1991 REVISITED:Players on both sides of the epic series of games tell
GAVIN CUMMISKEYabout their memories of
joy and utter disbelief
MOMENTS BEFORE the latest instalment of this ancient rivalry, Croke Park will rise to serenade the men who conjured up the madness of 1991. Three hectic draws led us to Dublin versus Meath part IV. Dublin raced into a six-point lead that was whittled down until Kevin Foley’s goal in the last minute levelled matters up.
From John O’Leary’s kick out, Liam Hayes gathered and carried up the left before sending a perfectly weighted kick pass crossfield to PJ Gillic, who laid off to the overlapping Meath attacker.
“David Beggy,” remembers Paddy Cullen, Dublin’s manager. “If I gave him a ball from now until next Christmas he wouldn’t score. He knows I feel that way about him!”
Beggy hardly disagrees: “I can remember wondering what the hell I was still doing on the pitch because I was dreadful. I kept going, but I had such a poor game to be remembered as the man who scored the winning point. I just thank the man who left me on the pitch to do it. Probably because we had so many injuries.”
Not to labour the point, although it was a point that everyone remembers, but supposedly Gillic thought Bernard Flynn was outside him.
“For the first time in all four games I thought we were dead and buried,” said Flynn. “I’d done my hamstring and was watching from the sideline, but to see Foley get the goal and then Jinksy get the winning point . . . Jesus, it could have gone anywhere!”
Trading in seconds? Dublin won a free at least 55 metres out in a central position. Time was up. One last chance to keep the never-ending game alive. Charlie Redmond was off the field and Keith Barr had missed an earlier penalty. “I had always taken frees,” said Jack Sheedy. “It wasn’t something that was thrust upon me.
“It was like the putt to win the Masters. You get it you win, you don’t, you lose. I felt it was do-able but with everything that was going on I probably didn’t strike it as well as I would have liked to. That’s history.”
It curled left and wide, so ending the odyssey for Dublin. Hill 16 used to take great delight in branding Seán Boylan a witch doctor. The herbalist took his title as a compliment.
“The team we had in ’91 had been around for an awful long time,” Boylan said this week. “I couldn’t do any of the preparatory work that you normally would do. There were no problems going up the hills, their joints were fine, but coming down them hills with ligaments, muscles and so on they were going to be in trouble.
“I remember Joan Benoit having won the Olympic marathon in 1984 and six weeks beforehand she had an operation on her knee. She got these buoyancy aids. I spoke to her team doctor, Jack Finn.
“Gerry McEntee was in the Mayo Clinic at the time and he was home to see the family and he rang me. ‘Are you going training?’ ‘I am.’ ‘Will you give us a lift?’ ‘Delighted to.’
“So I arrived and Mac threw the boots in the boot of the car. We get as far as Gormanston College and we head for the swimming pool. Gerry says nothing so we head in.
“We went in and the lads were in these buoyancy aids. It wasn’t like a life jacket in that if you stopped moving you sank but they gave you that buoyancy so you could do the preparatory work.
“Up until three weeks before we played Dublin in that first round we did all our preparatory work in the pool. It was only three weeks beforehand that we hit the ground for the first time.
“I will always remember on the way home Gerry went quiet and Gerry wouldn’t be known for going quiet.
“‘I have to say this to you’, he eventually said. ‘Can you tell me how you are going to face the people of Meath when you are beaten by Dublin in the first round of Leinster – ‘How’d the training go?’ ‘We were f**king swimming!’”
When it was over Meath still had an awfully long road to travel but they found their way back to September.
“We messed it up at the end of the year against Down,” said Flynn. “That’s my abiding memory. We didn’t do Dublin justice either, by losing it. We actually drew against Wicklow and had to go to another replay. Ten games in a championship season probably took its toll. O’Malley got injured. O’Rourke wasn’t right.
“Nine points down against Roscommon with 20 minutes to go we got 10 points on the trot. That was a brilliant game of football.
“Eleven points down against Down as well but could only pull it back to two. And that was it.”
Twenty-one years later what else lingers in the mind? “Something happened just before the fourth game,” said Flynn. “Both crowds just got going. The place shook. The noise. I’ll never forget it. I had goosepimples.”
For Sheedy, though, there is only one abiding memory that peers up at him from time to time.
“Losing. Just the really, really empty feeling after the fourth game. Being so close to the action, with the free at the end of the game, it was just so hard to believe. Not that you ever think you’ve won a game against Meath but I thought we had done enough in that fourth game, more than the other games, but you are just left standing there and it is all gone.
“Disbelief. A terribly empty feeling. That’s the one thing that has stuck with me.”
