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- Herausgeber: Liberties Press
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
Following the success of his book My Part of the Day, first published in 1981, Peter Byrne's second collection of stories, From the Press Box, provides fitting testimony to the most successful era in the history of Irish sport. From Gaelic Games and rugby to football and athletics, this book straddles the broad spectrum of sport as Byrne renews acquaintances with many of the personalities and places he got to know in a long career in search of the big story. A treasure trove of memories, recalled in a style to recreate the marvel of the moment, will ensure endless hours of enjoyment for both dedicated sports lovers and those who have monitored the outstanding achievements of Irish men and women from afar.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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From the Press Box
Seventy Years of Great Moments in Irish Sport
Peter Byrne
– Contents –
– Foreword – by Sonia O’Sullivan
Many years ago, at a time when I was still only dreaming about making a career for myself in sport, I came across a book written by Peter Byrne called My Part of the Day. It was comprised of a long list of great sporting occasions, national as well as international, and it fired me with the thought that if I worked hard enough and got lucky enough I might, just might, get my name into a book like that, one day.
Fast forward thirty years or so and I get a call from Daniel Bolger at Liberties Press, telling me that Peter has written another book along similar lines, my story is in it and would I like to write a preface for it. No second invitation needed and here I am, wide-eyed and as enthusiastic as I was all those years ago, wallowing in the memories of many of the great days in Irish sport.
I’m not old enough to have known or even seen some of the people who feature in this book. But their achievements and the stories of those achievements are told in such a way that I’m transported back through the years to share in the exhilaration of the good days and the heartbreak of those occasions when even the best wasn’t good enough.
I’ve known both in my time in athletics, and browsing through these pages I’m struck by the thought that while much may have changed for competitors and spectators alike in the second half of the twentieth century, the chemistry that went into the mix in the making of sporting idols all those years ago is still largely unchanged in the modern world.
Every generation needs to be inspired by the legacy of the ones that went before and it is in this context that Peter Byrne’s recollections from his days in the press boxes of sports stadia around the world, can be inspirational for the children dreaming of one day wearing the green of Ireland in big international events.
As a child, I recall the grownups talking in almost reverential tones of the days that Ronnie Delany won his Olympic 1,500 metres title in 1956. All of thirty years had passed since his wonderful run in the Melbourne Cricket Ground, a place I would later get to know very well, but the way those people spoke, Ronnie’s gold medal might well have been won just the day before.
I was well aware of that brilliant achievement growing up but for me, the real role models were people like Frank O’Mara, Marcus O’Sullivan and Eamon Coghlan who were closer to my age group. Marcus and Eamon, of course, were Villanova graduates and when I got the chance of going there on an athletics scholarship, that certainly helped when I first dipped my toe in American collegiate competition.
And then, of course, there was John Treacy, who followed up his two world cross country titles with that magnificent run to take silver in the Olympic marathon championship in Los Angeles. How can you quantify the benefits that flow from achievements like his, in showcasing Ireland and the image of Irish people as a vibrant, upwardly mobile race?
Coming from my background, it is only natural that I should put forward athletics as a sport which has done much to generate good publicity for the country. But I am also conscious of the great public relations work that other sporting associations continue to do in promoting Ireland abroad.
I was just starting out on my international career when Jack Charlton was working his little miracle with the national football team. And travelling to meetings around Europe at that time, I was acutely aware of the favourable impression Irish players were making; and just as important, the manner in which the team’s supporters were deporting themselves on their trips abroad.
In more recent times, it is rugby which has captured the imagination of the floating sporting public. And like so many others, I have been lost in admiration for the standards achieved by Munster and Leinster and the manner in which the provincial teams fed into the unforgettable Grand Slam success in 2009.
No less than the GAA, these organisations have done much to keep morale high in a climate of recession and it provides an effective answer to those who would question the merit of government in helping to fund sport, albeit at a lower level, in difficult, challenging times.
Many of the success stories recounted by Peter Byrne in these pages were achieved in equally trying circumstances. In that context, I believe his book has a role to play in reminding us of a glorious past which can help inspire future generations in their attempts to keep the Irish Tricolour flying proudly in stadia around the world. I wish them well in that mission.
Sonia O’Sullivan
– Introduction –
Seated in the body of a conference hall during the annual congress of the International Association of Sports Journalists in Milan many moons ago, I was among old and valued friends. The seating arrangements on such occasions are normally set out in alphabetical order, ordaining that the representatives of Iran, Iraq, Ireland and Israel are accommodated cheek by jowl; and that, as you might suspect, can lead to some unkind if predictable humour.
‘I wouldn’t want to be sitting in the row behind or in front of you lot’, was the usual remark in an era when security was at the top of the agenda for anybody charged with the responsibility of organising an international gathering. ‘A lot of fire power in your row,’ said one wag. ‘But if we’re talking sport, I’d want to be with the big hitters – Ireland.’
That got me thinking about our rating in international sport and how much of the world views us as a small country which frequently punches above its weight in major championships around the world.
In a sense, that is the logical product of our great love affair with sport, national and international, which in good times and bad has been a major part of the Irish psyche. Now more than ever, it seems, its value in projecting the image of a nation, defiant and resourceful in a challenging climate of austerity, is more important than ever.
From the relative comfort of the press box, I’ve been privileged to witness many of the achievements which, in their time, held the country captive. And on those occasions when I wasn’t fortunate enough to be present, I couldn’t wait to read the accounts of history in the making.
Long years after Ron Delany had confounded the collective wisdom of the world’s sporting press at Melbourne in 1956, which of us could fail to be impressed by the exploits of John Treacy, Eamonn Coghlan and, not least, Sonia O’Sullivan in the broad world of international athletics?
The discipline of boxing provided me with an entry to spots writing and because of that, I have always felt a special affinity with this, one of the most demanding of all sports. In line with a pedigree which rates among the best in the roped square, boxers like Barry McGuigan and Steve Collins in the professional game and Michael Carruth, Harry Perry and Katie Taylor among a host of gifted amateurs, did much to keep the Irish flag flying at distant venues in the second half of the twentieth century.
For many people, team sport is where it’s at, and recounting the achievements of men like Jack Carey, Liam Brady and John Giles in football and the imperishable genius of men like Jack Kyle and Brian O’Driscoll with a rugby ball in their hands, was a mission undertaken with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy.
For those who complain with some justification that the less popular sports do not receive adequate coverage in the national press, the memories of Stephen Roche’s golden year in cycling in 1987, still evoke national pride as do the exploits of Arkle, the remarkable horse who was responsible for a redraft of the parameters of National Hunt horse racing in the 1960s. The passage of time has, in some ways, merely added to the fascination of those successes.
North Dublin was part of another marvellous sporting story in 2007 when players such as Eoin Morgan and John Mooney shared in Ireland’s World Cup cricket safari. Even for those with only a limited interest in cricket, Ireland’s win over Pakistan and the drama which followed still makes for an absorbing read.
Set among the pantheon of outstanding international performers are the men and women who continue to attract more attention than all others on GAA fields throughout the length and breadth of the country. For the hundreds of thousands who make Gaelic football and hurling the most popular spectator sports, Croke Park in September is a location which will always hold a special fascination.
From Christy Ring and Nick Rackard to modern personalities of the quality of Henry Shefflin and Joe Canning, the battles for hurling’s biggest prize on the first Sunday in September are well documented in these pages. And Gaelic football enthusiasts can once more rejoice in the deeds of men like Mick O’Connell, Kevin Heffernan, Mick Higgins and many of those who followed in their footsteps in more modern times.
Reliving the grandeur of those giddy, sunlit days, was for me, a source of deep satisfaction. My earnest wish is that it will be no less enjoyable for you.
Peter Byrne May 2013
– Chapter 1 –
Date With Destiny
Football – Ireland v England, Dalymount Park, September 1946
On the face of it, there wasn’t a lot about the early 1940s to appeal to a boy who prized sport above all else in those dark, deprived days. Across the breadth of Europe and beyond, the most terrible war the world has known was raging with ever increasing consequences for the civil population at large.
Money was scarce, food was rationed severely, oil and fuel supplies dwindled to almost nothing and an acute shortage of newsprint meant that newspapers in neutral Ireland frequently amounted to just four unattractive leaves and sometimes even less.
It doesn’t take a great sweep of the imagination to guess that when duty editors came to dividing up those precious column inches, sporting matters came low down the list of priorities. To aggravate those who took exception, there was precious little sport deemed important enough by the editorial authorities in Radio Éireann to warrant coverage on the ‘wireless’. In those circumstances, the old crackling BBC Light Programme was a godsend and one measure of its influence was that any kid worth his salt could rattle off the names of the eight world champions in boxing, without as much as a moment’s hesitation.
I was one of those, and it somehow fostered the ambition that when I ‘grew up’, I would hopefully get a job writing about sport. It was a notion which, I have to admit, didn’t attract any discernible envy from my friends on the road where I lived. But guess what? I was all of nine years of age when, in 1945, I experienced the excitement of seeing my name in print for the first time.
It was the practice at the time, for the two Dublin evening papers, the Herald and the Mail, to invite readers to submit the names of the League of Ireland representative team they would like to see chosen for the task of taking on the Irish League in the twice yearly games which helped cushion the loss of international fixtures during the war years.
And after delivering my letter personally to the Herald’s sports department in Middle Abbey Street, I felt the sheer delight of seeing my team in print the following day. ‘Peter Byrne of Glasnevin’ it said in bold type before reeling off the names and the clubs of those I had selected. ‘Was that your young fellow’s letter I saw in the paper the other day?’ enquired a colleague of my father. ‘Don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Was there anything wrong?’ ‘No,’ came the answer, ‘but in selecting his best League of Ireland team, he included eight Bohemians players – would you credit that’. ‘Oh, that would be him alright,’ said the father. ‘He’s Bohemians mad. If he paid half as much attention to the school books as he does to football, I’d be happy.’
Growing up on Dublin’s north side had a lot to recommend it. Those living on the other side of the Liffey could pop across to Milltown, home to Shamrock Rovers, the most successful of all Irish football clubs or, at a push, divert to Shelbourne Park before Shels abandoned their base to embark on their travels north and south of the river. Most important of all, of course, was the fact that they had Lansdowne Road, the great cathedral of Irish sport, on their doorstep.
Against that, however, we were able to access Croke Park with minimum trouble, particularly on those gloriously sunny afternoons in the long, long ago when the championship season was at its height in late summer and, for all the traffic restrictions of the day, fans arrived in their thousands to pay homage at the shrine of Gaelic Games. And then there was always the option of watching Drumcondra and Bohemians play their home games on alternate Sundays at a time when the FAI Cup and the old League of Ireland championship held a fascination which many in the modern world might find difficult to fathom.
Drums, clad in those blue and gold hoops which became an iconic part of Irish football before their demise in 1972, were at the summit of their powers in the 1940s and ’50s when names like Con Martin, Pa Daly, Benny Henderson and Dessie Glynn were an essential part of the Irish sporting lexicon. There was undeniably no love lost between them and their near neighbours from Phibsborough, but for lads of my age group, it was still possible to switch allegiance with an ease that bordered on treasonous.
Ultimately, it was an ill-advised amalgamation with Home Farm that consigned Drums to the scrapheap, but fortunately, Bohemians, the oldest club south of the border, are still alive and occasionally thriving. Many view their momentous decision to espouse professionalism in 1970 as the move which saved the club from extinction, but for the romantics among us, it was the achievements of their amateur players – and two brothers in particular – which gave the club its undying allure.
Kevin O’Flanagan was born in Dublin in 1919, almost three years before his brother Michael saw the light of day. Collectively, they would emerge as probably the two most gifted siblings in the history of Irish sport. What is beyond dispute is that they are the only set of brothers to have represented Ireland in both football and rugby, an astounding achievement which puts them apart from all others in international sport.
More than that, the older brother has all the qualifications needed to meet the criteria for the accolade of the country’s outstanding sports person of the twentieth century. Apart from his football and rugby exploits, he was a multiple Irish athletics champion in the sprints and long jump events who would assuredly have earned inclusion in Ireland’s Olympic squads but for the intervention of World War II and a six-year suspension of all international sport.
He was also a formidable competitor in amateur golf with Milltown and Portmarnock, and on the rare occasions when a crowded programme permitted it, he wielded a tennis racket with a level of dexterity which suggested that had he applied himself with greater commitment, he might well have challenged the established masters of the discipline in Ireland at the time, Cyril Kemp and Joe Hackett.
As a student at Synge Street CBS, he excelled at Gaelic football and together with his long-time friend, Jack Carey, he was chosen in the Dublin team to play in the minor championship in 1936. All that changed, however, when they were revealed as members of the Home Farm football nursery in Whitehall and the disclosure promptly brought suspension by the GAA. Little more than a year later, the pair made their senior international debuts in a World Cup game against Norway in Oslo.
On the completion of his medical studies at UCD, Kevin moved to London to work as an intern and it was there that he swapped the red and black of Bohemians for the storied red and white of Arsenal – one of the last amateur players to play for the Highbury club. As ever, though, his sporting life remained hectic, and side by side with his football commitments, he managed to fit in the occasional rugby appearance for London Irish, winning his first ‘full’ rugby cap against Australia in December 1947, as a member of the Exiles club.
If Michael O’Flanagan never quite made as many headlines, he was still regarded by many as the more skilful of the two brothers. Whereas Kevin relied, in the main, on his impressive pace and ability to strike the ball harder than any of his contemporaries, Michael’s game was all about ball control and the ability to outwit defenders, in size-14 boots, by sheer skill and courage. And that was equally true of his rugby career, which brought him his only cap against Scotland in 1948 and a special place in history by sharing in Ireland’s first-ever Five Nations Grand Slam.
Nor was that his only claim to fame in the 1947/48 season. Just three months before the Scotland rugby game, he made another piece of sporting history by scoring six times in Bohemians’ Leinster Senior Cup Final win over St Brendan’s, a record which still endures as testimony to the unique qualities which lit up Dalymount Park and many other venues around the country throughout the 1940s and early ’50s.
Imagine the drama then, when a unique set of circumstances contrived to put the brothers, who had played together so often for Bohemians, in the Ireland team for the first post-war international at Dalymount since the suspension of international football seven years earlier. England provided the opposition on Monday, 30 September 1946, and that too was laden with significance, marking, as it did, the first time England had put their range of talents on display in the Irish capital since 1912.
Kevin O’Flanagan was named in the original team, even though he was required to work overnight in London, before catching an early morning flight to Dublin to join his international colleagues at the team hotel for a light lunch. At that point, Michael was busy pulling pints for customers in the Confession Box, a small pub he owned on Marlborough Street. Imagine his surprise then when, less than four hours before the 5.30 kick-off at Dalymount, he took a phone call at the premises, inviting him to fill the vacancy caused by the late withdrawal of the selected centre forward, Davy Walsh.
With no help immediately available, there was no alternative but to usher the customers to the door, close the pub, dash home to Terenure to collect his boots and then back to Dalymount for the task of pitting his wits against the legendary England defender, Neil Franklin. It wasn’t the kind of preparation he would have wished on the biggest day of his life, but after being left on the bench for the games in Portugal and Spain earlier in the summer, he was up for the challenge.
The prospect of the gifted brothers lining up together for the first time on the national team wasn’t the only talking point as a huge crowd converged on the stadium. In goal, for example, the Irish selectors had risked the ire of many of the team’s supporters by choosing Tommy Breen, once of Belfast Celtic and Manchester United but now plying his trade with Shamrock Rovers. Back in 1937, Drogheda-born Breen had become something of a hate figure in the south when, at the dictate of Belfast, he pulled out of Ireland’s World Cup game against Norway to safeguard his place in the Northern Ireland team. Now, faced with something of a goalkeeping crisis, the selectors conveniently forgot their pledge that he would never again represent the FAI and handed him the yellow sweater.
Then there was Alex Stevenson, a Dublin Protestant who was one of only a handful of southern Irish players to wear the dark blue of Glasgow Rangers. After winning his first cap as a Dolphin player against Holland in 1932, Stevenson’s name was conspicuous by its absence from every team sent out by the FAI until the outbreak of war in 1939, during which time he made no fewer than fourteen appearances for Northern Ireland. This was attributed by some to his refusal to play on Sundays but the truth was that Everton, a club which subsequently bent over backwards to placate Dublin, insisted on releasing him only to the Irish Football Association in Belfast. Now the man who the FAI would subsequently appoint as their national coach was back in favour at inside right.
Even without these subplots, all the ingredients were in place for an epic struggle as England, regarded by their supporters as the uncrowned kings of world football, got ready to end their cold war with Dublin after conciliatory talks extending over a period of almost twenty-five years. The reality was, however, that their decision to journey on to Dublin after playing in Belfast forty-eight hours earlier had less to do with diplomacy than the need to sample the best of Irish food and living. Wartime rationing was still operational in Britain at the time and the prospect of spending two days in the luxury of Dublin’s Gresham Hotel was, it appeared, sufficiently attractive to outweigh all other considerations. Frank Swift, England’s legendary goalkeeper, obviously thought so, for in his autobiography published some years later, he recalled the sheer exhilaration of his fellow English players on seeing a mouth-watering four course menu set out before them.
A highly significant occasion was rendered all the more important by the quality of the team England sent out. True, they were playing their second game in forty-eight hours, but such was the facile nature of their crushing 7–2 win over Northern Ireland that they weren’t overly burdened by weariness. In the strange practice of the day which allowed the IFA to select players born south of the border, the dark realisation began to dawn on the visitors that they would again be facing two of those who had confronted them in Belfast, Jack Carey and Bill Gorman with a third southern-born player, Tom ‘Bud’ Aherne, named as a replacement on the FAI’s team. It was the first occasion that English officials had experienced at first hand the bizarre realities of the Irish football split and it would play a significant part in the negotiations which rationalised the situation shortly afterwards.
Apart from the legendary Stanley Matthews, England fielded their full array of stars: Laurie Scott and George Hardwick fronted Swift in goal, Billy Wright and Henry Cockburn played on either side of Neil Franklin in the half-back line and the front line was made up of Tom Finney, Raich Carter, Tommy Lawton, Wilf Mannion and Bobby Langton. It was, by any standard, a formidable formation that, in terms of individual skills, far eclipsed many of the selections sent out by the English FA in the years leading up to their World Cup success in 1966.
Having waited so long to see England’s national team, a big crowd was not discouraged by the heavy rain which preceded the kick-off, and the visitors would later attribute the pressures occasioned by the famous Dalymount roar as one of the reasons for a performance that fell some way short of the standard they had set in Belfast. After Breen had done well to deflect Carter’s shot, the Irish more than held their own in a lively, eventful game with the O’Flanagan brothers, all pace and purpose, occasionally spreading raw panic in the opposing defence.
It was Michael’s pass which sent Kevin careering through in a one-on-one with the huge English goalkeeper midway through the first half and when the ball rebounded across the six yards line, Scott was forced to scramble, in-knocking the ball over his own crossbar. That was a let off for the team in white and their relief showed once more when Stevenson’s shot struck the crossbar after the interval.
Roared on by the crowd, Ireland spared nothing or nobody in their search for a winner, but in an incident which would be replicated by England at the same venue in 1957, the home team was later made to count the cost of a fateful lapse in concentration. With just seven minutes left, Breen could merely parry Langton’s shot and Finney, in his first international appearance, pounced for the only goal of the game.
An historic evening on Liffeyside had been spoiled by just one mistake, but the bigger picture was that Dublin was now firmly re-established as a focal point in international football and open for business on a regular basis with the old enemy.
– Chapter 2 –
New York, New York
Gaelic Football – Cavan v Kerry, Polo Grounds, New York, September 1947
Looking at the small army of print and electronic journalists who accompany teams on foreign assignments in the modern era, it is easy to forget that that it wasn’t always so. The historic happenings in a baseball stadium in New York on 14 September 1947 illustrate the point perfectly.
In a remarkable decision which continued to agitate long after the dust had settled on a day of high drama in the Polo Grounds, home of the legendary New York Giants, the Central Council of the GAA decreed, in its wisdom, to move the final of that year’s All-Ireland Football Championship between Cavan and Kerry some 3,000 miles west of its traditional setting in Croke Park.
It was a gamble that surprised some of the association’s most influential policy makers, who subsequently contended that the ruling made at the end of the council’s meeting was a direct reversal of the opinions expressed by a majority of members at the start of the fateful gathering. And apart from the plethora of logistical problems it occasioned, it gave rise to some difficult decision-making by those who controlled the purse strings of the national newspapers in Ireland.
The Irish Times and Cork Examiner, for example, decided against the cost of sending journalists on the transatlantic journey, preferring instead to rely on locally based newsmen to cover one of the showpiece events in Irish sport. The Irish Independent, on other hand, nominated its sports editor, Mitchel Cogley, to write on the game; and surprisingly, the now defunct Irish Press left its specialist GAA reporter, Terry Myles, at home and delegated Anna Kelly, who at that time was in charge of the paper’s women’s page, to travel and complement the match report of the freelance journalist, Arthur Quinlan.
If their choice of a staff representative in New York was curious, there was no denying the sense of enterprise in the decision of the Irish Press management to go for broke in their pictorial coverage of the historic event. Because of the time difference, there was no way that they would be able to get pictures from New York in the conventional manner to appear in the following day’s paper. Cue the entrepreneurs at the IP offices on Burgh Quay.
They would scoop the opposition big time by utilising the most modern technical development in the newspaper business, the wired photograph. This involved the hush-hush rental of the necessary machine from the Associated Press international agency in New York and, equally important, the hiring of one of their personnel to work it. To the thinly veiled astonishment of the local journalists, it worked and the following morning, the Irish Press proudly presented the first ever wired pictures from the other side of the Atlantic. And all this a mere twenty years before the Americans put a man on the moon.
In the heyday of radio, however, it was obvious from a long way back that Michael O’Hehir’s commentary would be all-important in quelling the objections of the traditionalists who believed that the authorities were selling out on their heritage by staging the final in New York. The difficulty was that Radio Éireann had never commissioned a transatlantic project to that point and, more importantly, didn’t apparently have the means to fund it.
In his book The Star Spangled Final, the late Mick Dunne revealed that the financial problem, measured in hundreds rather than thousands of pounds, was eventually referred to the Department of Finance before the requisite funding was provided. But if O’Hehir, just twenty-seven years old, thought that was the end of his problems, he was wrong.
Because of an apparent mix up between the authorities in Radio Éireann and those in the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, it was discovered just twenty-four hours before the match that the necessary lines had not been booked for the commentary. And when hours of frantic negotiations eventually resolved the problem, Radio Éireann bosses, obviously under instructions to cut costs to the minimum, booked only the bare minimum of time for the full commentary.
Just four months earlier, those same radio authorities had been embarrassed on the occasion of Gearóid Ó Colmáin’s victory in the European championship heavyweight final at the National Boxing Stadium in Dublin. It was the first time that Ireland had secured the heavyweight title but the occasion was soured somewhat when Radio Éireann terminated Eamon Andrews’s commentary and the voices of the singing masses after just a verse of ‘Amhran na bhFiann’ as Ó Colmáin stood in the middle of the ring with the gold medal hanging from his neck. The nightly news bulletin had to start at 10 PM sharp and despite the joyous celebrations on South Circular Road, no exemptions could be made.
The difficulty in New York was that the elaborate pre-match ceremonies delayed the start and as the excitement built to a crescendo in the dying minutes of the match, O’Hehir noticed that if the American authorities adhered strictly to the original terms of the booking, the telephone line would be cut before the final whistle. And with no producer on hand to make his case, he was left with no option but to plead on air, not just once but three times, for the line to be left open. Fortunately, his entreaties were heard but he left the stadium not knowing whether in fact the listeners back in Ireland had heard his description of the last eventful minutes and, indeed, if the country at large was aware of the result of the game.
The drama in the commentary box in the Polo Grounds was a microcosm of the difficulties visited on the GAA’s General Secretary, Pádraig Ó Caoimh, after Monsignor Michael Hamilton, a passionate churchman in County Clare and equally articulate in advancing the association’s cause, had convinced the sceptics that the decision to bring the final to America was indeed in the best interests of the game on either side of the Atlantic. Among the pluses he mentioned was the assumption that the match would attract a crowd of expatriates in the region of 60,000, but as it transpired this estimate proved wildly optimistic.
More predictable by far was the fact that in the stampede to placate the American lobby headed by John Kerry O’Donnell, few pondered the problem of finding a suitable venue for a contest being billed as the ‘World’s Greatest Game’. Eventually, the choice fell on the Polo Grounds, a modern stadium in its time which, apart from baseball, had seen some spectacular world championship boxing fights, not least when Joe Louis knocked out the Welshman Billy Conn in thirteen rounds some six years earlier.
The difficulty for the committee overseeing arrangements for the All-Ireland Final was that it was a diamond-shaped field, designed as a baseball arena, and for all the different configurations envisaged by the visitors from Ireland, there was no escaping that fact. Eventually, it was determined to make the best of an impossible situation and go with a pitch which undeniably devalued the occasion. It was just 137 yards long and the width varied from 84 yards at one end to 71 yards at the other. To accentuate the problem, the baseball authorities resisted all attempts to remove the pitcher’s mound, measured at some 10 inches high.
In the words of the players, the playing surface was ‘as hard as concrete’ and, added to the presence of the mound, it made for extremely hazardous conditions. Almost inevitably, perhaps, it would contribute to the injury sustained by the Kerry midfield player Eddie Dowling, which ultimately would have a profound bearing on the outcome.
Not least of the logistical problems faced by Padraig O’Caoimh was that of organising the travel arrangements for the official party of players and officials. Transatlantic air travel was still only in its infancy in the immediate post-war years and no fewer than twenty-five members of the party chose to go by sea, leaving Cobh for New York on the SS Mauritania on 2 September for the seven-day voyage. They were already safely in port as the bulk of the travel party, fourteen players from each team as well as officials and the tiny media corps, left Rineanna Airport, later renamed Shannon Airport, at the start of the eventful journey.
None of the air travellers had sat in a plane before and Mitchel Cogley would later recall the consternation and raw fear among the passengers when the pilot left the cockpit to greet his distinguished passengers in mid-flight. ‘I looked across the aisle and saw these big, strong men looking absolutely terrified. It didn’t do anything to reassure the rest of us,’ said the veteran newsman. By no stretch of the imagination could it be called an easy journey for the uninitiated.
‘Because of the prevailing winds we had to make an unscheduled stop to take on extra fuel in Santa Maria in the Portuguese Azores,’ said Cogley. ‘After that, we had short stopovers in Newfoundland and Boston and eventually disembarked in LaGuardia Airport in New York, almost twenty-nine hours after leaving Ireland.’ Joe Keohane, a colourful full-back with few equals, was one of five Kerry players who had previously played in New York – they travelled there by ship – in an exhibition game against Mayo before the outbreak of war in 1939. Keohane chose to go by air on this occasion and, as in the case of some of his teammates, there were occasions on the journey when he wished that he hadn’t.
Like his teammates Paddy Bawn Brosnan, Bill Casey, Paddy Kennedy and Gega O’Connor, Keohane had a reasonable idea of the strange setting awaiting the players when they set down in the Polo Grounds, but he still professed to being shocked when he saw the state of the playing surface in the stadium. ‘There wasn’t a blade of grass on it – it was certainly no place to play an All-Ireland Final,’ he said. And to exacerbate the problem, New York was hit by a downpour for much of the thirty-six hours preceding the match, making it difficult for players to retain a foothold.
Fortunately, the sun had broken though before the teams set off for the stadium, making it hot and humid inside, but it probably came too late to persuade many intending patrons to watch the match. In the event, 34,941 turned up for the marathon programme, presided over by the mayor of New York, ‘Irish’ Bill O’Dwyer, which included two local games before the main event. Even as the Cavan and Kerry players flexed muscles in the dressing rooms, however, they received an unexpected visitor in the person of the referee, Martin O’Neill from Wexford.
O’Neill, later to become Secretary of the Leinster Council, was reputed to be one of the best referees of his time, a strict disciplinarian who wasn’t afraid to impose his authority. It was this latter quality which probably encouraged the authorities at Croke Park to appoint him, even though he was not overly keen to take on the job which was seen as central to the success of the occasion.
‘He came into the room with the air man who had a stern message to impart,’ said Joe Keohane, ‘and proceeded to lecture us on the significance of the occasion, how we were representing our country abroad and the importance of staying within the rules on all occasions. The underlying message was that he would deal harshly with anything he deemed to be reckless play. But he didn’t need to remind us of our responsibilities and the effect was to instil an element of apprehension that ought to be no part of a build up to an All-Ireland Final.’
For Mick Higgins, the main playmaker in a vastly underrated Cavan team, it was a case of home from home. Born in New York but taken by his parents to Ireland as a boy, he was a man who above all others, prospered on the hype and the fears about the pitch in the build up to the game. ‘For people in the Cavan camp, it was a chance to seize the moment – and we did.’ And the state of the pitch? ‘It was manageable and remember – some of the pitches we played on in Ireland at the time weren’t too good either.’
Cavan, who required a replay to beat a modest Monaghan team on their way to the final, had good reason to be grateful for the skills and tactical nous that Higgins brought to the team after a positively nightmare start. Even with their charismatic midfielder, Paddy Kennedy, forced by injury to take up an unaccustomed role as a corner forward, Kerry’s improvised partnership of Eddie Dowling and Teddy O’Connor dominated in the centre in the early stages and it showed as first Batt Garvey, and then Dowling, crashed home the goals which saw the Munster champions open up an eight-point lead midway through the first half.
Decreeing that drastic situations demand drastic measures of redress, Cavan reshaped their team, withdrawing Higgins and Tony Tighe from the half forward line to take on O’Connor and Dowling in midfield and shunting P. J. Duke, the dashing UCD student, to right half-back to counter the threat presented by Garvey. The switches paid off, but the biggest factor by far in the transformation which followed was the back injury Dowling sustained in a heavy fall on the rocklike surface.
With their power base disrupted, Kerry lost their earlier look of invincibility. Spectacular goals from their impish corner forward Joe Stafford and, almost inevitably, Higgins, hauled Cavan off the floor and back into contention in a game in which Bruddy O’Donnell, on as a replacement for Dowling, could never rediscover the skills which had brought Meath to heel in the semi-final.
In the manner of their making, the Munster men came back to ask searching questions of the opposition after Tim Brosnan had been summoned from the bench to replace O’Donnell, and Gega O’Connor’s finely executed point, the first of the second half, brought them level at 2-5 apiece. But the defensive gaps which had earlier threatened to undo Cavan were by now sealed off and with John Joe O’Reilly and Simon Deignan complementing the majestic Duke in the half-back line, the prospect of pulling off an unlikely victory gradually dawned on the rank outsiders.
Peter Donohoe, a barman in Gaffney’s famous hostelry in Fairview, just a stone’s throw from Croke Park, eventually emerged from the shadow of some of his more illustrious teammates to put Cavan in full control, kicking eight points, most of them from frees, as the watch on Martin O’Neill’s wrist ticked towards full time. Nothing if not defiant, Kerry hit them with everything they had in those last, tense minutes but when O’Neill eventually called time, the scoreboard confirmed Cavan as 2-12 to 2-7 winners and the Sam Maguire Cup was on its way to Ulster for only the third occasion.
Twenty-four hours later, American sportswriters were extolling the sportsmanship of the players in this ‘remarkable new sport’. The celebrated New York Times columnist Arthur Daley was euphoric in writing up Peter Donohoe as the Babe Ruth of Gaelic football, and the highs and lows of an outstanding sporting odyssey were already beginning to pass into history, as victors and vanquished prepared to take their leave of the Big Apple – and the oddest stadium ever to host a major GAA event.
– Chapter 3 –
King Kyle
Rugby – Ireland v Wales, Ravenhill, March 1948
The cost of Adolf Hitler’s fixation on waging war on the world in 1939 could be counted in many currencies. No part of life remained untouched as the conflagration raged on for close to six terrible years. For sport in particular and the aspirations of thousands of young men and women to involve themselves at the highest level of their specialist disciplines, the suspension of international competition was, in many cases, ruinous.
Take the case of rugby union football. By the end of the Five Nations Championship in the 1938/39 season, players in the northern hemisphere, no less than their counterparts in the south, were eagerly anticipating the arrival of the roaring forties and, in the case of Ireland, re-applying themselves to the challenge of completing the Grand Slam for the first time. Suddenly, such ambitions were made to look fatuous in the extreme after German troops had marched on Poland. Sport, like so many other normal activities in peace time, was put on hold for the next six years.
One of the consequences was to hone still further the competitive element in domestic rugby, with Old Belvedere’s record sequence of seven victories in the Leinster Senior Cup, starting in 1940, setting the standard that ensured there was no shortage of emerging talent by the time peace was restored in 1945 and big time rugby resumed with a series of unofficial international games in 1946.
The immensely gifted Quinn brothers, Kevin, Brendan and Gerry, who had contributed so much to Old Belvedere’s dominance in Leinster, played in those unofficial games, but it was another raw talent at the club who would make the more lasting impact. Karl Mullen was a young medical student in Dublin when first summoned to wear the green jersey of Ireland in the fixture against France at Lansdowne Road on 26 January 1946. By the time he took his leave of international rugby in March 1953, he had written his name indelibly into the history of the game.
Aside from captaining Ireland to that coveted Grand Slam, the inspirational hooker led the British and Irish party on their marathon tour of New Zealand in 1950. At the time the Irish team was riding high in the pecking order in the northern hemisphere, not least because of Mullen’s motivational qualities and the strengths he brought to an unglamorous position in the middle of the front row. And as it transpired, those qualities more than compensated for his relative immaturity.
Coincidentally, it was another young man with aspirations of a medical career who emerged at approximately the same time to provide the creative nous to complement Karl Mullan’s leadership of the pack. Studying at Queen’s University Belfast, Jack Kyle was largely responsible for transforming a modest back line into the potent scoring unit that would undo some of the best defences in the championship in what came to be known as the first of the golden eras in Irish rugby.
Judged by the physical makeup of modern rugby international backs, Kyle was a slight but deceptively strong figure, blessed with remarkable vision on the pitch and the kind of acceleration which made those around him look positively pedestrian. Fittingly, the finest fly-half of his generation and, in the opinion of many, one of the greatest of all time, was among the first names down on paper in the selection of the distinguished Lions squad of 1950.
That protracted tour lasted more than three months and Jack recalls the reaction in the Kyle household when he opened the pages of the BelfastTelegraph to discover that he was in the touring party. ‘It was only a small story on the sports pages of the Telegraph but my father was not impressed. His first question was, “What about your studies – how can you take all that time off without it impacting on your hopes of graduating on schedule?”’ Fortunately, apprehension soon mellowed into fatherly admiration, and in time Kyle would become an honoured name in the southern hemisphere.
By that stage, he was the finished product but it was somewhat different on the restart of the Five Nations Championship in 1946/47 season. The long duration of Hitler’s conflict meant that only a handful of pre-war players featured on the resumption and in the case of Ireland, the indomitable Lansdowne full-back, Con Murphy, was the sole survivor. It all made for a significant exercise in improvisation but the measure of the Irish response was that they fell only at the last obstacle in the Triple Crown race, losing 6–0 to Wales at Swansea.
The critics rated it as an encouraging beginning but they might have been contemplating a rethink before the end of 1947, after the touring Australians had outplayed the men in green as comprehensively as the 16–3 scoreline indicated at Lansdowne Road on 6 December. It scarcely augured well for the start of the championship in the Colombes Stadium in Paris on New Year’s Day 1948, one of the few occasions that a championship fixture was played in midweek.
If the awesome power and refined finishing skills which would later identify the French brand of rugby hadn’t yet manifested themselves, France still represented a formidable test for any opposition on home terrain. Allied to the comprehensive nature of the collapse against the Wallabies just two weeks earlier, it was an anxious Irish squad that truncated its festive celebrations to embark on the journey to Paris. And that sense of unease was shared by the five Irish team selectors who, conscious of the need to sharpen the competitive element in the team, recalled Barney Mullan and the Dolphin player, Bertie O’Hanlon, to the three quarter line.
Mullan’s recall came at the expense of the multi-faceted Kevin O’Flanagan and it served to emphasise Clontarf’s acknowledged contribution to the national team. Before Old Belvedere embarked on their long train of success, Clontarf had been the dominant rugby force in Dublin north of the Liffey and among those who contrived to put the club’s headquarters at Castle Avenue at the centre of club competition was the celebrated Freddie Moran. Like O’Flanagan, Moran was a national sprint champion and but for the intervention of the war, he would unquestionably have added to his meagre total of eight Irish caps. Now Barney Mullan (no relation of the team captain) was set to enrich the club’s history, and in time his place kicking, no less than his innate try-scoring skills, would see Ireland through some treacherous tests.
The most significant change in the pack by far was the introduction of the Dolphin and Munster openside flanker, Jim McCarthy. A player possessed of boundless energy, McCarthy’s biggest asset was his ability to complement Kyle on those occasions when the Ulsterman’s sense of adventure appeared to surprise his teammates as much as the opposition. Invariably, the red-haired Corkman was at Kyle’s shoulder in such situations, and much later Tony O’Reilly would describe him pretty accurately as ‘Jack Kyle’s outrider’.
Complementing McCarthy in the back row was Bill McKay and packing down immediately behind them were Ernie Keefe, an international amateur boxer when he wasn’t playing rugby, and the redoubtable Colum Callan, whose imposing presence on the pitch contrasted starkly with his diffidence off it. In the event, it turned out to be a winning formation with McCarthy and Barney Mullan coming up with the tries that broke the back of France’s resistance and with Mullan kicking seven points. Ireland were fully deserving of their 13–6 win.
By most estimates, it was a good day’s work and yet, not quite good enough in the eyes of the selectors to warrant an unchanged team for the next assignment, away to England, some six weeks later. Jack Mattsson of Wanderers was named for his first – and only – cap at full-back, Chris Daly was in the front row in place of another Munster player, Jim Corcoran, Des O’Brien was promoted at number eight and most significant of all, Ernie Strathdee, who had led the team in Paris, was dropped. Instead, it was decided to go with Hugh de Lacy at scrumhalf with the captaincy transferring to Karl Mullen. In the latter instance, it would prove a decision biblical in its wisdom.
The England fixture, then as now, was invested with an importance which put it apart from all others, particularly at Twickenham. But with the new skipper leading by example, the pack provided just enough possession to feed the creative skills of Kyle at number ten. And the Ulsterman was not found wanting, scoring a fine try as well as creating the openings for two others by Des McKee and Bill McKay. Barney Mullan converted one of them and the Irish squeezed home by the narrowest of margins, 11–10.
It was only then that the public at large sensed that this was an Ireland team above the norm, and one of the consequences of the exciting Twickenham triumph was that Karl Mullen’s men prepared for the next assignment, against Scotland at Lansdowne Road, in the certain knowledge that victory would assure them of the championship title, irrespective of how they made out against Wales in their final game of the season.
It is a measure of the turmoil caused by the suspension of international sport during the war years and the uncertainty created by that void, that the Irish selectors, like those in each of the other four teams in the competition, chopped and changed the team in bewildering fashion in the hope of putting their strongest formation in the field. That was a product of the times, and in keeping with the trend they duly announced two more changes from the side that had done so well in putting down the best efforts of a strong English combination in London.
One of them was at full-back where Dudley Higgins was recalled in place of Mattsson, and in another remarkable twist in the odyssey of the O’Flanagan family, Michael was summoned for his first rugby cap in the centre. Ironically, he replaced another versatile performer, Paddy Reid, who in between his rugby commitments with Garryown and Munster had played football for his native Limerick in the League of Ireland.
