Irish Daily Star - Inside Sport
DAY THE DUBS CHOPPED DOWN OAK MEN
DERRY were at the Citywest hotel in a meeting room, trying to piece their season back together again — or at least make some sense of the carnage that had unfolded a fortnight earlier. Gerard O’Kane won’t forget that video analysis session in a hurry.
“Sobering”is how he appraises the experience of playing in the 2014 League final encounter with Dublin. As for the video session, that was worse again: “Cringeworthy, embarrassing,” he says. Derry had beaten Mayo in the League semi-final at Croke Park a fortnight earlier despite playing with 14 men for 45 minutes and gone into the decider on a high.
They started out with a fourth minute Cailean O’Boyle goal.
Anything seemed possible in that moment, but it was fleeting as Dublin blew them away, hitting nine unanswered points and creating goal chances galore to run out 3-19 to 1-10 winners.
The devastating truth was that the game looked up for Derry as early as the 15th minute. “Video analysis is generally stopped, dissected, watched, paused again,” says former Derry captain O’Kane. “That was watching from behind the sofa stuff. When you are in a room with 30 other players, there is no hiding place.
Touch
“Everybody was getting a bit of a touch that day. We had to say, ‘That’s where we finished our league at. What happened there? Why did we not push out.’
“It was paused that often they had to cut it short. It was Brian McIver, Paul McIver, Paddy Tally. “It could have been going on for hours if they ran through the entire game.” One thing stood out to O’Kane about Dublin that afternoon: “Their aggression,” he says. “Before the ball was thrown in James McCarthy had Enda Lynn in a headlock on the ground and I mean Enda wasn’t getting out. “The two of them were on the floor. I don’t know if Enda Lynn walked up into him and shouldered him. “It was like the things you used to see with the Ireland players in the Aussie Rules. I remember thinking, ‘That’s a bit much.’”
Other snippets from “a chastening afternoon” remain in his head.
“We were standing out in the concourse at Croke Park,” says O’Kane.
“Chrissy McKaigue was pulled in for a drug test, so we had to wait an hour or something.
“Needless to say they couldn’t even find a trace of a packet of crisps, never mind drugs, in Chrissy’s system.
“Some of the Dublin players were out there. They were hanging about. We were, ‘Come on, we’ll get a pint, maybe go over the road.’
“Jim Gavin called them back in. It was a case of the League is done and dusted. It’s all over. None of that messing about.
“I mind that night Michael Darragh Macauley ran 10kms as part of a charity run after marking Fergal Doherty in a League final at four o’clock. “That just shows you where they were at compared to where we were at.” That League final held all sorts of portents of what was to come and had ramifications for both sides.
Dublin didn’t heed their warning — the amount of goal chances Derry created that afternoon, as they left their full-back line two on two with little or no cover.
Ultimately, Donegal would ambush them in the All-Ireland semi-final, firing three goals past Stephen Cluxton.
Cian O’Sullivan didn’t leave his own half for about two years after that.
The curtain-raiser that day in 2014 was the Division 2 final between Donegal and Monaghan.
Donegal, who would face Derry in the Ulster Championship four weeks’ later, had just jetted into Dublin the evening before, off a warm weather training camp.
“Monaghan beat Donegal and I remember thinking we are in a good place compared to them. It lulled us into a false sense of security.
“They ended up beating us and going to the All-Ireland final.”
Dublin had beef with Derry going into that ’14 Division 1 final.
Brian McIver’s side had inflicted what would be the heaviest defeat of Gavin’s reign on March 16 — just 42 days earlier. Mark Lynch hit 1-8 at Celtic Park against a Dublin side without McCarthy, O’Sullivan, Ciarán Kilkenny, Paul Flynn, Diarmuid Connolly, Kevin McManamon, Jack McCaffrey, Bernard Brogan and Denis Bastick. A couple of months ago, O’Kane was doing a skit on the Glen/Kilmacud saga for TV show Ireland AM, along with Paddy Andrews.
Andrews started both games against Derry in ’14.
“Paddy just happened to say it in passing,” says O’Kane “He said, ‘Jesus Jim wasn’t happy that day. God he wasn’t happy. Sure, look what happened in the League final.’ O’Kane continues: “I was chatting to Dublin players after that game (Celtic Park). “That had meant business. They had given up their Paddy’s weekend. They stayed up in Letterkenny and went across that morning.
“It was a semi-strong team. I marked Alan Brogan and Paddy Andrews. Maybe we were peaking a bit early but we fully deserved that six-point victory.
Roared
“Six weeks later there was a 21-point turnaround. Maybe it was, ‘We’ll show these boys. They shouted and roared up in Derry six weeks ago.’ “I think they went out with the bit between their teeth because of what happened in Celtic Park. “The aggression, the pace and power of them once they opened up a bit of space.
“Cluxton put down a ball. Paul Flynn ran from the Cusack Stand to the tunnel under the Hogan.
“I was with him every step of
Brutal 2014 NFL hammering sent Derry into a spiral
the way and the last five yards the gap opened up and I just couldn’t get near him.
“You think you are in good shape and you think you are fast, but it was a different level to what we had ever seen.
“I remember boys looking around at each other in the changing room afterwards, thinking, ‘That was a bit of a chastening experience.’”
A fortnight earlier Derry had turned over Mayo at Croke Park in the semi-final curtain-raiser.
As the Derry bus nosed out onto Clonliffe Road just after halftime of the main event, everyone on board believed they’d be playing Cork in the decider.
“We were trying to get up the road,” says O’Kane. “The bus went under some tunnel and the radio kept cutting out and it didn’t work then.
“By the time we got the radio on again we were at the Applegreen and Dublin had won by seven. They were eight down at half-time — a 15 point swing.
“Boys were like, ‘Nah, nah, that can’t be right.’
Seats
“We had watched the first half and got up and left our seats and said, ‘Right, we’ll see Cork in two weeks’ time.
“It wasn’t as if we went into a final with Dublin with a Croke Park fear. We won there against Mayo. We were moving well.
“We were, ‘This team is made for Croke Park. It’s built for it,’ but you only think that until you see the standard you need to get to to win an All-Ireland. “But it was more the Donegal game that knocked the stuffing out of us, big time.”
After the Donegal defeat, Derry were knocked out of the Championship by Longford at Celtic Park.
“We were getting to Division 1 finals and that year we’d beat Dublin, Kerry, Kildare, Cork, Westmeath and drew with Tyrone,” says O’Kane.
That ‘14 League final was also the catalyst, 11 months later, for new GAA president Jarlath Burns’ famous ‘Death of Football’ tweet.
The date was Saturday, March 28, 2015, when Derry were relegated to Division 2 with a game to spare, after parking the bus at Croke Park against Dublin.
They were beaten 0-8 to 0-4. “I didn’t travel that night,”says O’Kane.
“I was lying at home watching on TV but I knew what Derry were going to do.
“We were told, ‘Look what happened to us last year.’
“And, ‘The only teams to get close to Dublin at Croke Park were the teams that did that to them.’
“Donegal got close to them in ’11 and beat them in ’14.
“It was, ‘We can try it now.’ “Donegal had perfected it over two or three years. We looked at it two or three weeks before and said, ‘Look, we’ll try this — see how it goes.’
Means
“If you won you could say it was a means to an end. Beat 8-4, you may as well get beat 18-4.”
Dublin would ultimately absorb the lessons of 2014. After a carefully orchestrated Gavin ‘mia culpa’ at an September 2014 press conference, Dublin would go on to win six All-Ireland titles in a row, as the two counties went off in polar
opposite directions. Those two 2014 defeats — Dublin and Donegal — began a slide, which saw Derry wind up in Division 4 in 2019, before rising back up through the ranks again to secure their top flight status again for 2024.
O’Kane points out that for two relegations Derry were largely without their Slaughtneil players, who went to All-Ireland club football finals on March 17, and also had long running club hurling commitment at times too.
That was around a third of Derry’s starting line-up at the time.
“It was a downward spiral, but that was a bit overplayed,” says the Glenullin man.
“Maybe the squad depth wasn’t that great that we were depending on them, and that was before Shane McGuigan came along.
“They (Derry) had a couple of managerial changes into the bargain.
“It went from McIver to (Damien) Barton to (Damian) McErlain quite quickly without the conti