KILLINAN END - Unlikely GAA stories
There have been many strange and unlikely stories in the GAA down the decades.
Even the relatively recent feat of Teddy McCarthy winning two All-Ireland medals in the same year now seems quaint and of its time. Many are understandable only in their own context. For example, the disjointed years of the post-1916 revolution laid waste to the regular calendar and several finals were played in a different calendar year. This led to the extraordinary matter of Mick Gill winning an All-Ireland with Galway against Limerick in 1924 and just a few months later winning another with Dublin against his native Galway. These were medals for the hurling championships of 1923 and '24 played for and won in the same year. By the time Tipp won the 1925 hurling championship against Galway the game was played on the first Sunday in September of that same year. Normality and stability had been achieved. Never since has an All-Ireland Senior hurling final been played outside the proper calendar year. Football took some time to catch up, however, and in April 1925 Kerry and Dublin squared off for the 1924 title. The contemporaneous significance of the game has slipped under history's radar somewhat, but Kerry's one-point win prevented Dublin becoming only the second county to win four-in-a-row. It was one of only five occasions in history when a team entered a football All-Ireland having won the three previous finals and the only loss for such a team. Maybe it’s not as difficult to make history as we had imagined.
An Easter-time All-Ireland did indeed bode well for the possibility of getting the next football championship back on track as had happened with the hurling. There was no obvious reason why a September final was not attainable in the football championship also. But the best laid plans went up in smoke. Roscommon met Sligo on 17th May in what looked like a routine Connacht quarter-final. This was anything but humdrum. Fast forward to mid-September and these teams were still at it – five replays later, with several draws augmented by a couple of successful objections on the days there appeared to be light at the end of the tunnel.
The other provinces got through their business in reasonable time with only the Ulster Final between Cavan and Antrim ending in a draw. By later August the rest of the country was ready for the All-Ireland series while the Connacht still awaited Mayo’s semi-final opponents to emerge from the Roscommon-Sligo quagmire. For good measure the other semi-final between Galway and Leitrim also needed a replay, not that this was an enormous delay in the context of the Roscommon-Sligo marathon.
The GAA’s solution was one which has had a fair few echoes over the years - not least in our own county – which involved nominating a team to represent Connacht. The same happened some sixteen years later during the ‘Foot and Mouth’ year when Cork and Dublin were nominated to represent Munster and Leinster respectively in the All-Ireland series. Tipperary’s subsequent win over Cork in the Munster Final has often obscured the fact that Kilkenny, who lost the refixed Leinster Final, were also victims of the conditions of the time. Back in 1925, however, it was all rather self-inflicted between draws and objections. A penalty shoot-out or two would have made life much handier for the fixture-makers.
The Green and Red may have been only nominees, but they represented their province with gusto. Leinster champions, Wexford, were beaten in the semi-final to leave Mayo in the county’s third All-Ireland final in a decade and in good fettle for a tilt at a first All-Ireland title. They even survived the inevitable objection from Wexford. Indeed, it appeared that objections were about to land the All-Ireland title at Mayo’s door.
In late August defending champions, Kerry, beat Cavan by a point in the other semi-final only to fall foul of an objection regarding the legality of one of their players. Now what must you do if you are at the raw end of an objection? Launch your own objection of course, and it turned out that the constitution of Cavan’s team was no more robust than Kerry’s under challenge. The upshot was the expulsion of both the Munster and Ulster champions from the competition. With all three other provincial champions gone surely not even Mayo could find a way to lose this? They were broadly regarded as All-Ireland champions elect with the subsequent award of the title in the boardroom a foregone conclusion surely?
In the meantime, Mayo had qualified for the Connacht Final by beating Sligo. On 18th October their opponents, Galway, enjoyed not only home venue in Tuam but also a Galway referee, albeit a very highly-respected one. Stephen Jordan, a Fianna Fáil and referee of many All-Ireland finals including the very first Camogie final in 1932 which also involved his native county. It is probably superfluous to say at this stage that this did not end without a sting in the tail. Galway beat Mayo by two points with a last-minute goal and strangely, without having played or attempted to play, a team outside their province, were awarded the All-Ireland title. One claim they could make is that, like Tipperary’s hurlers in 1941, they were the only undefeated team in the competition. Though time has dimmed its notoriety this surely was as sore a loss as any All-Ireland Mayo have flirted with over the decades.