A day of days as an gorta mór is sated

OF course it sounds arrogant. Try telling Mayo about a football famine. Or Armagh and Tyrone who only won their first All-Ireland football title this century. Or the band of counties that have never even played in an All-Ireland football final, never mind won one. That’s starvation on a grand scale.

But everything is relative. When you’ve won 30 All-Ireland titles in 81 years you’ve earned the right to believe the 31st will be along shortly. Like in two or three years.

In 1986 Kerry had won the county’s third All-Ireland in a row; an eighth title in twelve years. The bachelor boys of 1975 were ageing men by ’86 but few, if any, foresaw what lay ahead.

As Kerry’s golden boys were losing much of their lustre by the end of the 1980s, Cork were a coming force. Every dog has its day and Cork, plenty would argue, deserved a few of them.

A little like David Moyes following Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, Mickey Ned O’Sullivan was in an invidious place when he took over as Kerry manager from Mick O’Dwyer. ‘Ogie’ Moran, another of Dwyer’s great proteges, struggled in the hot-seat too.

Great footballers served Kerry well in those tough days that straddled the late 80s and early 90s, but try as they might, the collective effort couldn’t pull Kerry out of the doldrums.

Losing to Clare in the ’92 Munster final was the nadir, but while things could only go up from there it took a while. It was ’95 before Kerry contested their next Munster Final; another year before they won it.

By then Páidí Ó Sé had taken over as manager, the All-Ireland U-21 winning teams of 1995 and ’96 had infused the team with a shot of youth, enthusiasm and raw talent, and there was a cautious, but justified, sense that the tide was rising. And turning.

With some justification, all concerned partied a little too hard after the ’96 Munster Final to the detriment of the All-Ireland semi-final against Mayo.

Twelve months later, a successful defence of the provincial title was followed by much more ruthless focus. Cavan fell at the penultimate stage. Mayo stood between the Kingdom and the Promised Land.

If Mayo’s then 46-year wait for their fourth All-Ireland title seemed interminably long up there and around the rest of the country, few might have appreciated an gorta mór that was threatening to devour Kerry.

Where Kerry had underestimated Mayo in that ’96 semi-final, Mayo can never have imagined the desire Kerry had to redress that defeat a year later. Kerry were starving. And ravenous. The Connacht champions probably didn’t underestimate the talent and threat of Maurice Fitzgerald: they were just powerless to do anything about it.

The Cahersiveen man would be the first to blanche at the notion that it was his final, but Fitzgerald’s nine points and all round performance was paramount to Kerry’s success that September Sunday 20 years ago.

But in a final that won’t be remembered as a classic it truly was an 18-man effort by Kerry. And if ever a crowd provided an sixteenth man from the stands, the Kerry followers did that day.

In the long and storied annals of Kerry football, September 28, 1997 was, without doubt, a day of days.

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