Rebel rising 1973: Cork stake their claim to a place in modern football

Iconography

“Ray Cummins up along the wing now to Jimmy Barry-Murphy. Jimmy Barry on the ‘14′. What’s he going to do? A goal! There he is. The young man with the goalscoring touch. He may be only 19 but he surely joins the football immortals.” – Michael O’Hehir.

It’s the one image from the 1973 All-Ireland football final that those who saw the match might remember. The teenage Jimmy Barry-Murphy, lanky and suede-headed, tears in from the right and into a long punched pass from Ray Cummins.

Somehow, he shrugs off Brendan Colleran who is hanging on to his jersey like Barry-Murphy has stolen his wallet. The young Cork corner forward pauses, holding up the play, toe tapping, the ball cradled like some votive offering. When O’Hehir commentates, ‘what’s he going to do?’ there is actually some mystery about what happens next.

Before the question is fully out, there is the familiar squawk: ‘A goal!’ as the corner forward steers the ball beyond Galway goalkeeper Gay Mitchell and a defender. It’s a significant score, the last rites for a Galway comeback that reduced the margin to three at one stage.

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Fifty years later, the once teenage prodigy groans.

“Classic! I’ve heard it a million times. Johnny Buckley, who was on the Cork hurling panel with us – he used to do a very good imitation of Michael O’Hehir and if he did it once... he used give me an awful going-over. Never left it off!”

Still, he scored 2-1 that day out of Cork’s 3-17, which made for a three-match championship campaign total of 5-1, more than 0-5 a match from play.

He didn’t know it but it was the peak of what would be his eight-year football career; but as a hurler he would scale many more.

‘Probably the best coach I ever worked under ... – Billy Morgan

On the morning of this year’s football final, there was an All-Ireland-themed Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio 1. Included was a charming piece about how a teenage boy had lived the dream 50 years previously, accompanying his father to training and going all the way to All-Ireland triumph while being treated at school as if he was himself one of the management – even taking questions on how the team was getting on.

Diarmuid O’Donovan is a former newspaper man, a writer and GAA historian as well as formerly a county board administrator and selector on various county teams. For the purposes of Sunday Miscellany, though, he was Donie O’Donovan’s son.

“I’d say I was f***ing insufferable,” he cheerily remembers his 14-year-old self and his unofficial role as the selectors’ representative in Farranferris.

O’Donovan snr played football and hurling for Cork and, with 1945 All-Ireland winner Eamonn Young, was instrumental in resurrecting football in the county.

Diarmuid O’Donovan synopsises Cork’s plight, without an All-Ireland since that 1945 win; only three members of the 1973 team were even born when that happened.

“Football was getting better but Kerry were always there. Between 1907 and 1943, Cork failed to beat Kerry in any championship game. Between 1945 and 1971, Cork won just six matches. Things had started to improve after 1945. The city clubs started to take football seriously. St Nick’s [St Nicholas’ was the football wing of the famous Glen Rovers hurling club] had been the only senior club in the city but eventually others followed.

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“My father coached the team that reached the 1967 All-Ireland final but after a row between the Glen and the county board, the club withdrew all its members from co-operating with Cork teams.”

When the row eventually fizzled out, the county footballers went in deputation to the O’Donovan house on Gardiner’s Hill to ask that he return to coach them again.

His commitment to Cork football was boundless and he, endlessly available to direct matters, was frequently called in to do so. Diarmuid remembers seeing in the newsagents that his father had again taken on the county footballers.

That evening, in walks Donie. “I had been meaning to tell you,” he says to his long-suffering wife, Sheila.

The 1973 captain, Billy Morgan, who would in time take the torch from O’Donovan and Young to lead Cork to unprecedented football success, explains Donie O’Donovan’s role.

“Cork had plenty of underage success and a lot of talent but unfortunately we weren’t well managed at senior level. Donie O’Donovan had been the coach in 1967 when we got to the final, beaten by Meath. There was a falling-out between Glen Rovers and the county board, which meant that all the St Nick’s fellas withdrew and Donie was gone for two years.

“We the players went to him to ask for him to come back. Donie was probably the best coach I ever worked under.”

Finding Nemo

The rising stock of city football clubs became apparent when Nemo Rangers won their first county title in 1972 and went on to become the most successful football club in Ireland, sitting top of the roll of honour with seven All-Ireland titles.

Cork football was a beneficiary of that rise. It provided Morgan as captain – he would end the year as the first goalkeeper to win the Texaco Award for football – as well as corner backs Frank Cogan and Brian Murphy and corner forward Jimmy Barrett.

Crucially, it also produced Denis McDonnell, Nemo’s off-field driving force.

“He became chair of the selectors in 1973,” says Diarmuid O’Donovan. “My father always gave Dinny huge credit for what he did in the background and how he ruled with an iron fist in terms of keeping the thing focused. There would have been a mental challenge for some – the idea that if you could beat Kerry, everyone would be happy. Dinny wanted to win the All-Ireland.”

Morgan agrees.

“Denis McDonnell was a very forceful character. He got things done. In 1972, two weeks before the Munster final, Nemo had a practice match against Muskerry and Dinny was in charge. I remember Frank Cogan and myself asking him did we have to play, with the Kerry match coming up in a fortnight?

“He said, ‘you do’, and I’ll never forget was he said next: ‘I’ll put Nemo football up on a pedestal and if I do, I’ll also put Cork football on a pedestal.’”

By the bizarre conventions of the time, O’Donovan – coach, physical trainer and lead tactician – wasn’t a selector but even that was resolved by McDonnell, according to Morgan.

“Dinny sat beside him at matches and if Donie suggested something, Dinny Mac made sure it was done.”

Diarmuid O’Donovan remembers one tactical coup, designed to take Kerry’s capable but orthodox full back Paudie O’Donoghue out of his comfort zone. “When the famous switch of Jimmy Barry-Murphy and Ray Cummins was made before the Munster final, most of the selectors were unaware and there was nearly murder until Declan Barron’s goal goes in after four minutes.”

A stable base: Munster final 1973

Even for a venue that would be reconstructed in the immediate aftermath, the old Athletic Grounds in Cork was a shambles. Rather than use its “horrendous” dressing rooms under the stand – “more a shed, really,” recalls Barry-Murphy – Cork changed in the relative seclusion of the stables in the old agricultural showgrounds and took the field through a side gate.

“Billy and Donie and the selectors decided to get away from going into the stand so we togged out in the old Showgrounds at the city end where there were stables.

“We just went straight on to the field. We wanted to get away from all the nonsense around having to go through the crowd.”

Kerry were defending champions and forewarned, having been well beaten by Cork just two years previously, but the match was over almost as soon as it had begun. A deluge of goals left Cork 5-3 to 0-2 ahead in the 25th minute and even with a second-half rally, Cork won by nine.

“We couldn’t believe our eyes. It was fantastic. The match was over by half-time. Donie had a job to get us to calm down,” says Barry-Murphy.

The Irish Times report nonetheless made sure to mention “the enormous contribution of goalkeeper Billy Morgan,” who made three early saves from Mickey Ned O’Sullivan, Mick O’Dwyer (in his last match) and Jackie Walsh to prevent Kerry getting any foothold in the match.

Beating Kerry was no longer the primary focus of the team and players were now thinking about a first All-Ireland in 28 years. There would be no competing distractions for the Cork public.

“The hurlers were out of the championship early,” according to Morgan, “which meant that we got – I won’t say full attention, but people did turn to us.”

Teenage rampage

Jimmy Barry-Murphy didn’t feature in the first championship match against Clare but he believes that a good display in a challenge match in the Mardyke against the Combined Forces, which pitched him against Galway full back Jack Cosgrove, a guard stationed in Cork, stated his case.

“All I remember is getting the Examiner – shows you how players were treated in those days. We trained on Tuesdays and the team had to be given to the county board for ratification. I went home and there it was: Barry-Murphy to make his debut, by the late Michael Ellard.

“Someone must have tipped him off. He came to me at training and asked me how would I feel if I got picked, so he knew before I did. That’s what happened in those days.”

In the 21st minute a Dave McCarthy shot came back off the post for JBM to kill the ball and side-foot it to the net, two touches for Cork’s fourth goal.

A minor the previous year, he had yet to grow nerves and was now on course to renew acquaintance with Tyrone, Cork’s defeated opponents in the 1972 minor final. They had their own legend-in-waiting, Frank McGuigan, but again Cork’s firepower was uncontainable.

“My uncle Dinny Barry-Murphy, who had won hurling All-Irelands with Cork in the 1920s, died and his removal was on the Saturday night. On Sunday morning I went up on the train with one of the county board.

“Although I scored two late goals, I didn’t contribute an awful lot up until then. Two goals camouflages a lot, though. To be honest we had been well on our way by then, anyway.”

The All-Ireland routine was familiar to him from four minor finals in the previous two years, but the atmosphere for a senior final was different.

“I remember the build-up to the final. There was huge interest here. We were banging in goals for fun and attracting a lot of hype. It’s only fair to say too that the bedrock of the success was built on Nemo Rangers. It meant Billy Morgan was captain and he was a very forceful character and a huge influence on a lot of careers, mine definitely.

“I wasn’t driving at the time and had just started to work in the county council in Cork. Billy would pick me up to go training, and spending so long in his company had a huge impact on me in all areas of my life, not just football. I remember being affected by how much Cork football meant to him. Also, things to do and how to behave.”

‘Jesus Christ – look at ye’

From their base in Drumcondra’s Skylon Hotel, Cork footballers had a choice of venues, according to Billy Morgan.

“Across the road there were two pubs, the Cat and Cage and the Ivy House. Believe it or not, we always went for two pints a man the night before a match and we went across to I think, the Ivy House – about 10 of us. The second round arrives with glasses from the first still on the tables.

“Cork supporters came in and saw this. ‘Jesus Christ,’ they said, ‘we’ve no chance’” – his voice rises an octave to convey indignation – “‘look at ye!’ We left after the second and went back, perfectly relaxed.”

And when he became manager in due course, did he implement the same permissive protocols?

“I didn’t explicitly but I wouldn’t be checking on them. I honestly don’t know whether they did or not but I suspect a couple of them took a pint. That ‘87 to ‘90 team were good to socialise but they were great to train and drank at the right times.”

Postscript: To the victors, the spoils. To the vanquished, a second viewing

The day after the final, both teams went to lunch in Leopardstown racecourse where both teams got the opportunity to re-watch the match. A second chance for Galway to experience the second final they had lost in three years.

Fifty years on, Billy Morgan still has the uncomfortable memory.

“I remember being there and Michael O’Hehir being the MC. I was sitting beside Liam Sammon, the Galway captain, and I can say if it had been the other way around, I don’t think I’d have been sitting there for two hours watching it again.”

Don’t doubt it.