Tom Humphrieson a brutal day for Dublin's hurlers; hammered by Kildare, they went and cried until they laughed.
BANANA SKIN TIME. Dublin travel to Portlaoise tomorrow for one of those early season Leinster hurling championship engagements which always seem to be freighted with good hope for Dublin teams.
Dublin are in their second year of Division One hurling, coming off some underage success and the city is drumming its fingers waiting for the great leap forward. And yet . . .
Memories are long. Dublin play Westmeath tomorrow and it is only two years since the Dubs travelled to the same venue, found the pitch to be a quagmire but let themselves be talked into playing because the TV cameras were there. Westmeath won. And that stirred memories of 1982, and a humiliating one-point defeat to Westmeath in Croke Park.
Was that the worst ever? No, the boys of 1982 can always point back to Aughrim. To 1976. Dublin versus Kildare. Worst ever.
"That's one not to be discussed," says Tom Quinn, a half back that day. "That one has been erased from the floppy disk."
"Do you know how bad that was?" asks Kevin Drumgoole, "the Kildare hurlers got Sports Stars of the Week in the Indo the following Friday! It was the week after Dublin beat Derry in the National League final and the Kildare hurlers were Sports Stars of the Week. A dark day. "
"Ah no," says Vinny Holden, who didn't even play that day, "I remember it well. One of the real embarrassing days."
"Stop!" says Peadar Carton who has two sons playing for Dublin tomorrow and hoping to avoid a similar landmark disaster, "that was the worst day."
The worst. On the day that Dublin beat Derry in the National League final in Croke Park with 33,000 watching, the Dublin hurlers were at a rather more private function down in Aughrim, playing Kildare.
There was trouble in the camp, the Holden brothers, Vinny and PJ, were absent having opted to train with Cuala rather than the county in the run up to the game but Dublin had enjoyed a good league. Having survived in the top tier the previous year they drew with Kilkenny and beat Wexford and were narrowly beaten by Tipp for a play-off place.
Plus the under-21 side which had reached the All-Ireland final in 1972 were coming through. The 1967 under-21 side had also reached an All-Ireland and should have been at their peak by then. There were options. Most of them weren't on the pitch though.
If Croke Park was showery that afternoon as the Dubs laid Derry to waste Aughrim suffered under a biblical deluge at the throw in. Only a hardcore of hurling fundamentalists had travelled from the capital. The pitch was windswept and the agony in the Garden County would be longer than usual. The game was among the first 70-minute affairs.
Kildare played with the wind in the first half and played like a team who knew what they were doing. Mick Moore of Broadford got an early goal and Johnny Walsh, a transplanted Wexford native, did some damage. Tommy Carew was playing in midfield and it is sufficient tribute to state that the Dubs present remember him as being as good a hurler as he was a footballer.
Dublin knew well before half-time they were in a match. How long the match should be was a detail which briefly eluded the attention of the referee, however. Noel Matthews from Wexford blew the half-time whistle after 30 minutes. Dublin were pressing at the time.
The teams were walking in. Accounts vary as to what happened next. Either a Dublin player brimming with optimism or a Kildare official approached the referee to remind him of the missing five minutes. There was a brief conference and soon everybody was trooping out to play five more minutes.
The sense of tragedy blended with comedy is so pure in Dublin at this stage most Dublin players remember themselves as being a point or two to the good when the five minutes was tagged on. In fact they were seven points down but had been hurling well for the 10 before the whistle blew and should have been facing into the second half with a wind at their backs and a bit of confidence.
Instead, having got their additional five minutes of wind-assisted action Kildare opted to make it worth their while. Mick Moore added to his earlier goal and Mick Deeley drove in another to leave Kildare 13 points up the next time the teams headed in for their five-minute break. Those five minutes effectively ended the game. Dublin rallied a little but took a six-point beating.
"We were all going in fairly happy with ourselves," says Peadar Carton, "we went back out for the few minutes and they scored two goals. We came in with the heads down. We never recovered. The weather was bad, I think. Not that bad though! The half-time dressingroom was a little shellshocked but Dublin hadn't been a happy camp anyway. The Cuala club in Dalkey were just climbing to prominence and were backboned (like the 1972 Dublin under-21 side) by the Holden brothers, Vinny, PJ and Mick. The Holdens watched the game form the grassy bank.
Vinny Holden takes up the tale.
"Jim Boggan was the Dublin manager. The rules at the time were that if you were playing senior hurling championship for your club at the weekend on the Thursday you went training with the club. In Cuala we were junior at the time. I was captain of the junior hurling board selection, though, and we were playing in championship on the Sunday. Training for Dublin was Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
"On Thursday we trained with the junior board team. Meanwhile, Dublin were training at the same time that Thursday night and they took the decision at training they would change the following week's nights to Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday as we had the Kildare game on the Sunday. Grand. But nobody got in touch with us.
"Now anyone who knows me knows I was more willing than anyone when it came to Dublin training. But they trained on Monday and we didn't know and the team for the weekend appeared in the paper the next day. I look and I am 25. Mick is 26. Management was making a statement."
The Holdens appeared at training on Tuesday night. They were told they were dropped, having missed two of the six sessions in the run up to the championship, players who had missed one or none would get preference. They asked if this applied to subs who might be brought on. They were told it did. So possibly Dublin's two best hurlers, Mick and Vinny Holden, never togged out.
"It was a bad situation. The team was picked by the time we went training on the Tuesday night. We had got no word. When we went to Jim to ask what's the story, that we were 25 and 26, he told us straight. So we didn't tog out.
"We went up on to the sideline. That was it. One of those battles. Mick wasn't as mad committed as I was. His attitude was if they would do that they have no real interest, f*** them. That was it, really. They were out of the championship on the first weekend in May and there was no follow on."
The second half was an exercise in desperation. Dublin's full-forward line was graced by an All Star, Joey Towell, whose sublime skills were badly needed. He scored a goal and a point. He remembers little else.
"All I really remember about that day was I was an All Star and there would have been a good bit expected of me. I'm told I scored 1-1 but I don't really remember it. In the second half I went for a ball and I collided heavily with the goal post. I was surprised the post was still standing. I could barely stand. That was that day for me."
The Dubs threw in a few subs, John Murphy of Crumlin, PJ Buckley, a good footballer, from Erin's Isle and Mick Reidy from An Caisleán, a priest who had performed the weddings of many of the team. He produced no miracles.
"I remember it ending," says Tom Quinn, "and did something I never did before or after. I had a shower and made my own way home. Got a lift off somebody and that was it. I was too sick to go on the bus with the team. It was the lowest day.
"Kildare were a decent team, though. I wouldn't like to take anything from them by saying that we lost because of the Cuala lads. Kildare had drawn with Offaly (4-12 to 6-6) the previous year in a league quarter-final, I think it was. They had good players and we were ambushed. "
Vinny Holden remembers the night as a black one out of which even more comedy was mined. The Cuala crew went to a nearby hotel for a post mortem. It being one of those days when things couldn't get any worse, somebody started to sing. Everyone joined in.
Inevitably the management came across and announced there would be no singing. So somebody told a joke. And another. And another. Soon the locals were piling in. Everything seems funnier when you are escaping from a bad, bad day.
For hours they sat crammed into a huge alcove telling jokes till they cried.
"It was a terrible day, the worst for Dublin hurling and not good for us in Cuala but funny thing is it turned into one of the funniest nights ever in the pub. In Cuala we still talk about that night. No disrespect to the hurling but there was nothing could be done by then."
Kevin Drumgoole's plight was worse. The scion of a great hurling family he avoided his father till that night: "I was living above Meagher's in Fairview at the time. I remember going back to Meagher's that night and it was difficult. It was full of Dubs who had been in Croke Park. I got some stick. To this day I haven't lived down that match. I avoided the Da till about 10 that night. Then we had an awkward half hour.
"I still hear about that game. Seán Lane (manager of last year's under-21 side) was playing minor that day against Laois in the curtain-raiser. He brings it up a lot. I say 'did that not cure you of hurling?'."
Any excuses? "It was windy and gusty! Aughrim wouldn't have been a hurling pitch. We were still in Division One, though. We were narrowly beaten by Tipp to qualify for the play-offs.
"There is nothing more I can say. I make efforts to blank it from time to time but people bring it up. In my short career as a captain that will be what I will be remembered for. I take primary responsibility for Kildare's greatest achievement in hurling!"
Kildare earned themselves a home game with Wexford in the Leinster semi-final and actually led by four points at half-time before losing by four. Johnny Walsh of Ardclough scored 12 points .
Strangely only 4,000 turned up to watch that day and when Kildare reached the Leinster semi-final again in 1977 only 2,000 turned out to see them hammered by Wexford.
Dublin hadn't even the satisfaction of seeing their conquerors turn from ugly ducklings to lilywhite swans.
