The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Ryle Dwyer looks back at Dub rivalry
IN THE HISTORY OF THE GAA, AND INDEED OF IRISH SPORT, THERE IS NO RIVALRY THAT MATCHES THAT OF KERRY AND DUBLIN. RYLE DWYER LOOKS BACK AT SOME SEMINAL MOMENTS IN THAT LONG BATTLE
KERRY’S LOSS IN ‘34 WENT DOWN IN TRALEE FOLKLORE AS ‘HAM SUNDAY’ AFTER LOCAL FANS LOST THEIR APPETITE FOR PUBS’ STOCKPILED SANDWICHES
ANOTHER scene of the keenest rivalry in Irish sport played out between Kerry and Dublin on Saturday before a sell-out crowd at Austin Stack Park. Yet that sell-out crowd was comparatively small compared with the record crowd in the Park for the game between the two teams in 1934.
The real foundation for the Dublin-Kerry football rivalry goes back to the 1920s and the bitterness of the Civil War.
The worst three atrocities of that conflict were committed in Kerry in March, 1923, by members of the Dublin Brigade who slaughtered eight Kerry Republican prisoners at Ballyseedy, and four others at Countess Bridge, near Killarney, on the same day.
Each time a prisoner escaped to tell the story. So, the following week, when the Dublin Brigade took out five prisoners in Cahersiveen, they shot them in the legs to ensure nobody would escape, before blowing them up with a mine.
Dublin won the first three all-Ireland senior football championships following the Civil War: the unfinished championships of 1921 and 1922, before beating Kerry in the 1923 All-Ireland final, which was actually played in 1924.
Kerry turned the tables by denying Dublin the four-in-a-row in the All-Ireland final of 1924.
Gaelic football had become the healing force in Kerry. Players who had fought on both sides in the Civil War came together on the Kerry team, and the whole county then united behind them. Kerry won again in 1926 and went on to win four in a row from 1929 to 1932.
On September 9, 1934, when Dublin and Kerry met in the All-Ireland semi-final, Kerry was strongly fancied because the game was being played in Tralee. The attendance of 21,438 people at the Austin Stack Park that day was the record for any Kerry venue at the time. It is still the record for Tralee.
Dublin ran away with the game, winningby 3-8to0-6.Thecrowd at the game “had the honour in joining in the swansong of Kerry’s greatest football combination as they passed out before a younger and better team”, The Kerryman reported.
That day went gone down in local folklore as “Ham Sunday” because shops in Tralee had stocked up with ham sandwiches for the occasion.
The 1,000 Dublin supporters returned home on the train immediately after the game, while the Kerry fans lost their appetite, leaving people in Tralee eating ham sandwiches for days afterwards.
It marked the end of the inter-county playing days of the Kerry stalwart Joe Barrett. He was roasted by the Dublin full-forward, Joe Colleran, who scored 2-2 of his team’s total.
Joe, a native of Sligo, was a veterinary student in Dublin at the time. He later married a Kerry woman, Maureen Ashe, and they settled just outside Tralee.
Curiously Joe Colleran did not play in the final. The story at time was that he was deemed ineligible because he had played for Sligo earlier in the year. But Joe’s son, Peter, tells a very different story.
His father was togged out and ready to play when the Dublin officials were presented with a photograph of a College of Surgeons team in which Joe Colleran played rugby in Twickenham earlier in the year.
This was during the ban of foreign games, so he was dropped rather to not risk an objection. Galway went ontowinthetitle.
Kerry did not meet Dublin again in the championship until the semi-final of 1941 in Croke Park, which ended in a low-scoring draw. The replay was staged in Tralee before just 15,189 people – but that attendance compared very well with the 15,806 people at the drawn game in Dublin.
Those games were played during the strict rationing of the war years, when there were no special trains, buses, or even private cars permitted for football games. Most people had to walk or cycle to matches. Kerry won the replay by 2-9 to 0-3.
Kerry went on to win the next five championship encounters between the two teams before losing in the final of 1976. Dublin defeated Kerry again the following year and was going for a three- in-a-row again in 1978.
The Dublin team that year was widely hailed as “the team of the century”. Dublin had raced into a 0-6 to 0-1 lead after 20 minutes, but an opportunist goal by Mikey Sheehy became their worst nightmare.
Eoin “Bomber” Liston scored a hat trick of goals in the second half, and Kerry romped home 5-11 to 0-9.
To reinforce the message, Kerry buried Dublin in the 1979 final and went on to make it four in a row in 1981. Few would dispute that Kerry team earned the accolade of “team of the century”.
But if Dublin go on to claim the five-in-a-row this year, they will have a legitimate claim to be best team of all time. Saturday’s encounter offered up an intriguing preview of what may lie ahead in the coming months.