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- Herausgeber: The O'Brien Press
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
22 September, 2002 is a date engrained in the mind of every Armagh fan. At Croke Park for the first time ever, the Sam Maguire was lifted in front of a sea of orange and white and the celebrations continued for months. Twenty years on, the story of that famous day is revisited and examined and the reasons for their ascent are detailed by those at the heart of the journey. Orchard stars, fans and opponents all contribute to paint a vivid picture of the day that Armagh were Kings for a Day. Kings for a Day is a book to celebrate that success but also to give readers a new and exciting insight on what exactly happened inside the tight-knit dressing room that took Armagh from also-rans to All-Ireland champions.
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Contents
Prologue
Unscrewing the Cap
In 1953, after Armagh defeated Roscommon to reach the All-Ireland final for the first time ever, the Orchard management booked out Tommy Mackle’s Hotel in Maghery for a pre-final training camp.
Short of space to room the players, beds were instead lined out in the main hall. For days, the players shared the space with couples celebrating their wedding breakfasts.
Everywhere they travelled in the small village on the edge of Lough Neagh, starry-eyed youngsters followed. These included Kevin Rafferty, who would go on to play in an All-Ireland final some 24 years later.
Twenty special trains were put on for the meeting of Armagh and Kerry at Croke Park, half of these coming from the northern direction, with starting points such as Clones, Monaghan, Portadown, Enniskillen and Derry. Over 150 special buses were booked through the Ulster Transport Authority.
The attendance on final day was officially registered at 85,155, but with fans streaming in through open gates at the Canal End, 92,000 or so was a more realistic estimate. It seemed the entire county had decamped to Dublin, as Kerry supporters were outnumbered five to one. A sea of orange and white was ready to celebrate their crowning moment.
No team from the six counties had reached an All-Ireland final since the controversial establishment of Northern Ireland in 1921. The occasion was embraced with wild enthusiasm. The result, however, was not.
Armagh returned from Dublin crushed. Bill McCorry entered sporting folklore for all the wrong reasons, thanks to a 54th-minute penalty miss. If converted, it would have put the Ulster side a point ahead; instead, the Kingdom ultimately ran out winners 0-13 to 1-6.
‘We’ll get it next year.’ They didn’t. Instead, Peter McDermott, the referee who had awarded the penalty that McCorry drove a yard wide of the post, captained Meath to the All-Ireland title in 1954. Then another year passed, and another, hope slipping away with each advancing season.
When Armagh finally made it back to the September showpiece in 1977, a bottle of whiskey was put behind the counter in McKeever’s bar in Portadown. Jameson Redbreast, 12 years old.
The whiskey, their victory dance, sat patiently as the days counted down to the team’s game against the mighty Dublin. However, those Sam Maguire dreams would again be shattered.
Paddy Moriarty joined McCorry in missing an All-Ireland final penalty for Armagh, but that error mattered little as Dublin steamrolled the Ulster champions.
The whiskey wouldn’t be opened to provide solace. ‘Leave it until we do win the All-Ireland; it’ll not be long.’ Next season maybe.
Back into the shadows the bottle went, waiting, almost forgotten, regulars wondering would its contents ever be poured and savoured as they should. As the years – the decades – went by, the bottle’s dust cover grew thick.
On Tuesday, 24 September 2002, two days after Oisín McConville had joined McCorry and Moriarty in missing a penalty for the Orchard County in the All-Ireland final, the Armagh squad were handed a glass each. The dust was blown off the whiskey bottle; the cap was unscrewed.
Chapter One
Ulster Says Go
The 1991 Ulster Championship started with a bang – literally – for Down’s new great white hope, James McCartan.
The future two-time Mourne County manager was at home the night before Down were due to face Armagh, who he would come close to joining just a few years later, in a provincial quarter-final in Newry when a 600lb IRA bomb exploded in Donacloney.
Instead of much-needed rest, McCartan worked through the night, sweeping up glass in the family pub and providing shelter for neighbours who had been displaced.
Less explosive was the clash in Newry between the bitter rivals. The horrendous encounter was matched only by the conditions and Armagh’s Jim McConville falling over himself with the goal gaping. His miss allowed Pete McGrath’s men to sneak through with two points to spare.
Much as many old hands in the border town push the boundaries of truth by claiming they were at U2’s famous town hall concert in 1980 – booked by Mickey Magill, father of future Down All-Star Miceal – a number of fans have claimed they were the source of the famed quote shouted as the crowds dispersed from the Marshes that day:
‘The pick of those two teams wouldn’t win an All-Ireland …’
That story still airs every so often, all these years on, the scorn in the sentiment barely softening with time.
In September 1994, Armagh stars Jarlath Burns and Kieran McGeeney – known to most as Geezer – squared up to each other in training, coming close to blows.
Their moods had been simmering for years as continuous unfulfilled dreams drained their devotion. Meanwhile, neighbours, footballing enemies, had their cravings sated.
The pick of those teams in ’91 wasn’t meant to win an All-Ireland, but Down would embark on a wondrous journey culminating in an All-Ireland final win over Meath.
The following year, the Donegal players scaled the Hogan Stand steps to lift the Sam Maguire Cup for the first time, and northwest neighbours Derry dutifully followed their lead in 1993.
‘Watching other teams going on and winning All-Irelands from Ulster was great, but it was a bit annoying too – “could we not do that?” “Why can we not do that?” says Joe Kernan, who was Armagh’s assistant manager under Paddy Moriarty from 1989 until that rain-soaked day in the Marshes in 1991.
‘There wasn’t much between us, but in fairness to Derry, Down and Donegal, they were three great teams.’
Down were about to underline that greatness. In early September 1994, on the night that Burns and McGeeney lost their cool, Down were also training. There was a tension in the air there too, a whiff of cordite ready to explode. In Armagh, frustration was the potential accelerant. For Pete McGrath’s side, anticipation.
Orchard County boss Jim McCorry had decided to bring the squad in early to get ready for October’s National League opener against Mayo. A few miles down the road, the Mourne County were preparing for an All-Ireland final with Dublin.
Some of the Armagh players had to drive through roads bedecked in black and red on their way to training – a constant, unwelcome reminder of where Down stood, and how far Armagh had to go.
Orchard coach John Morrison had set up a simple sprinting drill. Player A stood on the 45-metre line and Player B stood five yards behind. Burns and McGeeney were paired together and when the whistle sounded, the former took off for goal with ball in hand.
Like a lion hunting a gazelle, McGeeney chased his prey down and dragged him down coarsely from behind.
‘Fuck me, Geezer,’ roared an angry Burns, ‘that’s a foul and a booking.’
McGeeney shot back, questioning Burns’s masculinity, and a shoving match broke out. The pair were separated, but silence provided the soundtrack for their car journey back to south Armagh together. Those red-and-black flags fluttered provocatively once more as they came through Newry and steered towards country terrain.
Goalkeeper Benny Tierney, a club-mate of McGeeney, had quelled the rising temperature between the pair with a few jokes. The Mullaghbawn man was mercifully armed with the wit to defuse many a sticky situation.
Inside, though, he was hurting as much as anyone. The goalkeeper had been called into the Armagh panel for a McKenna Cup game by Father Sean Hegarty when he was still a student at St Colman’s in Newry. He joined the squad properly in the late 1980s. Through his bright white smile, Tierney’s teeth would grind as an endless run of Ulster sides, Armagh not included, enjoyed their day in the sun.
Unable to see a way to end Armagh’s sorry sequence, his own strategy was to ensure he was as good as he possibly could be – the constant appraisal of Tierney’s jovial demeanour far too easily overlooked a fierce competitive streak.
‘I took over from Brian McAlinden, who was probably the most celebrated goalkeeper in Armagh’s history, at 19 or 20 years of age, and that to me was an honour,’ says Tierney. ‘I always wanted to be number one; I always believed that I was number one. Now, I could meet a thousand people out of a thousand and twenty and they would tell me that I wasn’t number one, but in my head I was.
‘You have to believe in yourself and you have to believe that you’re good enough. I don’t know where that came from. Boys would tell you that when they’re playing golf with me for a pound, I’ll hole a putt for 30 foot on the last hole and I’ll say to them, “It’s not because I’m competitive,” and they’ll say, “No, it is, you’re totally competitive.” That’s in you.
‘You see anyone that’s walking up the steps to lift an All-Ireland or a club championship, be that junior or senior or intermediate, they have to have that competitive will and that drive, and they have to realise that you have to give something up for that as well.
‘You’re not living the life of a monk or anything like that, but there has to be a time where you have to settle down and try and be the best that you can be.’
A few weeks after Burns and McGeeney had been on the brink, Down defeated Dublin in the All-Ireland final. Ulster everywhere, Armagh nowhere – on the surface, at least.
The early 1990s belonged to other counties in Ireland’s northern province, but building blocks were being put in place that would ultimately provide the most solid of foundations for their momentous 2002 Sam Maguire success.
It can be traced all the way back to that horrible 1991 day in Newry, when Mickey Linden sent Tierney the wrong way from the penalty spot for what would prove to be the match-winning goal.
Before that tasteless main, the Armagh minor team had slammed home six goals against Down in a sizzling starter course. Des Mackin scored a hat-trick, while Barry O’Hagan dominated at midfield. Their teamsheet also included goalkeeper Darren Whitmarsh and Pat McGibbon.
The former would play in front of 30,000 fans at Old Trafford the next year as a Manchester United side featuring Paul Scholes, David Beckham and the Neville brothers faced Leeds in the Youth Cup final. In 1995, McGibbon would also play at the Theatre of Dreams alongside Beckham and Eric Cantona as Alex Ferguson’s side suffered a shock League Cup loss to York City.
Whitmarsh was still in goals for the Armagh minors in 1992 when they got agonisingly close to an All-Ireland crown. Leading by two points a couple of minutes into additional time, Trevor Giles – destined for a glorious career in the green and gold of Meath – played the ball into Royal substitute Michael Farrelly. With his marker Kevin O’Hagan slipping on the turf, the Kells man blasted beyond Whitmarsh.
Barry O’Hagan was presented with a chance to equalise from a ‘45’, but, against the wind, it dropped short. Though the ball was flicked onto the crossbar, the full-time whistle had already sounded.
That tormenting experience was crucial though. Many of the players from that team remained close to manager Brother Larry Ennis until his death in 2021, particularly Paul McGrane. The coaching received from Liam McCorry was also banked and called on for years to come.
Two years later, the Orchard minors were back on the All-Ireland stage after claiming another Ulster title. In that 1994 clash at Croke Park, the class of 2002 would again be represented, with Aidan O’Rourke, Enda McNulty, John McEntee, Barry Duffy and Tony McEntee – listed as Anthony in the match programme – in the first 15.
It was Kerry who ended their hopes then, Armagh’s dream dying in the last four.
‘Mike Frank Russell and Kerry beat us in the semi-final in Croke Park,’ says Aidan O’Rourke. ‘That minor team could and should have won an All-Ireland, but we didn’t have the belief that we could do that.’
Sigerson football was also providing a launchpad for expectation, with legendary college coaches such as Jordanstown’s Adrian McGuckin, Jim McKeever of St Mary’s and Queen’s Dessie Ryan having a massive impact on some future Armagh stars.
There had been highlights before – Ger Houlahan won the Player of the Tournament award in 1986 as Jordanstown won the colleges’ title, and John Rafferty collected the accolade three years later when St Mary’s prevailed. Benny Tierney was goalkeeper for the Ranch, the moniker of St Mary’s in 1989.
In the 1993 season, when Queen’s defeated St Mary’s in the final, Armagh’s power-packed potential was there for all to see. Kieran McGeeney, Andrew McCann, Cathal O’Rourke and Paul McGrane were all key members of that QUB team.
On 22 September 2002, 12 members of the Armagh squad that arrived at Croke Park for the All-Ireland final against Kerry had tasted success at Sigerson level with various universities. At the media night before the game, Queen’s coach, and a former Tyrone selector, Dessie Ryan made a presentation to Armagh captain Kieran McGeeney to recognise the county’s contribution to the Malone Road institution. Geezer received the memento on behalf of the 13 panellists who had played at Queen’s.
‘Dessie’s training sessions were notorious. You could be on the training pitch two and a half, three hours on a Wednesday, and at stages of the session you’d be fucking froze, because he’d stand for 20 minutes and explain why you don’t put your foot there when you’re turning; this is why you step; the man is a genius,’ O’Rourke continued.
‘We would have rehearsed, repeated, rehearsed, repeated – repetition, repetition, repetition. I bring a lot of that into my own coaching now. That just builds into people’s muscle memory. I know what he is going to do; I can see the flight of this ball before it’s kicked; I know where to move and when. Dessie would drill that into the Queen’s boys and that was crucial for how we played for Armagh.
‘Joe Kernan’s tactics were very similar with and without the ball and I benefited from Dessie’s coaching because I already had what Joe wanted from his wing-backs.
‘What Joe did was give us a simple, workable plan that didn’t need a lot of elaboration. The ball went into the forward line a certain way and it went early.
‘If people had asked at that time about my strengths, no one would have said I was a brilliant kick passer. I developed as a kick passer in 2001, ’02 and ’03 because Dessie Ryan wanted that strategy, the diagonal ball to the back post.’
Even at schools’ level, future stars were making their mark. Diarmaid Marsden, who would become perhaps the most idolised Orchard player inside the four dressing room walls by that 2002 group, starred as St Colman’s won a Hogan Cup in 1993.
Two years earlier, Kieran Hughes had won a MacRory Cup with St Pat’s, Dungannon, against a St Colman’s side containing Marsden and Paul McGrane on the same day as Barry O’Hagan took home a MacLarnon Cup title with St Michael’s, Lurgan.
When Down captain DJ Kane lifted the Sam Maguire in 1994, ideas of an Armagh challenge looked more fanciful than ever. Below the surface, however, the roots were taking hold.
Chapter Two
The Two Brians
The Armagh players, bodies jaded and in some cases very bruised, filed past the officials, political representatives and members of the clergy sitting on the side of a trailer. The footballers made their way into the makeshift changing rooms after the day’s club action.
It was standard procedure for a Sunday in the mid-’90s. Play a club League game in the afternoon, hop in the car and then play for your county that evening at an official pitch opening. The location of the second match generally determined whether or not you had time for a shower in between games.
Club football in the Orchard County was renowned for its physicality – an unquantifiable badge of honour, no doubt manufactured on a pub stool, which proclaimed Armagh and Meath as the hardiest in the land. The validity of that particular assertion can be debated, but it was no place for the faint-hearted. Punches flew, hits were frequent and there was enough testosterone on show to alert an Olympic drug tester.
On that particular Sunday afternoon, a brawl had broken out between two clubs towards the north of the county. The referee took the unusual step of abandoning the game rather than waiting for the participants to run out of steam.
Two of Armagh’s noted hard men were involved. It was particularly vicious, and the acrimony remained. One of the unfortunate quirks of an abandoned match is that it doesn’t give the two teams the opportunity to shake hands at the end of the game and say ‘no hard feelings’.
In the Armagh dressing room later that evening, this bad blood led to a confrontation between the pair. An offer to step outside from one was instantly accepted by the other, and the antagonists headed for the door to pick up where they had left off earlier.
Some quick-thinking players and coaches realised that the sight of two Armagh players taking lumps out of each other in front of the Archbishop probably wouldn’t lend itself to positive headlines. The pair were dragged back inside the changing room and through a mesh of bodies they got a few shoves and half-punches in. Enough for both to feel that they had stood their ground, anyway. The fact that they were teammates mattered little in that moment.
Those types of cracks were all too obvious in the Armagh dressing room in the early 1990s, splits that hampered the work of manager Jim McCorry and his assistant John Morrison. When Brian McAlinden and Brian Canavan replaced McCorry as Armagh manager in late 1995, those fissures in the Orchard core were still rotting away.
‘That sort of only stopped around 1998,’ says former Armagh captain Jarlath Burns. ‘Paul McGrane and Diarmaid Marsden and these boys started talking about Club Armagh. That term, Club Armagh, resonated, and we made a decision that whatever happens at club level had no business with what went on at county level.
‘The best way to deal with those rivalries was through humour, and the best person to deal with that was Benny Tierney. Benny is a joker, but Benny Tierney is indispensable within the dynamics of a panel. He creates levity when levity is required.
‘Within a panel, things can become very tense, particularly coming up to a championship match when a starting team is emerging. You can see who they fancy, who they want, just by what they’re trying and the line-outs they’re putting together in training. That becomes very evident.
‘You always need someone in the changing room to cut the tension from that.
‘From St Colman’s to Mullaghbawn to Armagh, he has won everything, apart from an All-Ireland Club. Armagh didn’t win an All-Ireland after him; the dressing room would have been more serious. Benny Tierney was a man that just continually broke the tension.’
For Tierney, who played midfield for his club right up to U21 level, being the class clown came naturally.
‘When I look at the players now who are hooked on phones and social media, they’re coming out of training and the first thing they’re going looking for is their phone,’ says Tierney. ‘The first thing we were looking was to see what prank we could pull on each other, see what we were going to do or mess about with somebody and have a bit of a laugh.’
Such capers were commonplace in the Armagh squad in the mid- to late 1990s, especially on weekends away. They could be as simple and as immature as filling an unsuspecting player’s bag full of kettles, or as downright annoying as the approach taken by Justin McNulty.
The Mullaghbawn man had taken to ringing his teammates from his hotel room and reading passages of the Bible to them. The phone would usually be hung up on the other end before it was discovered whether or not the Romans ever wrote back to St Paul.
In 1999, on the day before Armagh’s All-Ireland semi-final meeting with Meath, McNulty was doing his ring-around when physio Dan Turley answered. Thinking it was hotel service, Turley listened intently until McNulty got bored. That evening, the player was at Turley’s table for dinner when he remarked how attentive the hotel staff were to do such a thing. McNulty nearly fell off his chair.
Those lighter moments are fondly remembered now, but when Brian McAlinden and Brian Canavan called the first team meeting as joint-managers, they knew it was a dressing room not short on inner tension.
Canavan, referred to as Barney by those who know him best, says that they planned to get around some of it by way of familiarity.
‘There were better players in the county that weren’t on the pitch. It might have only been one or two, but it can make a difference. We felt that having a man from the north, mid and south would cover all bases.
‘We’d know all the players between us, and it wouldn’t be hard to pick up a phone. I could ring someone from Dromintee or Crossmaglen or Silverbridge for a chat about anything, because they’d know me from south Armagh. Brian would know the Clan na nGael lads and all those well, whereas I wouldn’t have been as close.
‘It worked fine, because by the time we got to 1999, we had the best players on the panel. Between rows and ructions and everything else that goes on, for those couple of years we had the best players there.’
Those rows were tolerated, because they were working with a united dressing room. That anger and frustration was often welcomed, as long as everyone was pointing in the same direction, that being to bring Armagh football forward.
‘I remember one night in Lurgan. Enda McNulty was marking me and he ripped the bib off me and I swung for him,’ Oisín McConville recalls. ‘Aidan O’Rourke came in and swung for me and Cathal O’Rourke came in and swung for Aidan. That was a sign that things were flipped – I knew we were going to be alright after that.’
That unity hadn’t been there when the two Brians took up the reins.
To understand the dynamic of the partnership, you need look no further than the interview process from a few weeks beforehand.
Canavan inadvertently put himself into the frame during Armagh’s 1995 Ulster Championship clash with Derry. He took aim at Armagh whilst on BBC media duty.
The Oakleafers, still smouldering from their early exit to Down 12 months previously, arrived at the Athletic Grounds determined to show they were still All-Ireland contenders – despite the war that had broken out in the county following the unexpected sacking of Eamonn Coleman.
Even with the fallout from that move simmering throughout 1995, Derry – now led by Coleman’s former right-hand man Mickey Moran – delivered the goods. The half-back line of Johnny McGurk, Henry Downey and Fergal McCusker enjoyed the freedom of the Cathedral City to provide the launchpad for a 1-17 to 0-10 trimming.
It stung some of the players more than others.
Cathal O’Rourke had stroked over seven frees across the game, but was in a foul mood when speaking to the press afterwards.
‘We trained approximately 470 hours for this game. That’s for one hour’s football. We let ourselves down; we let our county down; we let our families down. I know the feeling of depression that’s going to be with us now, and it’ll be with us for a long time. I know because we’ve had it before so often.’
Armagh player John Grimley didn’t hold back either. Taking aim at the management team of Jim McCorry and John Morrison, the 6’4” powerhouse said that he would be stepping away and that his twin brother Mark would be doing likewise. This was an acrimonious end for players who had represented their country in international rules in Australia.
An unfortunate end too for McCorry, who had won a Dr McKenna Cup and had taken the side on a memorable run to the 1994 National League final.
In another part of the ground after that heavy Derry loss, the knife was also being twisted, via a radio microphone, by Brian Canavan, who had captained the Orchard County five years previously.
Canavan’s words were noted by members of the County Board. One official went to meet him to pick his brains on how Armagh football could move forward. That conversation evolved into a temperature check on his potential availability.
The initial interest was there, but Canavan also put forward Brian McAlinden’s name. The pair hadn’t been especially close as players, but Canavan had never played with anyone who had displayed more footballing intelligence than the Sarsfields man.
Enthused by the idea, Armagh asked the pair to attend an interview. McAlinden, as old school as they come, declined. ‘If they want us, they can give us it,’ was his thinking. Canavan, more willing to play the game, went and represented the pair of them. The good cop/bad cop routine would be a trademark of their tenure.
Walking into the interview, Canavan met another contender, a certain Eamonn Coleman, disposed of by Derry so controversially. In the meeting with officials, Canavan revealed that it was not just a joint ticket they were proposing, but a triple threat, also including Grange man Peter Rafferty.
‘I said we needed Peter Rafferty for the mid-Armagh boys,’ Canavan said. ‘Peter was a good fella and had started to take teams. He was one who jumped out at me.
‘Armagh arranged a meeting between the three of us and, long story short, the three of us decided that we’d take it on. Unfortunately, in the end, Peter wasn’t able to, so Brian and myself took it on.’
First impressions cannot be underestimated and the two Brians made a good one on a cold October day in 1995.
Distinguished former players making their inter-county managerial debuts would typically make plenty of headlines in the weekend newspapers, but the press focus was on two other men in similar circumstances.
Páidí Ó Sé, an eight-time Celtic Cross winner, had been handed the task of awakening his native Kerry from their slumber, while three-time Dublin All-Star Barney Rock was preparing for his first game as Westmeath boss.
The two greats endured mixed fortunes. Kildare came to Tralee and turned over Kerry, while in Newcastle, Westmeath defender Dermot Brady shut down new Down captain Mickey Linden to ensure that Rock’s reign got off to the perfect start.
The focus on events in Drogheda was less intense, but satisfying still for the new management, as Armagh started with a 1-14 to 0-8 win over Louth. The goal came from that most familiar of sources, Ger Houlahan, while Diarmaid Marsden’s transition to senior football continued to prove almost unfairly easy.
A defeat of All-Ireland champions Dublin, albeit minus eight of their All-Ireland winning 15, was another early boost, although a dislocated shoulder for prolific scorer Cathal O’Rourke was a real sour note.
Armagh were also without Marsden, Kieran McGeeney – who had hurt his shoulder in Mullaghbawn’s Ulster Club win over Castleblayney – and Paul McGrane, meaning that Andy McCann was handed his debut, Justin McNulty doing likewise a week earlier against Louth. The seeds for 2002 were already being sown.
Those two wins ensured that the League objective of Division Two safety had been all but achieved by Christmas, and Armagh ended up coming very close to promotion, only to miss out on a potential play-off when they fell to a Colin Corkery-inspired Cork in the final round.
McAlinden and Canavan hadn’t taken the job merely to earn promotion though. They came in to make the Orchard what it had been in their heyday – a feared Championship outfit.
Facing a hotly fancied Derry in 1996, this time at Celtic Park, was the perfect means to measure any improvement a year down the track.
McAlinden, in particular, would bristle at any suggestion that they were there simply to make up the numbers. When they raced into a four-point lead after eight minutes, the shock of the summer looked on the cards.
Jarlath Burns had been imperious in those opening 20 minutes, and that domination owed a lot to some mental kidology from McAlinden.
‘We warmed up in in St Columb’s College before the game in Celtic Park,’ he said. ‘Jarlath had a problem, a ligament problem in his ankle. I asked him would he take an injection to help with the pain, and he said he would.
‘I rang the doctor as he was coming to the match and I explained about the ligament. When we got to the College, he said it’s too late, it won’t work.
‘I told him to give him an injection but put nothing in the needle. Jarlath got an injection with nothing in the needle. Half an hour later, I asked him how he was feeling. “Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.” He was cured by an injection with nothing in it.
‘I told him that story one day, and he just shook his head.’
Brian Mullins’s side would eventually take control when Joe Brolly plundered a goal early in the second half. Full-time: Derry 1-13 Armagh 1-6 and another campaign had fizzled out.
The start of the 1997 season was a proud one for Benny and Bernadette O’Rourke and Sean and Geraldine Duffy. Three years earlier, their sons Aidan O’Rourke and Barry Duffy had jumped on a bus at the Carrickdale Hotel with a group of lads. They stood on the Canal End as a sea of orange took over Croke Park for the National League final against Meath.
Big days were to be savoured back then for Armagh fans. Although Meath ruthlessly swatted them aside, the lukewarm tins and the craic around the ground sweetened the pill of defeat.
Those Armagh fans also loved a pitch invasion, something evident in spectacular fashion when their 2002 awakening arrived.
O’Rourke and Duffy were among those who ended up on the field after that Meath game, looking around at a stadium that resembled a construction site at the time, as the old Cusack Stand had been bulldozed months before.
Three months later, the pair would be back on the pitch, playing this time, as a fancied Armagh lost an All-Ireland Minor semi-final to Kerry.
Like nine of the players on the 2002 Armagh squad, including fellow 1994 minors Enda McNulty, John McEntee and Tony McEntee, they had been learning their trade at the Abbey CBS in Newry. The ’02 alma mater also hosted Cathal O’Rourke, Justin McNulty, Kieran McGeeney and Oisín McConville. Manager Joe Kernan also received his education at the Abbey.
Prior to the 2002 final, the ten headed back up Courtney Hill for a photo with school principal Dermot McGovern. Also included was Val Kane, who was vice-principal at the time.
Kane is a famous name in Down football. Val was part of the 1968 All-Ireland winning squad and also won an Ulster title in the 1980s as part of a joint-manager ticket alongside James McCartan Snr. His brother DJ captained the Mourne County to the Sam Maguire in 1994. Three years earlier, DJ Kane had marked one of his students, Cathal O’Rourke, in the 1991 Ulster Championship clash between Down and Armagh at the Marshes.
Val Kane may have been a revered figure in Down, but he also played a major role in Armagh’s rejuvenation.
‘Val is old-school, but he is a trained PE teacher and aware of what others were doing. He would have been a big man for basketball and bringing patterns and habits from that into your game. We would have played a lot of basketball in the Abbey at the time,’ Aidan O’Rourke says.
‘That had a big influence on my game. When it became a thing to video games and watch back for learning purposes, I remember thinking: that’s basketball. Some of the moves I didn’t even realise I did, they came straight from basketball.
‘Val was the first person to ever introduce us to anything close to strength and conditioning. Now, they were fairly basic programmes, but it was about the ethic. You go to the gym twice a week and you do your session, and you were in charge of making sure that the other boys were there too.
‘As a seventh year, I would have had responsibility for sixth and fifth years to make sure they were there, and all that. Character building, leadership development, work ethic to do the session – that was all very important.
‘Kilbroney Park, the park around the school, mental stuff. Psychologically in terms of resilience – dig in and find more – I think that was massive.’
The bonds were forming, and as those same pupils progressed to college in Belfast, digs were shared as life took on a different look. That preparation in the gym meant that they adapted to college football instantly, dominating physically. Enda McNulty and the twin McEntees were quickly called into the Armagh senior team after that 1994 minor season.
At the start of the 1997 season, the two Brians decided to call in some more former county minors, including Aidan O’Rourke and Barry Duffy. County secretary Paddy Óg Nugent phoned the student house to ask the pair to training, but, it being a Monday night, it was drinking time.
As the lads sank pints in Renshaws, a female housemate was scribbling a note to pin up on the fridge for the boys.
‘Barry and Aidan to go to Armagh training, 7pm tomorrow, Davitt Park.’
After closing time, the group headed back to the house for an after-party. It was in full swing when the note was noticed.
‘Fuck, you have to go,’ insisted Enda McNulty to the pair. ‘You have to go.’ At that moment though, finding beers in the fridge was the top priority.
The next morning, the phone rang and rang again. Nugent delivered the details for a second time when the phone was eventually lifted. The two lads, hardly fit to move, made it to Lurgan that night and just about survived one of McAlinden’s famous vomit-inducing sessions.
McAlinden was in foul form that night, ahead of their third National League match against Monaghan at the start of December.
It had initially been postponed due to the weather, and they’d been told that the game would be replayed on 12 December. Instead, it was brought forward a fortnight to form a double header with Crossmaglen’s Ulster Club clash with Bellaghy. Two games on one pitch in the winter was a recipe for disaster, McAlinden felt, especially with his players featuring in both matches.
O’Rourke and Duffy were expecting an easy first day as Armagh players. A 12.45pm throw-in meant they’d be up the road to Belfast in great time after taking in the match from the bench. They were only among the substitutes because of a glut of injuries anyway.
However, with the Crossmaglen contingent absent and a minor car crash en route to Clones ruling out a few more players, Duffy and O’Rourke were unexpectedly thrown in from the start.
News reached their parents, whose chests swelled with pride, but as the ball was thrown in, they couldn’t see the boys. Other Armagh fans were bewildered too. Duffy, not unlike Ivan Drago from the Rocky films with his bright blonde hair and unmistakable presence, was a hugely exciting minor and there was plenty of anticipation about what he could add to the mix.
Those blonde locks were missing though. Doing what students do in the lead up to Christmas, they had gone drinking and with it came the inevitable bad decisions. In this case, it was taking a Gillette razor to the head and a shave right down to the scalp.
So two players, with just a few days’ growth on their heads, made their Armagh debuts with nobody able to recognise them. Their parents eventually worked it out, and they were left happy too. O’Rourke, playing corner-forward, hit a goal in the 21st minute, and Paul McGrane added a second a minute later. Duffy got a point as well in the 2-9 to 0-8 win.
Armagh would finish mid-table in Division Two when the 1996–97 National League came to a close. Their seven games had brought two wins, two losses and three draws.
Down or Tyrone would provide the Ulster Championship opposition. As management was still unsatisfied with the team’s conditioning, a training weekend was organised. The venue was Thurles, and that word is still enough to send a shudder through anyone involved in the 1997 panel.
‘Jim McCorry believed in looking after players, in the sense that if we went away for a weekend, we stayed in a bloody good hotel,’ Jarlath Burns remarked. ‘Brian McAlinden did not believe that: “These boys are soft, we have to harden them up.” McAlinden was right. We were soft-centered.’
As the bus rolled towards the Tipperary town, the players wondered which hotel they’d be staying in. But on the journey went, past hotels and B&Bs, until it pulled up at the town’s seminary. Opposition fans always did say that Armagh would need some divine intervention if they were ever to win an All-Ireland.
More used to chocolates on the pillows on these weekends away, the players were far from pleased. The mood worsened when they were told they were heading to Thurles Racecourse to complete five laps.
The grass was long and wet, and the 30-odd men panting as they did laps of the course, with McAlinden barking out orders, would have made for an unusual sight for any equine enthusiast who happened to be in the vicinity.
Back at the seminary later, word filtered through that Hayes Hotel, where the GAA was formed in a billiards room in 1884, was within striking distance. Some of the younger players planned a visit that night, not for a history tour but for the disco that was taking place.
Management got wind of this and McAlinden stood up after dinner to tell the squad that if anyone attended, the whole squad would be heading to Thurles on Sunday morning, this time for seven laps of the racecourse.
Team captain Jarlath Burns pleaded with his troops, ‘Not tonight, lads. Please, just this one night.’
A few hours later, Burns got a knock at his door and was summoned to meet the management. On his way he clapped eyes on one sheepish-looking player who had been caught trying to escape through a window.
Others had avoided detection and were dancing away in Hayes Hotel. The perfect crime it was not, however – as the four laughed over pints, four eyes were on them: those of Brian McAlinden and Brian Canavan.
At breakfast the next morning, management told the players to stand up and admit their crime. To the surprise of the two Brians, five rather than four players confessed. With one more body than expected, McAlinden brought them back to the racecourse, while the rest of the panel got a few hours of downtime.
‘I had a bottle of water which I was drinking out of,’ says McAlinden. ‘One of them asked me for a drink, and what was left in the bottle I poured out into the grass and said, “There’s none left.” Another one of the boys said, “Don’t ask him; I’d die with thirst before I’d take it off him.”
‘That was the relationship we had, but it bore its fruits when we got the victories in Clones.’
