Recor

IT was the game all Dundalk wanted to see.

The town’s biggest and best known clubs, going head to head for the biggest prize in Louth football, the senior championship.

The year was 1992, the era, an exciting one for football in the county, with hopes high for a renaissance for the Louth senior team.

The teams were Clan-na-Gael, seeking the 5th SFC title, and Gaels, looking for the first title since 1952 and their fourth in total.

Yet remarkably the teams, who had a rich history in the game in Dundalk, had never before met in a senior final.

Consequently interest in the game, staged in St. Brigid’s Park in September of 1992 was exceptional.

In the weeks preceding the final there was a great buzz round town, and much talk about the keen rivalry between the clubs, and individual players.

Clans, with seven county players in their squad, and a number of players for whom it would be their sixth final in seven years, were strong favourites, especially since Gaels lost their influential defender, Robbie McCrave with a ligament injury weeks before the final.

Gaels biggest chance, observers predicted, was that they had nothing to lose, and if they played with that attitude they could cause an unset, for the Clans found that their character was being questioned by some having lost their previous two finals.

Gaels too, had impressed on route to the final, beating the holders, Stabannon Parnells who has shocked Clans in the 1991 final, and the League holders, St. Mary’s.

It was no surprise therefore that the most anticipated club game in Dundalk for very many years attracted a record crowd of over 6,000 to the Newry Road venue.

Unfortunately however the match itself did not live up to the billing, for it was a disappointing game with Clans, who had the bulk of possession, scoring only three points from play over the duration of the game.

Indeed final day jitters which had deprived Clans of two, possibly three SFC titles in recent years, nearly cost them another title for in the final 15 minutes, the most exciting period in the game, Gaels finally started to believe that it could be their day, and produced their best football to go ahead for the first time in the game.

They had equalised in the 43rd minute, following the best move of the game when Martin Harvey elected to take a point, shunning a great opportunity for a goal.

The score lifted the Gaels supporters and they went ahead for the first time in the final in the 45th minute when Jarlath McCabe fired over a great point.

That score shook Clans out