A magical journey for Wicklow GAA
The year the Garden County bloomed
THE capacity crowd in Aughrim had fallen silent as Tony Hannon approached the ball deep into injury-time of Wicklow’s All-Ireland qualifier against Down on July 18, 2009. As the last kick of the game, the responsibility was on the shoulders of the Hollywood man to split the posts with the 45 and send Wicklow on their way to the final round of qualifiers. It was the latest chapter in a storied, romantic campaign for Wicklow, managed by the iconic Kerryman, Mick O’Dwyer.
In truth, the lead up to their 2009 national championship run was soso on paper, in terms of results. In Division 4, they had finished fifth, having recorded three wins, two draws, and three defeats from eight games. As for Leinster, they beat Longford in the first-round before losing to Westmeath, who had won the provincial title in 2004, in the quarter-finals.
It was in the All-Ireland series that ‘Micklow’ exploded into life and captured the hearts and minds of the nation. After beating Fermanagh and Cavan in the first two rounds, they met Down, who had been crowned champions of Division 3 of the national football league a couple of months earlier, in Aughrim.
After a back-and-forth, tense encounter, it was on Hannon to shrug off his fatiguing muscles to send one last-ditch strike up and over the bar, sealing the monumental upset.
‘I was probably thinking, ‘please don’t top it,’’ Hannon jokes. ‘I think I had picked up possession in the half-back line and laid it off to Jacko, who tore down the righthand side of the pitch and sent it across and, next thing you know, itisoverthelinefora45.
‘I kind of trudged up the field, thinking about if I had the legs to get it anywhere near the goals. I knew it was a big opportunity. If it goes to extra-time, you never know what was going to happen, but it was the last kick of the match and a chance to seal the deal and get us over the line. I kind of knew it was boom or bust, at that stage.’
While Wicklow would go on to come up short to Kildare in the final round of the All-Ireland qualifiers, it would be more than fair to consider the 2009 championship run as being one of the fondest memories of the county’s senior footballers. It was an indication that, while they remained in the bottom tier of the national league, when it came to the summer, Wicklow were there to play.
There had been signs of Wicklow’s burgeoning capabilities under Micko a year earlier when, against all odds, they dramatically bested Kildare in the first-round of the Leinster championship, an occasion that is still fondly remembered 12 years on. Suddenly, two years on from his first season in charge in 2007, Mick had instilled a belief and arrogance around the panel that he had put together.
That panel was suited with some of the finest talents to have played for Wicklow since the turn of the millennium, all captained by Rathnew’s Leighton Glynn, who had already represented Ireland in the International Rules Series before 2009, and who would go on to be nominated for an All-Star at the end of that season, alongside teammate Ciarán Hyland.
‘I was always disappointed that we never got to a Leinster semi-final, we were good enough, and then not to get to an All-Ireland quarter-final. If we had got that, it would have nearly been a dream come true, to play in Croke Park against a Tyrone. You kind of look back on it as a missed opportunity,’ Leighton confesses, demonstrating the ambition that was pulsing through the team at the time.
‘People would probably say that we were punching above our weight, but we were so close. We had beaten Kildare in 2008, so they were never going to take us lightly in the final round in 2009, but we still had the confidence to try and win that game. Maybe playing four or five games in a row kind of caught up on us. Maybe we didn’t have the panel large enough to get over the line, but certainly, if I was to pick one to rerun, it would be that game against Kildare. it would have brought us into an All-Ireland quarter-final and you never know what would have happened from there.’
This essence of how highly the players thought of themselves is echoed by Hannon, who holds the view that the team itself was as excellently talented as it was, and Mick had the experience and knowhow to bring it all together like the maestro conductor that he was.
‘I think it was probably Micko bringing everything together. Don’t get me wrong, we had really, really good players. When you go through the team there; Leighton Glynn, Seanie Furlong, Padge McWalter, James Stafford, Damien Power, Dara Ó Hannaidh, Paddy Dalton, Paul Earls, Jacko Dalton, Thomas Walsh, Mervyn Travers in goal, players of a really high quality and all of a sudden, Micko had come in.
‘Other years, for loads of different reasons, other players would have had the other priorities to other sports and other teams. Micko gave everyone the motivation to come in and be part of the team. Micko came along and it was the place to be. Everyone wanted to play, and then you have that little bit of success and other people look at it and say, ‘jeez, I would love to get involved with that.’’
In more recent years, the emphasis of county managers and coaches has been to get Wicklow out of their Division 4 quagmire. Current boss Davy Burke has made it clear that his short-term goal is to build a team that can gain promotion to Division 3 and stay there. That was not the case in 2009. According to both Glynn and Hannon, O’Dwyer – while not necessarily neglecting the national league effort – was not shy in prioritising the championship.
The training during the winter months was still rigorous in the lead up to the traditional pre-season O’Byrne Cup preparation, before turning hellacious in the few weeks between the national league and the championship. That pathology can be seen throughout the county’s performances in the championship and league, respectively.
Where the league is concerned, Wicklow were condemned to Division 4 after the 2007 season with three wins and four losses, while they finished fifth in said tier in 2008 and 2009. They placed fourth in 2010 before putting in their best showing in O’Dwyer’s final year, in 2011; they ended third, one-point shy of gaining promotion, having ended with a 4-3-1 record.
The approach paid off as Wicklow became more of a presence in the championship during Micko’s tenure. In 2007, they won the Tommy Murphy Cup with a 3-13 to 1-17 win over Antrim in the final in Croke Park. The next year, they made it to the final again, but lost out to Antrim. The Tommy Murphy was then scrapped, setting the stage for Wicklow to go on their extraordinary 2009 run. Subsequently, in 2010, they were again knocked out by Westmeath in the provincial quarter-finals, while they were beaten by Cavan in the first round of the qualifiers.
In 2011, they were beaten by Kildare in the opening round of