KILLINAN END - Defining Games

Provincial football championships are under threat like never before. There was perhaps a certain inevitability about this once the knockout element was removed over 20 years ago. Provinces rely on competitiveness even if that comes only in the final. Once that goes some would argue that these championships serve little purpose. Time was, however, when many era-defining games were played in provincial finals.

Meath’s win over Dublin on a wet day in 1986 was a springboard for the Royal county’s pre-eminence over the following decade and a half. Half a century ago in Munster we saw what appeared to be a major passing of the torch in the province. The future was Simply Red. That this did not happen makes the 1973 Munster football final all the more fascinating.

In 1973 Kerry had won four of the five previous Munster finals as well as two All-Irelands. Conversely Cork had to look back some 28 years for their previous All-Ireland football win. The comparative history of success in broader terms contrasted starkly. Cork were under-achievers – Kerry the ultimate aristocrats. Not on this day though. Cork hit five goals in the last major intercounty championship game at the old Cork Athletic grounds. Old certainties were blown apart.

Like their 1945 counterparts Cork had won the provincial final two years earlier, just as emphatically, but without any follow-up. By July 1973 not only could Cork celebrate but could also consider that this was a Kerry team with veterans like Paud O'Donoghue, Tom Prendergast, and Mick O’Dwyer, all nearing the end. In contrast Cork started only eight of the 1971 team. They also had Under-21 All-Ireland titles of 1970 & ‘71 and three-in-a-row Minor All-Ireland titles 1969-71, to suggest plenty more bubbling under.

What happened as leaves were falling served only to increase confidence and confirm expectations. Tyrone were routed in the All-Ireland semi-final with another five goals in a fifteen-point win. It was the Ulster champions’ first semi-final since 1956. By coincidence the final was also to be a repeat of the ‘56 decider after Galway had dethroned Offaly, champions of the two previous years. Back in the day Cork had been tormented by Frank Stockwell who scored 2-5 from play – 17 years on the tormentors came from the South.

Morgan Hughes opened the scoring with a Galway point, but this was the only time in the match the Connacht champions led. Cork’s seven-point half-time lead was maintained to the end with Jimmy Barry Murphy's late goal exemplifying the slickness and confidence of a dominant Cork team.

In a zero-sum business, if Cork’s underage cup was overflowing, inevitably Kerry’s cupboard must be bare. Judged in those terms the Kingdom’s picture was indeed bleak. Their last Minor All-Ireland win was all the way back in 1963, so long ago at that stage that the team had featured Séamus MacGearailt whose Senior career was on life-support by 1973.

However, a week before Cork’s great Senior win there was an under-stated straw in the wind when Kerry beat Mayo in the Under-21 final. Nine of this team would line out at Senior level when Kerry took the Sam Maguire cup just two years later. Nobody would have dreamt that the bulk of this team could live with the might of Cork not to mind forming the basis of an All-Ireland winning team. The moral of the story might be that Kerry has never needed vast amounts of underage success to develop Senior potential. Their great success of the 2000s came despite only one All-Ireland Minor win in the 1990s.

The 1974 Munster final, Mick O'Connell's last match for Kerry in an ill-fated comeback, was played in Killarney. There was little to quell the sense of foreboding that must have enveloped Kerry football around that time. Even on their home soil the Kingdom failed to put a dent in Cork. Yet, all that Leeside promise crumbled unexpectedly on an August afternoon when they were run ragged by a relatively unheralded Dublin team. Suddenly Cork were doing the chasing and a team bursting with talent was shown to be mortal.

For all Mick O’Dwyer’s subsequent plámás about Cork being the ‘second best team in Ireland’ never again would this team regain the aura of old. In 1974 the Kerryman newspaper had lamented the probability that it was Kerry’s turn to live in Cork’s shadow for the foreseeable future. The opposite would be true.

The next time Cork won Munster only Kevin Kehilly of the 1974 squad was still involved. Declan Barron, maybe the finest player of that Cork generation, leans towards the view that it was maybe too easy to keep Cork’s footballers happy. Maybe the hunger is never as deep as with Kerry, nor the outcome quite as important. Whatever the reality, never has Cork football been able to look to the future with quite the same fascination it could 50 years ago.