KILLINAN END - Finals saves the League

While Derry and Dublin lit up Croke Park with their football, the drama of a penalty shoot-out, and even a good old-fashioned dust-up, maybe the team that had the most poignant experience on Sunday was Armagh.

This is a county that has been so close to silverware in recent years but has been denied by the slimmest of margins. Donegal beat them by a point on Sunday, but the Orchard County has exited the championship in an even more unfortunate manner. In 2022 after quite a contest with Galway, the Connacht team progressed to the All-Ireland semi-final on penalties. Last year things got even worse. A drawn Ulster Final with Derry saw Armagh again lose out on penalties, and their exit in the All-Ireland quarter-final against Monaghan was also after a penalty shoot-out. If there is one element of consolation for them it is the knowledge that they are certainly on the right track and are hugely competitive. But those margins must erode confidence at some level.

It is hard to imagine a penalty loss will impact hugely on Dublin’s confidence, but they will have few complaints anyway. They played catch-up for a lot of the game, and it would have done Derry an injustice to lose. The openness of Dublin’s central defence brought the mind back to the 2013/14 All-Ireland semi-finals when they conceded three goals on both those days as well. In 2013, they came off the ropes and beat Kerry well in the end but a year later they got tangled in a Jim McGuinness web and were dethroned.

If there is one downside to Derry’s win it might be said that they have alerted Dublin to areas of vulnerability which will hardly reappear in high summer. The All-Ireland champions will take solace in having fourteen scorers on the day and appear to have a large wave of new young players coming through.

But for Mickey Harte to win a League title some 21 years after his first with Tyrone shows some longevity. He played full-forward and scored a goal for Tyrone in the 1972 All-Ireland Minor Football Final when the Ulster champions lost to Cork. The Rebels’ full-forward that day was one Jimmy Barry Murphy who scored two goals, as he would do a year later in the Senior final, winning All-Ireland medals on both days. There must have been something in the air back in those days – what a contribution these two went on to make.

Dublin and Derry’s cliff-hanger brought back memories of a similar clash back in 1976. Derry were going well in those days too, Ulster Champions in 1975 and poised to repeat the trick a year later. The League Final was a repeat of the 1975 All-Ireland semi-final, an August day when Derry started well with a couple of goals, eventually scoring three, but lost by five points. Dublin conceded 12 goals in five matches in that 1975 championship when they lost to Kerry in the final. A year later, with an entirely new half-back line – Tommy Drumm, Kevin Moran, and Pat O’Neill – they conceded a grand total of one goal in seven matches from the League semi-final to winning the All-Ireland Final. The scorer of that goal? A raw but very talented 18-year old Colm O’Rourke.

By coincidence, that Dublin-Derry League Final of 1976 in Croke Park was followed a week later on 9th May by the hurling final between Clare and Kilkenny in Thurles. This was Clare’s first final appearance since their previous League win 29 years earlier. Just a month earlier St Flannan’s College had added an All-Ireland title to the school’s first Harty Cup since 1959 so Clare’s star was rising. The Banner County faced into a team from the Nore which makes the current team look relatively unknown. This team had household names like Pat Henderson, Eddie Keher, Pat Delaney, Mick Crotty, Fan Larkin, Noel Skehan, Frank Cummins, and though in the autumn of its peak years, had a tilt at three All-Irelands in a row on the horizon.

In a scoreline very similar to the football final (2-10 to 0-16 – the goals were Clare’s) a second day was required to separate the teams. What happened next was extraordinary. Those desperate to get the championship, never mind the National League, out of the way these days would be apoplectic to realise that the replay was not played until 20th June. In the meantime, Clare had beaten Waterford in the championship and the All-Stars’ tour had taken place getting Kilkenny’s attention. The American sun did the wearers of Black and Amber no harm and they ran riot in the replay scoring six goals and winning by five. Nonetheless Kilkenny’s All-Ireland ambitions were dust within a month as were Clare’s. They did it all again a year later in the National Hurling league final of 1977 when Clare bridged a 30-year gap with this team: Seamus Durack (Feakle); Jackie O’Gorman (Cratloe), Jim Power (Tulla), Johnnie McMahon (Newmarket); Ger Loughnane (Feakle), Sean Hehir (O’Callaghan’s Mills), Sean Stack (Sixmilebridge, captain); Mick Moroney (Crusheen), John Callinan (Clarecastle); Jimmy McNamara (Newmarket), Noel Casey (Sixmilebridge), Colm Honan (Clonlara); Pat O’Connor (Tubber), Martin McKeogh (O’Callaghan’s Mills), Enda O’Connor (Tubber).