The day O’Gorman floored the Kingdom
O’Gorman’s hat-trick helps McGillycuddy’s men to
AFTER one reads into the way in which the Wicklow Junior team was entered into the 2002 championship and the way that they prepared for it, you would be forgiven for being stunned at the success that they had.
After winning the Leinster title on June 23, they steamrolled through to an All-Ireland final against Kerry that took place on August 5.
However, that timeline provided complications for Donal McGillycuddy Sr’s panel, as the club season’s clashing schedule meant that, remarkably, they only met once, or tried to, anyway.
Instead of a structured, traditional training session, due to low turnout, they ended up playing an internal five-v-five soccer match in Laragh.
This lack of preparation, coupled with the accompanying lack of expectation among external observers, can be pinned as the reason why Donal twice describes their season as a ‘miracle’ when he recounts it all.
‘It was a bit unexpected to a certain degree because I don’t think the people would have had the confidence that we would have had, having played with each other and travelled together and knowing the talent that we had,’ he admitted. ‘The people in the county wouldn’t have had the same confidence that we had.’
That sentiment is echoed by his captain, Robert Doyle, who, by winning the All-Ireland, followed in the footsteps of his grandfather, who was part of the last Wicklow team to win the national junior title, in 1936.
‘There was no great pressure because there was no great expectation,’ he said. ‘When they entered the team, it was nearly at the last minute. The squad was got together at the last minute and there wasn’t much time to think about it. When we turned up for that first game, we didn’t know who would be there. I think the expectation thing, since there was no real expectation, it helped us a lot.’
Robert was not ignorant of the familial link that was prevalent when he took the field on that day in Portlaoise. He was able to shrug it off through their provincial campaign, including their win over Kildare in the final, as well as their All-Ireland semi-final against Lancashire, in Manchester.
However, once it came to the final, the inherent pressure that came with being the grandson of one of Wicklow’s last All-Ireland junior champions did threaten to derail his own personal performance in the first-half against Kerry.
‘I always knew about it, but it wasn’t something that I would play on. I would never overthink it. I think Uncle Bobby brought it up to me a few times, but I think he was mindful not to put pressure on me. He knew not to let me overthink it too much because if I let it play on my mind, I probably would have been a bit more nervous. I probably struggled a bit in the first half but it in the second half, I never thought about it until it was over.
‘When it got to the final, I had a terrible first half. I gave myself a hard time about it. I let my man go off me far too many times and I got a kick in the arse for myself at half-time. Not a kick in the arse exactly, I think it was Kevin O’Brien who came up to me and told me to get tighter on the man. It was like a little switch that went off on me. It did play on my mind a little bit that day. I never really thought about it before that. We just went out and played. It was good to keep that tradition up. It is not too often that you get to do that; to follow in your grandfather’s footsteps.’
Neither the personal pressure that came with Robert’s ancestry, nor the rather slap-dash nature of preparation in the months up until August 5, 2002, could stop the runaway freight-train that was this extraordinarily talented Wicklow team. When it came down to the day itself, the Garden, inspired by hat-trick hero Wayne O’Gorman, edged out an uber-talented Kerry team to lift their first junior national title in almost 70 years.
The team that took the field that day was made up of some of the most iconic names in Wicklow football. Ken Quirke made for a Peter Schmeichel-esque organiser in goal, while Hugh Kenny – described by Robert Doyle as the best defender in Wicklow GAA history – anchored the full-back line alongside Alan Byrne and Robert himself. Further up the field, Diarmuid Doran and Brian O’Keeffe pulled the strings in midfield, while the full-forward line, made up of Wayne O’Gorman, Stephen Byrne, and 1990 All-Star Kevin O’Brien, made for one of the most dangerous trios you are likely to come across.
When you read the XV that took the field in Portlaoise, it is no wonder that they achieved what they did. In Leinster, they started their challenge by defeating Laois before welcoming Dublin to Aughrim on May 29. It was the winning of that game the led to the gears starting to turn within the camp, something that both Robert and Donal McGillycuddy made sure to highlight.
‘The team itself, after we beat the Dubs, that was a turning point. We had beaten Laois, but beating the Dubs, that’s when the tide turned,’ said Donal, while his skipper – who defied doctor’s orders by going to the county grounds to watch the game while battling the flu - testified: ‘Dublin will always have an edge over the so-called ‘weaker sides’, I suppose, because of who they are.
‘They were very well-drilled and they were gung-ho for this, so they were. The football played by the boys that night was superb. Dublin had us under pressure for long periods, but we went up the field and kicked a score.
‘Defensively, we were always good. Not many teams got inside to score too many goals. Kerry did, they scored two, but we were able to shut out teams fairly well. Ken Quirke is a very good organiser. If you stepped off your man, you were going to hear about it.’
It is appropriate for Robert to bring up the defensive resolve and determination that he says played a pivotal role in its success. Over the course of their protracted seven-game championship season, starting from May 15 and ending with Kerry on August 5, they conceded just three goals from five games in Leinster (Dublin being the most devastating with two goals in Wicklow’s 1-12 to 2-8 win), while Kerry were the only side to rattle the Wicklow net as much as Dublin did. It was this discipline provided the platform for Wayne O’Gorman and co. to dismantle opposition rearguards at the other end of the pitch, a sentiment wonderfully encapsulated by a tale told by Doyle.
‘I remember against Longford, I think it was, Hugh (Kenny) was playing a blinder at full-back. He was coming out for the ball and there was a 60-40 in favour of the two players who were coming in on top of him,’ Robert recounted.
‘Hugh got to it first. You could see the two players, Hugh was kind of crouched down low and they went to stop him, in the nicest terms. The two guys ended up going off the field. One of them had to be carried off right away, and the other went off a couple of minutes later. I don’t think he even seen them. There was just no pull back from anything. That went through the whole team.’
One of Robert’s fondest memories from that remarkable 2002 season was the provincial final against Kildare, in Aughrim. Getting to play a Leinster final in the county’s back garden made it all that bit more special. It got even better when, buoyed by a magnificent long-range volleyed goal from Kevin O’Brien which would have no doubt channeled that five-aside friendly contest in Laragh, he was able to lift the trophy.
Even then, the anticipation on the shoulders of the Wicklow players remained low. Not even the win over Lancashire and subsequent qualification for the national decider could raise the bar beyond the point at which pressure would begin to tell. The support was there, of course; fans travelling to the likes of Portlaoise and Kilkenny was a fixture of the Leinster championship run. This was the mighty Kerry, however. This was a team that had won, to that point, 13 All-Ireland Junior titles, compared to Wicklow’s sole triumph in 1936.
‘Kerry had a good team,’ conceded Kerry-native McGillycuddy. ‘They had a very good team. They would have had a couple of former players like Jack Ferriter playing with them and Gooch had a brother playing on the team. Other fellas, then, Stephen O’Sullivan, (Brian) Scanlon. They all played underage for Kerry at different times at minor and under-21.’
The pressure of leading out your county in an All-Ireland final could be understandably overawing prospect for any man, let alone one who was suddenly and keenly aware of the personal history that was beckoning. Robert did not have that sense of responsibility going into the clash with the Kingdom, such were the personalities and talismanic figures that he had alongside him.
‘Any time someone had us under pressure, we were able to find another gear. We had great characters so we could find something in us. Wayne (O’Gorman), in the final, for a guy to score three goals in an All-Ireland final, you couldn’t write it. Kevin (O’Brien) is Kevin. Stephen Byrne, you could ask anybody who played against Shillelagh, If you had Stephen around, he is going to score goals, he is going to create opportunities for other people. James Doyle, very good player for Kiltegan over the years. Andy Jameson. All of these guys were leaders, so any time we went behind or were under pressure, everybody just shrugged it off.
‘I was captain, but I wasn’t. We had leaders in every line of the field. Ciarán Foley at centre-back was immense. There was nobody, when you look through the team, there was nobody shouting at lads or trying to gear lads up because you didn’t need to. Nobody ever dropped their heads. It made it so easy for me because you didn’t really need a speech, you didn’t really need to get lads going. Those lads didn’t need that. If you were going around shouting at them, they’d be looking at you,