Cork did us a major favour because it gave fellas time to rest and recharge, and see would they go again.’
Either way, losing to Cork still inflicted an incurable kind of pain. On the way home from Páirc Uí Chaoimh, McGee made some deductions: Cork in the All-Ireland semi-final; Galway on the other side, and a Donegal team Offaly had recently massacred. Even with players carrying weight and injuries starting to mount, the summer was theirs for the taking. When the team reconvened in Edenderry the night before the Leinster final with Dublin, McGee was in boisterous mood. Offaly weren’t chasing anyone now. Everyone was chasing them.
‘His attitude changed to: we were to go out and beat Dublin in the first five minutes and game over,’ says Richie Connor, ‘instead of telling us we were the luckiest shower of fuckers ever to win an All-Ireland – Dublin are going to come out and hit you with everything. Be ready for them.’
‘We had it won before we went out,’ says Pat Fitzgerald. ‘I saw a couple of Dublin players, Mick Holden and a few others, walking into Croke Park. I pitied them. They were on a hiding to nothing. We were going to give them such a beating. The one message I remember from the night before was: a good team wins one All-Ireland. A great team wins two, and we had the capability to be a great team. This was before the Leinster final.’
The game was a disaster. Dublin hit two early goals and while Offaly never let them further away than four points, they never looked like reeling them in either. Darby was taken off, Matt Connor missed a penalty. By the end, even Mick Fitzgerald, the standard bearer for proper attitude and relentless concentration, had snapped.
‘The crowd was in on the sideline,’ says Fitzgerald. ‘On one occasion Martin Furlong was looking for the ball to kick it out and here was a Dublin supporter at the back of the goalmouth going on a solo run. Paddy Collins [referee] had given a few iffy decisions which I thought were a bit harsh, so it was building. Martin Furlong took a short kick-out to my brother. Pat went down on it. Ciarán Duff came in with his knee on top of him. I calculated: the game’s over; we’re not going to win this. If Collins isn’t going to do something about that, I will.
‘I took off and leapt with my feet into Duff and scraped my brother’s back as I was doing it. The crowd came on the field. I got a belt of a flagpole off a supporter. Collins says to me, “For your own safety, I’m sending you off.” And that was it.’
In the end, Dublin won by two points. McGee was shattered. Kevin Heffernan had trumped him. Offaly were shattered.
‘It was largely my own personal fault because I never thought we were going to lose it,’ says McGee. ‘We were going into the Leinster final after annihilating everybody in Leinster, beating Dublin the year before and Kerry were gone. We had this All-Ireland won. That’s the way we were. Immaturity. And an element of pomposity, obviously. That was one of my worst days because I took a lot of the blame on myself.
‘I wouldn’t have overestimated the value of the team, but I’d have overestimated how good we were for that day. Kerry were gone and there didn’t seem to be anybody else who could beat us. That was a big mistake on my part.’
That September, Dublin clobbered Galway in a vile All-Ireland final. Four players were sent off and the joyous rush of the previous year had been forgotten. ‘I remember walking out of the Cusack Stand,’ says Tom Spillane, ‘and some fella saying to me, “Jesus, ye better get back.” He didn’t have to say it twice. We knew in our own minds.’
Kerry were gone and suddenly the world missed them. The Wednesday before the All-Ireland final, O’Dwyer had called the players together in Tralee. He ran them around the pitch. He watched their body language. Bringing them out this week poked at their psyche, helped see if there was another year in them. He knew his defence needed restructuring, but the rest of the team still beamed with health. He still had the Spillanes and Bomber. Jacko and Sean Walsh. Mikey. Power and Ogie. Ó Sé and Charlie. Tommy Doyle had begun to conquer the demons that had assailed him since the 1982 final and almost tormented him into early retirement. That was enough. If he could keep them keen, there was nothing to be afraid of. Offaly in 1982 and then Cork had soaked up all their fear. Nothing else could possibly go wrong. He ran them around the field, and started planning a new team for 1984. Kerry would start again.
Offaly were drifting towards the end. In 1984 they began the Leinster championship against Longford looking weary and dishevelled. All the urgency that had once marked their training sessions was gone. Players were worn out. The precision that defined their preparations had been replaced by carelessness. When they arrived in Longford for the game, someone realised they had forgotten to bring the jerseys. By the end of the match, only Matt Connor’s accuracy salvaged a draw.
The replay at Croke Park was even more haphazard. Martin Furlong had picked up an injury late in the week, leaving Offaly reliant on reserve keeper Dinny Wynne. By half-time, Offaly were in trouble. McGee decided on drastic action. Laz Molloy had played some Under-21 football for Offaly as goalkeeper, and had been spotted entering the ground. An announcement was made on the public address system askin
g Molloy to make his way to the Offaly dressing room. Molloy was downstairs beneath the stand, eating sandwiches and soup with his brother. His boots were in his car, which was parked a short distance away on Mountjoy Square. His brother collected the boots and Molloy took his place in goal, looking out on a team decimated by injuries and drained of life. Offaly beat Longford 3-15 to 3-10, but, with the team now nursing seven injured players, they didn’t get the break they needed to regroup. The following week, they met Dublin.
Seamus Darby had struggled with injury all summer and the week before the Dublin game he settled himself for a day on the bench. That Saturday he attended a funeral, and let his guard down. He had a pint, then another. An afternoon’s drinking stretched into the night. The following morning he awoke with a blinding hangover, and news that he was starting.
He lasted till half-time, but by then Offaly were gone. Injuries had reduced the team to rubble. They tried to rough Dublin up, but got beaten to a pulp. In the end, they lost by eight points. The reporters filed into the Offaly dressing room after the game and gathered round their colleague. McGee delivered a eulogy.
‘This Offaly team has done a fabulous job,’ said McGee. ‘But clearly it has come to the end of its tether. It’s the price it had to pay for five years of hard slogging.’
After almost fifteen years of fighting Dublin, trailing Kevin Heffernan along the sideline and irritating Dublin like a thorn in their paw, McGee had sensed Dublin would be the team to finish them off. ‘The will to win,’ he said, ‘is no longer there.’
After the Dublin game, Gerry Carroll headed to Boston with Richie Connor for the summer and enjoyed the pace of life there. At twenty-five he had grown tired of Offaly and McGee. Just as his father had known when to let Offaly go, so did his son.
McGee’s appetite was waning too. This business of winning two All-Irelands and securing greatness didn’t entirely make sense to him. Winning one had been his driving force. That was done. He phoned Matt Connor about the year ahead, but he put down the receiver with his mind settled.
It was over.
22 MATT
Offaly GAA star Matt Connor is paralysed from the waist down after a Christmas Day accident. The 25 year-old Tullamore Garda received critical spinal injuries in a car crash as he drove to join his parents and family. He was the most injured over a two-day fatality-free Christmas holiday.
The Connor family, Mr and Mrs Jim Connor and Matt’s five brothers and two sisters, are awaiting the opinion of top surgeons on whether Matt will walk again or not. The Offaly scoring ace – the leading scorer nationally for the past two years – won three Bank of Ireland All-Star awards. He was a member, along with his brother Richie, of the Offaly team that put paid to Kerry’s five-in-a-row dream in 1982.
Garda Connor was driving home from Tullamore to his home in Walsh Island when his Ford Escort car careered out of control at Kellellery, Geashill, about thirteen miles from Tullamore.
The Escort struck a tree, throwing Garda Connor from the car and critically injuring his back. He lay on the roadside for almost half an hour before another motorist saw him. Garda Connor was taken by ambulance to Tullamore General Hospital but was later transferred to Dr Steevens’s Hospital, Dublin where he underwent surgery.
Irish Independent, 27 December 1984
Matt Connor: Half an hour? I could’ve been there all day and not realised it. My mind was strangled in shock. There was no blood. No feeling. Just silence.
So weird. I tried to twitch my legs. Nothing. Maybe it might wear off. I couldn’t feel the cold. Christmas morning and no cold.
It must’ve been a puncture. I felt the tyre blow out. Next thing, the car was gone flying at the corner. It was only a small lump of a tree. Nothing to it. They reckoned it wasn’t the fall that did the damage but the car door. I think my back hit the door handle. I wasn’t going hard. No speed involved. Now I’m lying there, trying to move my legs and wondering, is this temporary or what?
It was an old tradition in the Garda station on Christmas Day. I just called in, had the crack, met a few lads, then headed home for the day. Someone came across me and called for help. The ambulance arrived and took me to Tullamore General. I remember the staff talking about me. When I got there they examined me immediately. They checked for feeling in my legs, but I already knew there was something wrong. They transferred me to Dublin. They talked to me without telling me anything. They didn’t need to. I knew.
Richie Connor: We got a phone call that Matt was in an accident, that he was all right but he was badly broken up. I drove straight over to the hospital. I was expecting blood and broken bones but there wasn’t a drop of blood. The surgeon said they were transferring him to Dublin because there was a danger that some damage had been done to his spine. But we were still holding out hope.
I was in Dr Steevens’s Hospital that evening, just opposite Heuston Station. It was where they operated on me. The following morning I was told I’d be recuperating there for a fortnight. The injuries needed to settle down. For a while it didn’t really register. There was so much happening. People were calling in. Family were around. All the time the doctors kept holding out hope. I was holding out hope. Maybe the swelling will go down and my toes will start to move. Two weeks would tell everything. People still calling. Two weeks to decide the rest of my life. Waiting for news. Hard to take it all in.
Padraic Dunne: I never thought at the time he was going to end up in a wheelchair. I remember going in to see him and he was upside down in the bed. I was talking to him, laughing and joking. And I came out thinking to myself, ‘Matt’ll be all right now’, but he knew at that stage.
Sean Lowry: I remember calling up to see his parents a couple of weeks after the accident. Richie’s father was one of my biggest fans. Richie was always telling me he was a fan of the old-type player. They were heartbroken. They were getting older and it was tough. Matt Connor will never grow old. He’s like James Dean on a football field. No one ever saw him in his thirties. He will always be remembered as the athlete he was.
Michael Lowry: A whole lot of us went up. He was in great form that time. He was so quiet before that. It was like he accepted it quick and just got on with it. There was four or five of us there that night and he never stopped talking. He never gave us time to chat.
Mick Fitzgerald: I remember the previous League game we’d played – I think it was Mayo in Tullamore – I’d had a go at all and sundry at half-time when I thought they weren’t trying, including Matt. That was the last thing I said to Matt on the field of play. ‘For fuck’s sake, cop on, show a bit of something.’ That was difficult.
The two weeks passed and I ended up in a rehabilitation centre in Dun Laoghaire. Feck all can be done. This is it. I’ll be here for six months and in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. Time to harden. Time to adjust.
These are the worst moments. People have stopped calling. Life is starting again. You can go mad and lose the head, but that’s not going to do any good. I don’t think I did. I hope I didn’t. The rehabilitation work took three months, but I stayed six.
They did some occupational therapy with me, lots of physio. They put me through some counselling. Total rubbish. I look around the hospital and meet so many people in the same position as me, and some who are much worse off. A good talk with them helped me more than hours with a psychiatrist. They know what’s ahead. They’re living it. A lot of people are coming back to the centre for check-ups, people who have been in wheelchairs for four and five years. They seem happy enough. They’re able to get along with life. That’s the best part of the rehab. People.
Brendan Lowry: I’ll never forget the joyrider sitting in the bed beside him. He wasn’t able to move. The joyrider had a bit of wire around his finger with the wire extended out and another hole at the other end where the nurse used put a fag in it. His family had disowned him. He was slagging Matt because Matt only wrote off an Escort while he was in a BMW. I’d say Matt got some kind of inner strength when he
looked round and saw the people around him; he was the best of the ten or eleven in the ward.
Richie Connor: Dun Laoghaire was a kind of tonic for us because he was one of the best cases in there. There was a lad from Mayo who fell off some bales of hay and was paralysed from the neck down. We had been warned, Murt and myself, that Matt might be inclined to say things he didn’t mean, that he might lose it at times. But he never said a bad word. I wrote an article for a programme at a benefit game where I said that when Matt played for Walsh Island and Offaly, he played in front of handfuls of people and before seventy thousand in Croke Park, yet he seemed to be the same guy in both situations. Sport probably helped him come to terms with things.
Liam O’Connor: The only day I saw him sort of down was the day when I went in and I knew he’d been told. But it only lasted three or four minutes and he was back. He never made you feel uncomfortable, did Matt. When you were with him, you could talk football. In fact, he wanted you to talk football. He never made you feel: Jesus, I have to be careful, I can’t mention this. To me, the way he handled his accident far exceeded his exploits out on the field. It was really, really brilliant. He must have had his hard times, but he never let you see them.
I made it back to Walsh Island in June, sitting in my wheelchair with a new life ahead of me. Football was gone and I missed it, but that wasn’t the biggest part of it. It was the simplest things in life were now hardest for me. Just sitting there wanting to take the dogs for a walk, that was hard. As the years went on I missed playing football even more, but that wears off too. I was twenty-five when I finished playing, but I put so much into it. I’d spent hours kicking frees every day in Walsh Island, bringing the bag of balls to training in Tullamore before a session with Offaly and practising even more. I’d done my bit. I would’ve liked to have done more, but it didn’t work out that way. Feck all I could do about it.
Kings of September Page 23
