GAELIC GAMES:IT ISN'T anyone's fault, just the way things worked out. When Kerry beat Mayo after a replay to win the 1995 under-21 All-Ireland, nobody could have taken a punt at what the tea leaves held for both sets of players. Kerry were about to enter their 10th season without a senior All-Ireland, Mayo were about to head into Division Three of the league the following month.
The notion that they would be planets colliding from that point on, looping in and out of each other’s orbit at crucial times, well it required a bigger leap than science could make.
Yet here’s a stat to make you suck a thoughtful tooth. The Kerry players who won the replay went on to win 28 All-Ireland medals between them as seniors, a ludicrous bounty from one under-21 team. And of those, 18 were gathered up beating Mayo teams in the final. It’s never been personal between them, just a quirk of timing and happenstance really. Yet more than anything, it’s what informs any sense of dread harboured by Mayo followers heading into the semi-final tomorrow.
In the beginning was the West, and the West was with Mayo, and the West was Mayo. By the time Mayo played Kerry in the 1996 All-Ireland semi-final, no Connacht team had beaten a Munster team in the championship for 30 years.
Mayo themselves hadn’t beaten a team from Munster in 45 years. So you’d be forgiven for assuming that Kerry were caught on the hop in going down to a 2-13 to 1-10 defeat. More accurate though would be to say that Kerry were caught going on the hop. It was Páidí Ó Sé’s first year in charge and their Munster final win over Cork had brought a first provincial title for five whole seasons. For a splash of context, consider that Kerry had put in stretches of more than four years without a Munster title only twice since the foundation of the GAA. Ending one was a cause for a hoedown and Páidí played host in his pub in Ventry on the Monday. For some of them, it might just have leaked into the Tuesday.
“It all came from the fact that somebody took a picture and it was in The Kerryman then,” says Dara Ó Cinnéide. “But the problem is The Kerryman didn’t come out until the Thursday so when you saw this photo of the Kerry team celebrating in the paper, it looked like the whole squad had been on the lash for the week over a Munster title. Which was kind of annoying because we had to put up and shut up, even though we were back training with West Kerry on the Tuesday. And then we got beaten in the semi-final to make it worse.”
There’s the rub, see. They could have swallowed a lake of the stuff and nobody would have broken sweat if they’d put Mayo away as time and tides expected them to. But the semi-final was a shambles. People talk of Mayo’s flights of fancy down the years but they had nothing on Kerry in 1996.
Ó Sé and his panel stayed in the Burlington the night before the match and the place was fizzing as they tried to get their heads down. They even got fitted for suits. For a semi-final.
That day changed everything. In truth, Mayo knew not what they did. John Maughan came into the Kerry dressing room afterwards and gave a speech in which he made a passing reference to Clare and ’92 among other things. No offence was meant but Páidí made sure to take some all the same.
Kerry came home to a hailstorm. The hooley after the Munster final took away any right they had to an umbrella. Even Jack O’Shea, normally one of the milder voices among the commentariat, made reference to it. The fall-out was brutal and it needed the under-21s winning their second All-Ireland in a row a couple of weeks later to take the sting out of the situation. By October, Ó Se had them back in full training – unheard of for a Kerry team.
“It kind of steeled us in a way,” says Ó Cinnéide. “There was no winter bans back then so we trained like savages through October. And there were little things being thrown out at us the whole time. In the run-up to the All-Ireland final, you’d hear things being said about John Maughan and the hell he’d put Mayo through. Every interview with a Mayo player made reference to the training they’d been doing way back the previous winter. That seeped into our psyche in October and November ’96. Kind of, ‘Well if ye do a hundred sit-ups, we’ll do a thousand’. It had really sickened us.”
In truth though, Mayo were innocent bystanders in all of this. For Kerry, 1997 was never a quest to get back at them. It was about going all-out for an All-Ireland that the eventual final and replay in ’96 told them they weren’t far off. It was about flushing the under-21s into the side and doing things right by them.
Ó Sé wanted them disciplined so he disciplined himself. No messing, no big nights in Ventry. By the time they made their way back to the final – their first since 1986, remember – they were a different animal. In his last speech before sending them out, Páidí brought up Maughan’s words from 13 months earlier – it was the only hint of vengeance anyone had injected into the build-up. Then Maurice Fitzgerald did his thing and Mayo were left spinning.
“Ah, Maurice elevated the game beyond anything I’ve ever seen that year,” says Ó Cinnéide. “He was driving us on, Darragh Ó Sé was coming into his own, Séamus Moynihan was driving everybody. And over us, Páidí was absolutely outstanding through that period. He helped us forget the past, forget the weight of history and the baggage that we would have had from the Golden Years era. For all of ’97 there was just a vibe that we were going places. We played on the fact that we were so young, we were a team of bachelors, no inhibitions and two under-21s back to back. All of that went into the mix. It was never about getting revenge on Mayo or anything like that.”
Spin the tape on seven years and the roads intersect again in the 2004 final. For Mayo, it was like crossing in front of a bus but looking the wrong way for traffic. After Meath, after Armagh, after Tyrone, Kerry were aching. Somebody was going feel the leather for it and Mayo just happened to be the ones with their hands out. The Kerry dressing room that day was the calmest Ó Cinnéide has ever stood in. This was happening.
“I actually remember talking to Jack that morning and saying, ‘Look, no matter who we’re playing today, they’re going to get a right going over’. It happened to be Mayo but it could have been anybody. We were ready for every eventuality. When Mayo got an early goal through Alan Dillon, I looked left and right and caught both Gooch and Johnny Crowley’s eye and said, ‘We spoke about this, we prepared for this’. Every box was ticked by Jack O’Connor.”
The same went two years later. Tyrone had dished out another tanning to Kerry in the meantime and by now, only Darragh Ó Sé and Diarmuid Murphy remained from the 1995 under-21 team. But this wasn’t about Mayo at all. The new breed had no quarrel with no men from Cong, and any anger they played with was directed north. But once again, by pure coincidence, Mayo’s part in the rise of a great Kerry team was to be there without being thereabouts. “There was this perception out there that because we beat them, we didn’t respect them or didn’t take them seriously,” say Ó Cinnéide. “But that just wasn’t the case. Anyone who says that doesn’t know Kerry. Mayo were just unfortunate that they were the ones who were in front of us both days. It could have been anybody. Like, if you ask Kerry people, they probably would have wished it was Tyrone at the time. They beat us on three big days and we never got to atone. Mayo unfortunately paid the price.
“There was a lot of bad stuff in our stomachs in ’04 and ’06 after losing the previous years to Tyrone. It was just that Mayo were the team we came up against in the final. Same in ’97 in a way. They just caught us at bad times from their point of view, times when we were just super-motivated. But we never had any animosity towards them.”
Which, in a way, is the most damning statement of them all. Certainly the most Kerryish. Makes you wonder what they’d have done to Mayo if there’d ever been bad blood between them.
Tale of the tape
All-Ireland semi-final, 11 Aug 1996 – Mayo 2-13 Kerry 1-10
A riotous day's work for the men from the west and their first win over Kerry since 1951. A day for freaky goals as well. James Horan floated a gorgeous effort over Declan O'Keeffe after the Kerry goalkeeper fluffed a kick-out for one of the great lost goals, never seen again because the TV cameras missed it. Down the other end, John Madden was watching a replay on the big screen and missed Seán Burke's effort from out the field lobbing in past him. A mad day all round, with Mayo worth more than their six-point win.
All-Ireland final, 28 Sept 1997 – Kerry 0-13 Mayo 1-7
The Maurice Fitzgerald final. Mayo came in as plenty of tipsters' favourites, having gathered themselves after the loss of the previous year's final. But in a brute of a game, Fitzgerald shimmered. He scored nine of Kerry's 13 points, including the three closing frees to choke off the Mayo challenge. His last one, from the sideline with time just about up, capped the whole show off.
All-Ireland final, 26 Sept 2004 – Kerry 1-20 Mayo 2-9
The first massacre. Mayo actually ran into an early lead with an Alan Dillon goal but Kerry clipped them back with Dara Ó Cinnéide putting in a virtuoso first half. Despite being on pain-killers for a badly spasming back, Ó Cinnéide kicked seven first-half points. All the same, the highlight was still Colm Cooper's 29th-minute goal, a beautifully-balanced run and finish at the Canal End. Mayo were never within touching distance after that.
All Ireland quarter-final, 7 Aug 2005 – Kerry 2-15 Mayo 0-18
The forgotten game. Mayo made plenty of friends this day and kept pace with Kerry up until half-time, only going in 1-7 to 0-9 behind. But Kerry put in a muscular third quarter and Darragh Ó Sé poxed the only goal of his intercounty career. Paul Galvin came off the bench to score three points in a row and Kerry were clear. Mayo pegged them back to just a goal in the end but Kerry were never in danger.
All-Ireland final, 17 Sept 2006 – Kerry 4-15 Mayo 3-5
The second massacre. A crazy game with neither shape nor make to it. Kerry hit early and hit often, with Kieran Donaghy and Declan O'Sullivan both scoring goals in the first 10 minutes. Kevin O'Neill got one back for Mayo before Colm Cooper slid one home himself. That made it 3-6 to 1-0 with 20 minutes gone. Mayo got two goals in a minute just before half-time and still went in six points down. Kerry just eased away from them in the second half, during which Mayo didn't score a point from play.
