KILLINAN END - Offaly’s golden era

The death of Kevin Kilmurray very recently was a throwback to an era for Offaly which was truly golden. At the time it likely looked like it might last forever in the sense of Offaly becoming a perpetual football force. While it remains a county which occasionally catches the eye in football it does seem to have succumbed to the laws of sporting gravity.

Kevin Kilmurray as a young man growing up in Daingean hardly entertained too many serious notions of winning All-Irelands with his native county. Moments in the sun were scarce and largely unrewarded. The county had participated in one of the most extraordinary events in Irish sporting history in 1961 when over 90,000 people saw them play Down in the All-Ireland final. To put a context on that size of crowd - when Offaly won the All-Ireland football title a decade later, the population of the county stood at 51,289. It remains the county with the smallest population to have won an All-Ireland Senior title.

The county’s 1964 Minor final win over Cork was a remarkable straw in the wind and even in 1968 an appearance in the Under-21 final – lost to Derry – spoke well of future potential. A future of competitiveness and talent maybe but no great sign of the time of plenty that lay across the threshold. The year of 1968 is considered one of social revolution across the world and certainly Leinster football played its part.

That year’s provincial final was a first and only meeting at that stage of Longford and Laois. Even more extraordinarily it was won by Longford and better still with a population of just under 29k. When you consider that the population of Longford just before the Famine was 115k you realise the devastation of that tragic event, and the legacy it still leaves to this day in the context of population.

Offaly had lost to Laois in the Leinster semi-final without creating any great waves, yet just a year later they came within a kick of a ball of an All-Ireland title when Kevin Kilmurray - just a young stripling at that stage - saw some service. It was a team which featured some legacy players from the early ‘60s such as Greg Hughes. Small pick or not six players who started that final as well as two of the three subs did not feature two years when the 1971 final was won in the rain against Galway. The other sub who came on in 1969 was Kevin Kilmurray.

His involvement with Offaly in 1969 puts him in fairly exalted company since he won provincial championship in three different decades. He also won provincial titles over 60, 70 and 80 minutes. It was indeed a time of change in many aspects. Take a look at the Offaly 1961 team which narrowly failed against Down and you could be looking at the 1951 or 1941 teams. By 1972, Kevin Kilmurray looked out from the old colour Sláinte calendar like a poster boy for the ‘70s. Daingean’s answer to John Lennon.

That old photograph hints at another quirk of Kevin Kilmurray’s era – Offaly played in six All-Ireland final matches between 1969 and 1982 (including the ‘72 replay) and wore their traditional tri-colour jersey in just one of them. It was a challenging time for Kerry’s kit suppliers too – they walked behind the Artane Band on All-Ireland day in alternative colours four times between 1969 and 1972.

If Kilmurray was a thoroughly modern presence in the early ‘70s, he did have some connection with the old world back in 1969. Offaly beat Cavan in a semi-final replay while Kerry beat Mayo in the other. The 1970s proved a barren landscape for those two great counties of Cavan and Mayo. The green above the red would not wear Connacht medals again until 1981 despite Minor and Under-21 All-Ireland titles in 1971 and ’74 respectively. Cavan would wait until 1997 to raise the Anglo-Celt cup once more.

By early 1971, Kerry had built quite a reputation having defended their All-Ireland title successfully in 1970 after Meath had beaten Offaly in a pulsating high-scoring Leinster Final. The All-Ireland was not one for the faint of heart either and Kerry’s stock was high having come through that. Cork stopped Kerry’s bid for that kind of gilded place three-in-a-row affords on history’s pages in a little hint of the brief brilliance that was about to emerge on Leeside a couple of years later. Cork hadn’t won a title since 1945 but Offaly had never won one and that sheer resolve told in their semi-final, before Murt Connor famous net-shaking goal helped the Faithful County to a maiden Senior All-Ireland that September.

When Kerry re-emerged in 1972 and made the final against Offaly, there was an element of High Noon about the whole business. Not having played Kerry the previous year there inevitably would be some snobbish scoffing at Offaly’s All-Ireland win. The stakes were high. The drawn game was a tense affair and Offaly took a draw with both hands in the end. The replay was, arguably, Offaly’s finest hour if the terms of reference for such an accolade includes a controlled and convincing win over a formidable and proven opponent. Kevin Kilmurray’s contribution was recognised by a place at centre-forward on the All-Star football team. Another colour poster looking down to make you think he would never grow old.