Division Two Semi-final Monaghan v DerrySeán Moran asks Seán McCague, Páraic Duffy and Bernie Murray why the great Monaghan side of the 1980s didn't win more than just one NFL title
Last weekend at Congress, Seán McCague sat at the end of the past presidents' table and Páraic Duffy delivered a report and organised the tellers for votes. Tomorrow afternoon in Clones Bernie Murray will be on the line as one of Monaghan's selectors in the Allianz NFL Division Two semi-final against Derry.
Twenty years ago this month all three were involved in what was then, and still remains, the high point of Monaghan's senior football achievements - the 1985 National League title.
The team went on to add an Ulster title that year and nearly beat Mick O'Dwyer's Kerry before adding one more provincial title three years later. And that was that.
The team have been nagged by the feeling their potential was unfulfilled - had they beaten Kerry, had they been around just a few years later when Ulster teams started to dominate the All-Ireland, had they had the benefit of the qualifiers to guarantee decent championship runs in each of their best years.
"It would be regarded as the best Monaghan team of modern times," says Duffy, who was county chair and a selector. "The 1979 side had Seán McCague in charge and was very well organised and good at stopping other teams from playing, but the 1985 side was a good footballing team."
They did retain, however, a hard edge. McCague remembers Fergus Caulfield, the team's - ummm - combative corner back in an Ulster semi-final. Facing an audacious corner forward, Caulfield made life hard for him until his opponent's endurance combusted.
"Anyway," says McCague, "he did the wrong thing and hit Caulfield. The first I saw of it was this guy running right out the field with Caulfield coming after him, wagging a finger and obviously telling him not to come back to the corner. I took him off immediately and he wasn't at all happy. 'I'd like to have you for the Ulster final,' I told him."
The 1979 prologue was an Ulster title with an older, different team, some of whom were still around by the middle of the next decade. Their experience of the big time ended in a scarifying, 20-point defeat by Kerry.
Duffy remembers expectations being low. "Seán went down to Munster to talk to Billy Morgan about any suggestions he might have with regard to playing Kerry. Billy more or less told him that it was pointless."
"That's true," says McCague. "They were at their peak and the hand-pass goal was still allowed. They were a tremendous team, individually great players who still retained their hunger. That was the year they destroyed Dublin in the final and scored 9-21 against Clare."
By the mid-1980s the landscape had changed little. Kerry were older and on their lap of honour, but the same rules applied. The only chance Ulster and Connacht counties got to play in an All-Ireland final was when they played each other in the semi-finals every three years.
Monaghan had won an Ulster under-21 title in 1981, but otherwise there wasn't much happening at under-age.
The team that emerged was backboned by players from Scotstown and Castleblayney, both of whom had won Ulster club titles.
The county has a strong football tradition and for most of the GAA's history has run second only to Cavan's historical domination of Ulster. But for a small, rural county with a population of little over 50,000 the modern game is more of a struggle. Still, the roots are deep.
"It's a very good GAA county or rather a very good football county," says Duffy, "as hurling isn't strong. The clubs are well supported and the championship attracts big crowds. Facilities are very good and few clubs anywhere would have better facilities than are common in Monaghan. Our own club, Scotstown, has a big social centre, all-weather pitches, and four dressingrooms.
"Clubs are very strong. Seán McDermotts in Threemilehouse for instance has a beautiful hall that has hosted All-Ireland Scór finals. But their pitch was poor and they decided they needed a Prunty pitch. So they raffled a house and made €600,000. That meant selling around 8,000 tickets at €100. "In the end the house was won by another club, Emyvale, so they'll sell that on and invest it in their facilities."
CENTENARY YEAR in 1984 was a turning point for the county; they reached the final of the special, commemorative Centenary Cup, where they lost to Meath.
"That competition gave great confidence to the team. Monaghan wouldn't have played at Croke Park often, but we ended up going three Sundays in a row and that had an amazing effect on supporters and players and gave us momentum."
Murray was a gifted teenage footballer and played wing forward in the 1985 league final. He believes a lot of what was achieved was down to the team's management.
"Seán is a very good organiser and administrator. One of the problems in Monaghan - and a lot of counties - was different club factions that didn't get on. He was able to harness everyone. Páraic is also a fabulous administrator and the set-up was perfect.
"My input with the current team is in trying to replicate that set-up - the good leadership and guidance."
The league season started in the autumn of 1984 with Monaghan in Division Two. In those days, the top teams in all of the divisions got a crack at the NFL title and Monaghan won promotion and with it a place in the quarter-finals.
"We beat Tyrone in the semi-final after a replay and Kildare in the quarter-final," says McCague. "Ciarán Murray had a great game on Larry Tompkins. Ciarán (who went on to become physiotherapist with the international soccer team) was a new type of centre back, fast and mobile."
The final stages were dominated by Ulster teams and in the final on a wet Sunday at Croke Park before a small crowd of 15,000 Monaghan beat Armagh to win the title. "It was the first time that Monaghan had taken a trophy off the Hogan Stand," remembers McCague.
The euphoria carried into the summer. It was a great year in the county. Barry McGuigan beat Eusebio Pedroza that May and a huge mural of the new world champion beamed down on Clones. But the high-flying team hit a spot of injury turbulence with the championship on the horizon - a worry for a side with limited resources.
"The league got the team stabilised," says Murray. "We were unusual in that we only used 15 players in the final - no substitutes - but between then and the championship Declan Loughman broke his leg, Gerry Hoey broke an ankle and I broke my leg. I remember someone saying that between the three of us we must have been worth a point against Kerry."
The Ulster title was something of an anti-climax in that Derry were not the serious opposition in the province and Monaghan won well. But the looming All-Ireland semi-final against Kerry conjured up evil phantasms from six years previously.
Even though Kerry were past their peak and Monaghan were much better than they had been, the background to the match was forbidding. An Ulster side hadn't beaten the Munster champions in the All-Ireland series for 17 years. Little more than 20,000 turned up, but those who didn't missed one of the best matches of the decade.
"Kerry were All-Ireland champions then as well," says McCague. "And they always seemed to have some reason why it was important to win it again."
Ultimately, it took a 45-metre free from Eamonn McEneaney to level the match, but for most of the 70 minutes, Monaghan had looked like credible winners.
"We missed the boat that day after playing well in the first 25 minutes," continues McCague. "I remember they got a lucky goal when a ball came back down off the top of the post and Ger Power stuck it in the net - they mightn't have come back otherwise."
IN THE REPLAY the champions won comfortably before a big crowd - an unusual phenomenon for Kerry semi-finals - and duly added the All-Ireland.
Monaghan, however, had earned a sense of redemption from the performance and looked to have plenty to build on with a young team, developing experience and already some silverware on the mantelpiece.
That was to reckon without Ulster and its competitiveness, which meant counties from the province hardly ever got the run of success that helped develop typical champions in Munster and Leinster. Badly beaten by Cork on their one return to the All-Ireland stage, Monaghan were left to wonder at the evaporated promise.
"Had we come in the early 1990s," says McCague, "I think we could have competed with Derry, Donegal and Down of that period. We were possibly three players short of what we required and didn't have the strength in depth. That always happens smaller counties. But I felt that the '85 team at a different time could have won it out."
Murray, who is joined as a selector for current manager Séamus McEnaney by two other members of the 1985 team, Gerry Hoey and Gerry McCarville, naturally agrees.
"As a team we would feel that we underachieved, that we should have done more. Having won the league in April I was thinking 'I could have five or 10 more years of this'. It didn't happen.
"As the 1990s unfolded it was inevitable that those teams would be compared to us. I think we were every bit as good."
