THE THIN BLUE LINE
Twomey and Walsh recall the save that never was which denied capital hurlers their major breakthrough 30 years ago against the Cats
IN injury time in the 1991 Leinster hurling final, Kilkenny led by two points as Dublin captain John Twomey stood over a free inside the opposition half, dead straight in front of the goal.
A point was for the taking but, with time almost up, only a goal would do. Twomey didn’t quite lob it in, instead drilling a more flatline trajectory which flew over the thicket of bodies to the front of the penalty area and bounced in front of Kilkenny goalkeeper Michael Walsh.
“It was a terrible dangerous ball,” Walsh recalls. “It just dropped in over everyone and next minute it bounced and, look, whether it was going just inside or just outside the post, I don’t know and I still don’t know but obviously I couldn’t take the chance so I just dived to my right-hand side and I just flicked it around the post.
“For some reason, I still don’t know why and I’m very grateful, the umpire actually waved it wide but it was definitely a save.
“I was actually very relieved it was signalled wide because from the next puckout, the final whistle blew.”
Thirty years on, Twomey has no doubt the ball was goalbound prior to Walsh’s intervention.
“After it took the bounce it was going inside the post, is my recollection of it, and his save was the defining factor of it,” he says.
“If he didn’t save it, it would have gone into the back of the net.
“I often wonder, Kilkenny probably went in believing they could win where we probably went in hoping. Again, there’s a difference between the two of those and that, fairly often, dictates.”
Yet, it wasn’t a case of Dublin slipping through on the handy side of the draw and playing above themselves in putting it up to the province’s foremost traditional power.
They had beaten Wexford the previous year and it was their second successive Leinster final having lost to Offaly in 1990. Offaly were newly-crowned League champions and bidding for a Leinster four-in-a-row entering the 1991 Championship. Dublin took them out in the semi-final, denying them a 12th successive final appearance.
Kilkenny, beaten by 16 points by Offaly the year before, were in a state of flux with a fresh management led by Ollie Walsh and a new-look team. They rode their luck throughout 1991, winning each of their games en route to the All-ireland final by two points when any of Wexford, Dublin or Antrim might have taken them.
Michael Walsh was given his Championship debut at 29 years of age and accusations of nepotism were directed at his father.
“It was definitely the case, there’s doubt about that. He knew that and I knew that as well and you just have to turn a blind eye to it I suppose.
“I think, at the time, 12 of us played in our first All-ireland that year, an awful amount of us played our first Championship year as well because we had come off victorious junior teams which my Dad was over and he just brought a lot of us along with him.
“What happened the year before led to all of this happening. If they hadn’t lost by as much maybe none of that would have happened.”
Kilkenny weren’t good enough for Tipp in that year’s Allireland final but that campaign was the making of them and they won the next two All-irelands.
Dublin, who were inspired by the inimitable Lar Foley to within inches of a first Leinster title in 30 years, drifted and didn’t return to the provincial final for another 18 years.
“I think that could have been Foley’s probably fourth year so that was the time for us to win, for us to continue to build that momentum,” Twomey explains.
“I won’t say we never recovered from it but we never played as well again. We just never got back to that height. If you look at it, we began to tail off.”
But what if Twomey’s free had bounced inside Walsh’s post? It proved to be quite the sliding doors moment for both teams.
“I won’t say we never recovered from it but we never played as well again.
We began to tail off.”