How the Qualifiers boosted the profile of Sligo and ignited multiple summers
It is 20 years since the GAA introduced the ‘back door’ for the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. Sligo were among the beneficiaries of the new system, recording memorable victories still enthusiastically recalled
ROUND ONE: Derry 0-15, Sligo 0-8 (Derry)
ROUND TWO: Wicklow 0-10, Sligo 0-12 (Aughrim); ROUND THREE: Sligo 0-12, Limerick 0-10 (Markievicz Park); ROUND FOUR: Cork 0-21, Sligo 1-11 (Tullamore)
ROUND FOUR: Tyrone 0-21, Sligo 0-14 (Croke Park)
ROUND TWO: Sligo 2-15, Leitrim 0-10 (Markievicz Park)
ROUND THREE: Sligo 1-13, Clare 2-17 (Markievicz Park)
ROUND ONE: Sligo 0-22, Antrim 3-7 (Markievicz Park); ROUND TWO: Meath 0-14, Sligo 1-9 (Navan)
ROUND TWO: Sligo 1-13, Armagh 1-19 (Markievicz Park)
ROUND TWO: Offaly 3-17, Sligo 0-15 (Tullamore)
No Qualifiers because of a truncated season due to Covid-19
In their 29 Qualifiers fixtures, Sligo conceded 25-379 (454 points) which is an average of 15.65 points per game.
WHAT A GLORIOUS DAY: Sligo players celebrate their Qualifiers win over Tyrone in 2002.
bought into the notion.
That was the year of a foot-andmouth outbreak, which temporarily ground the nation to a halt, as Sligo were beaten by Mayo in the Connacht Senior Football Championship semi-final.
That one-point loss for the Peter Ford-managed Sligo was hardly a disgrace – four years prior Sligo, then guided by Mickey Moran, Ford’s predecessor, had been beaten by a similar margin in the Connacht final. We weren’t to know it at the time, but Sligo six years later would swoop for the Nestor Cup – a winning mindset and a desire to achieve made possible by inroads against several big guns in the Qualifiers – to end a Connacht title famine that stretched back to the mid-1970s. Indeed, five of the players who featured in the provincial semi-final against Mayo on June 10, 2001 at Castlebar would be involved in Sligo’s famous Nestor Cup capture of 2007.
Sligo’s debut in the Qualifiers wasn’t against especially glamorous opponents. But Carlow had to be beaten
CROKER DUEL: Tyrone’s Peter Cavanan is tackled by Eastern Harps’ Brendan Phillips during the Qualifiers fixture in July of 2002.
READY TO SUPPORT THE LADS: Sligo fan Callum Rowley-Hopkins was dressed for all types of weather while cheering Sligo in their GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Qualifiers round four game against Kildare at Hyde Park, Roscommon on July 28, 2012.
and that result was the spark that would ignite the county.
Local sports fans don’t need reminding that the day after Sligo’s triumph in Carlow, Sligo town’s Cartron United’s Boys U-16s won the SFAI Barry Cup (a national soccer competition) at Dublin’s AUL Complex.
Sligo’s second Qualifiers game was
against Kildare. This was a step up because the Lilywhites had been Leinster champions the previous year and also in 1998 (when they were All-Ireland finalists).
Although that mighty defeat of Kildare at Croke Park – the day Easkey’s Dessie Sloyan kicked eight points at a venue where he would stand as manager
Adrian Marren (0-57); Mark Breheny (0-53);
Dessie Sloyan (2-29); Stephen Coen (2-19);
Sean Davey (1-20); Niall Murphy (0-19); Gerry McGowan (0-15); David Kelly (2-8); Pat Hughes (1-9), John McPartland (1-9); Eamonn O’Hara (0-10); Liam Gaughan (0-7), Dara McGarty (0-7), Paul Taylor (0-7); Michael McNamara (1-3); Darragh Cummins (1-2), Tony Taylor (0-5);
Gerard O’Kelly-Lynch (1-1), Patrick O’Connor (0-4), Kyle Cawley (1-1); Sean Carrabine (0-3), Cian Breheny (1-0), Charlie Harrison (0-3), Paul Durcan (0-3), Kenneth Sweeney (0-3), Kieran Quinn; Kevin McDonnell, Brian Egan, Aidan Devaney, James Kilcullen, James Hynes, Brian Curran, Dermot McTernan, Karol O’Neill; Patrick Naughton, Padraig Doohan, David Durkin, Ross Donovan, Alan Costello, Colm McGee, Brendan Egan, David Maye, Shane McManus, Cian Breheny, Adrian McIntyre, Cathal Henry, Eoin McHugh, Neil Ewing, Paul Kilcoyne, Barry
Gorman, David Quinn.
TOP SCORER: Adrian Marren,
in 2019 when the Sea Blues appeared in the All-Ireland Club Junior Football Championship decider – was followed by a capitulation against Dublin in round four of the Qualifiers, that 14-point loss to the Dubs couldn’t derail the mood created by the previous round’s result.
IF SLIGO supporters were looking for something to surpass that Kildare game they didn’t have long to wait – a little over 12 months later Sligo claimed another formidable scalp, that of Tyrone, also at Croke Park.
That achievement of 2002 against Tyrone catapulted Sligo into the national consciousness and gave the Connacht finalists an All-Ireland quarter-final