ROYALS NEXT IN LINE TO KERRY’S THRONE
Meath showed they were on upward curve
IT WAS a shake of the hands that would signify the beginning of a changing of the guard. The final whistle had just blown in the All-Ireland semi-final and Mickey McQuillan’s face literally wore the mask of defeat.
He was bloodied in more ways than one when he became the unintended piece of meat — that painful honour should have fallen to Kerry’s Ger Power — in the most fearsome of Meath sandwiches, with Joe Cassells on one side, Mick Lyons on the other.
Power was in the process of chasing down Denis ‘Ogie’ Moran’s perceptive lob in the 17th minute when McQuillan came out to meet him and, with Lyons and Cassells also with one eye on the ball and the other on their Kerry quarry also closing in for the kill, they all crashed into each other.
Power, not one to look a gift horse in the eye, bagged the most fortunate goal of his career and Kerry were on their way to their 10th All-Ireland final in 12 years, and an eighth title.
As it turned out this was the penultimate Croke Park chapter in the story of the greatest team that ever lived and it read like that too.
All summer, the signs were there that time had crept inside the minds and bodies of Mick O’Dwyer’s team.
They had pretty much stank Killarney out in winning the Munster final but found a way.
It would be the narrative of their season which ran right through to the final where they were outplayed by Tyrone in the opening half, got the breaks they needed and then, when it was required most, found enough of themselves to get out of trouble.
It was like that here too. Meath dominated the first half and trailed, primarily because of that freak goal and the concession of four points inside three and a half minutes before half-time.
Even then they could have turned the screw on Kerry had Brian Stafford and Colm O’Rourke not spurned gilt-edged goal chances early in the second half, but the more they missed, the more inevitable this thing would roll. And so it did. And the more Meath got things right, the more Kerry found a way to defy them.
Mick Lyons won his personal duel with Eoin Liston and yet somehow the latter ending up bagging three points.
Liam Hayes threw a blanket over Jack O’Shea for 50 minutes and yet at the end it was the great one who took the Kingdom down the home straight, booming over a ridiculous point to ignite a finalquarter charge that could not be doused.
He even supplied the pass that would see substitute Willie Maher crack home a spectacular goal that manipulated the final scoreline cruelly to Meath eyes.
In the end O’Dwyer, with one eye on the pub quiz circuit, even benched Liston and replaced him with a soon-to-be legend of another code, Mick Galwey.
When it was all over, and the press pack came hunting for postmatch quotes in the Kerry dressing room, scribes had their ears reddened by some of O’Dwyer’s elder statesmen, who had been written off after the Munster final.
But if that slight against them was premature, it was only by a tad. However, the Kerry dressing room also bore witness to a moment of prophesy when Sean Boylan popped in to offer his best wishes. ‘I hope the lesson we learned today will serve us well,’ said Boylan.
And so it did. The penny would drop, and no realisation was bigger than the one that Martin O’Connell might just be a better wing-back than full-forward and that his centre-forward Stafford, scoreless on the day, might just have a sweet foot for kicking dead balls.
A year later football’s greatest team slipped into the darkness while Meath’s greatest one emerged into the light.
KERRY: C Nelligan; P Ó Sé, S Walsh, M Spillane; T Doyle, T Spillane, G Lynch; J O’Shea, A O’Donovan (T O’Dowd); J Kennedy (W Maher), D Moran, P Spillane; M Sheehy, E Liston (M Galwey), G Power.
Scorers: W Maher 1-1, M Sheehy 0-4 (2f), E Liston 0-3, G Power 1-0, P Spillane 0-2, T Doyle, J O’Shea, D Moran 0-1 each.
MEATH: M McQuillan; J Cassells, M Lyons, P Lyons; C Coyle, L Harnan, T Ferguson; L Hayes, G McEntee; F Murtagh, B Stafford, D Beggy (PJ Gillick); C O’Rourke, M O’Connell, B Flynn. Scorers: B Flynn 0-5 (4f), C O’Rourke 0-2, L Hayes 0-2f, T Ferguson 0-1f, F Murtagh, M O’Connell 0-1 each. Referee: M Greenan (Cavan)