ONE OF THE most fascinating passages from Kings for A Day arrives near the end, when Steven McDonnell laments how Armagh’s 2002 All-Ireland winning squad have drifted apart over the years.
During their pomp in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a ‘club Armagh’ feel to the group.
There was even an unwritten rule, according to the book’s author Niall McCoy, that county players didn’t fight one another when rows broke out in the feisty club championship.
To become the first team from the county to lift the Sam Maguire, the Armagh squad needed to have tight friendships and a close knit bond. But fast forward 20 years and McDonnell finds it hard to organise reunions and trips away for the men who brought the county on that glorious odyssey.
He saw the Down All-Ireland winning sides of 1991 and ’94 regularly meet up for golf days and wonders why Armagh are different.
“It’s annoying, because when you look back, that was one of the tightest group of players you’d ever come across,” McDonnell says in the book. “Everyone has their lives to live, but I would always be one for having regular reunions if possible. It’s always the same handful of boys that attend those events.
“Some boys don’t tend to go for it and it’s disappointing, because any time we do get together, it’s always great craic. We probably have drifted.
“We have a WhatsApp group that includes every player, it’s a players’ one, it doesn’t involve management, but some stay on the outskirts. That’s part and parcel of retiring and moving away from the game.”
Increased efforts have been made in recent years and the majority of the group did attend a recent event in Lurgan to mark the 20th anniversary of their All-Ireland win.
Still after years of failure and near misses, it’s curious that winning a Celtic Cross together didn’t mould a permanent bond in the group.
“It was quite sad,” McCoy tells The42. “I met Stevie for a bite to eat and we discussed it. He was genuinely hurt that they haven’t stayed close. Certainly obviously different people have stayed close, but as a group they haven’t really stayed close.
“Stevie was saying that he has tried on WhatsApp and different things and there were people leaving the group and not talking. It just sort of drifted away.”
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He believes club rivalries may be one reason. Another could be the remarkable number of players who’ve stayed in the game in a coaching capacity. Of the 30 players on the panel in 2002, 25 have moved into coaching across 10 counties, upwards of 30 clubs, five sports, three continents and two universities.
Oisin McConville takes on Tomás Ó Sé during the 2002 All-Ireland final. INPHO
INPHO
Oisin McConville recently became the seventh player to take up a senior inter-county managerial role.
“So they’re a busy group in terms of being involved with other teams, so maybe they lose contact with that main team they were with,” says McCoy.
“It is quite sad. I will say like, one of the things Oisin talked about was that in recent years, he’s made a real sort of attempt to talk to boys that he maybe has lost ground with.
“I hope a few others have done likewise. I remember Aidan O’Rourke saying that Oisin phoned him up out of the blue a year or two ago to say, ‘I watched the ’02 final back and I never realised just how good you were in that match.’”
A great deal of mystique still surrounds the team that many credit for bringing the inter-county game into the professional era. The Armagh squad was full of inspiring leaders and unique characters.
The book delves deep into the Armagh story, from the early ’90s as they watched three other Ulster land breakthrough Sam Maguire successes.
Armagh’s lot was filled with failures and near misses, both before and after their maiden All-Ireland win.
For a team that won seven Ulster titles in 10 years, should they have won more than a single All-Ireland?
“I know for a lot of players though it’s something that will eat away at them. Some of them have made peace with it but I know for some players it’s something that just grates at them and always will grate at them.
“At the end of the day, they’re All-Ireland winners. It would have been nice to win more but that’s the main thing, that they did get the Celtic Cross. Because they were so close on so many occasions. In 2002 Kerry were the better team and the luck went with them that year.
“At least they have one, otherwise it would be a modern Mayo story in all reality. The story of near misses and near chances. The amount of All-Irelands they lost by the break of a ball…from ’99 through to 2005 they really could have won every All-Ireland.”
He gets several interesting viewpoints from left-field sources.
One comes from a man in a Down jersey that was among the first people to rush onto the field when they beat Kerry in the 2002 final.
“The first one to break the barricade. So I managed to track him down and he was good craic, he gave me how he ended up in a Down jersey. He’s a big Down fan. He said he was chasing his daughter out onto the pitch so I’m not convinced. I think he just go caught up in the moment.”
Then there’s Annaghmore’s Shane Smyth, whose sole season on the county panel happened to come in 2002, of all years.
They played Fermanagh in the Ulster semi-final that summer and Armagh were leading comfortably in the 55th minute when Paddy McKeever was replaced by Cathal O’Rourke.
But O’Rourke picked up an injury and Smyth looked certain to make his debut.
“I was the only other option left but they put Paddy back on,” he recalls.
“There were only a few minutes to go and the game was won, and Paddy scored a point so you couldn’t argue with it, but people had been saying, ‘You’re next up here,’ so I went out and warmed up, but it was Paddy who came on.
“That was the message to me: you’re going to be the bit-part player if even that. I didn’t consider leaving the panel whatsoever…even when I was told to go off by people.”
McCoy takes up the story: “He never played a minute. He was number 30 and he was on the Armagh panel for 2002 and he was never there again. So it was interesting to get his take on it.
“He wasn’t a playing member, he never played a minute for Armagh in his life but still has an All-Ireland medal. He freely admits it wasn’t the same. He says in the showers after the match the first thing he was saying was, ‘I can’t wait to get going in 2003 and get a go.’ And then he was dropped so he never actually got that chance in the end.”
Kings for a Day, the story of Armagh and their 2002 journey to Sam Maguire, is available to purchase in all good bookshops and online.
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'Stevie McDonnell was genuinely hurt that they haven't stayed close. It is quite sad'
ONE OF THE most fascinating passages from Kings for A Day arrives near the end, when Steven McDonnell laments how Armagh’s 2002 All-Ireland winning squad have drifted apart over the years.
During their pomp in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a ‘club Armagh’ feel to the group.
There was even an unwritten rule, according to the book’s author Niall McCoy, that county players didn’t fight one another when rows broke out in the feisty club championship.
To become the first team from the county to lift the Sam Maguire, the Armagh squad needed to have tight friendships and a close knit bond. But fast forward 20 years and McDonnell finds it hard to organise reunions and trips away for the men who brought the county on that glorious odyssey.
He saw the Down All-Ireland winning sides of 1991 and ’94 regularly meet up for golf days and wonders why Armagh are different.
“It’s annoying, because when you look back, that was one of the tightest group of players you’d ever come across,” McDonnell says in the book. “Everyone has their lives to live, but I would always be one for having regular reunions if possible. It’s always the same handful of boys that attend those events.
“Some boys don’t tend to go for it and it’s disappointing, because any time we do get together, it’s always great craic. We probably have drifted.
“We have a WhatsApp group that includes every player, it’s a players’ one, it doesn’t involve management, but some stay on the outskirts. That’s part and parcel of retiring and moving away from the game.”
Increased efforts have been made in recent years and the majority of the group did attend a recent event in Lurgan to mark the 20th anniversary of their All-Ireland win.
Still after years of failure and near misses, it’s curious that winning a Celtic Cross together didn’t mould a permanent bond in the group.
“It was quite sad,” McCoy tells The42. “I met Stevie for a bite to eat and we discussed it. He was genuinely hurt that they haven’t stayed close. Certainly obviously different people have stayed close, but as a group they haven’t really stayed close.
“Stevie was saying that he has tried on WhatsApp and different things and there were people leaving the group and not talking. It just sort of drifted away.”
He believes club rivalries may be one reason. Another could be the remarkable number of players who’ve stayed in the game in a coaching capacity. Of the 30 players on the panel in 2002, 25 have moved into coaching across 10 counties, upwards of 30 clubs, five sports, three continents and two universities.
Oisin McConville recently became the seventh player to take up a senior inter-county managerial role.
“So they’re a busy group in terms of being involved with other teams, so maybe they lose contact with that main team they were with,” says McCoy.
“It is quite sad. I will say like, one of the things Oisin talked about was that in recent years, he’s made a real sort of attempt to talk to boys that he maybe has lost ground with.
“I hope a few others have done likewise. I remember Aidan O’Rourke saying that Oisin phoned him up out of the blue a year or two ago to say, ‘I watched the ’02 final back and I never realised just how good you were in that match.’”
A great deal of mystique still surrounds the team that many credit for bringing the inter-county game into the professional era. The Armagh squad was full of inspiring leaders and unique characters.
The book delves deep into the Armagh story, from the early ’90s as they watched three other Ulster land breakthrough Sam Maguire successes.
Armagh’s lot was filled with failures and near misses, both before and after their maiden All-Ireland win.
For a team that won seven Ulster titles in 10 years, should they have won more than a single All-Ireland?
“I know for a lot of players though it’s something that will eat away at them. Some of them have made peace with it but I know for some players it’s something that just grates at them and always will grate at them.
“At the end of the day, they’re All-Ireland winners. It would have been nice to win more but that’s the main thing, that they did get the Celtic Cross. Because they were so close on so many occasions. In 2002 Kerry were the better team and the luck went with them that year.
“At least they have one, otherwise it would be a modern Mayo story in all reality. The story of near misses and near chances. The amount of All-Irelands they lost by the break of a ball…from ’99 through to 2005 they really could have won every All-Ireland.”
He gets several interesting viewpoints from left-field sources.
One comes from a man in a Down jersey that was among the first people to rush onto the field when they beat Kerry in the 2002 final.
“The first one to break the barricade. So I managed to track him down and he was good craic, he gave me how he ended up in a Down jersey. He’s a big Down fan. He said he was chasing his daughter out onto the pitch so I’m not convinced. I think he just go caught up in the moment.”
Then there’s Annaghmore’s Shane Smyth, whose sole season on the county panel happened to come in 2002, of all years.
They played Fermanagh in the Ulster semi-final that summer and Armagh were leading comfortably in the 55th minute when Paddy McKeever was replaced by Cathal O’Rourke.
But O’Rourke picked up an injury and Smyth looked certain to make his debut.
“I was the only other option left but they put Paddy back on,” he recalls.
“There were only a few minutes to go and the game was won, and Paddy scored a point so you couldn’t argue with it, but people had been saying, ‘You’re next up here,’ so I went out and warmed up, but it was Paddy who came on.
“That was the message to me: you’re going to be the bit-part player if even that. I didn’t consider leaving the panel whatsoever…even when I was told to go off by people.”
McCoy takes up the story: “He never played a minute. He was number 30 and he was on the Armagh panel for 2002 and he was never there again. So it was interesting to get his take on it.
“He wasn’t a playing member, he never played a minute for Armagh in his life but still has an All-Ireland medal. He freely admits it wasn’t the same. He says in the showers after the match the first thing he was saying was, ‘I can’t wait to get going in 2003 and get a go.’ And then he was dropped so he never actually got that chance in the end.”
Kings for a Day, the story of Armagh and their 2002 journey to Sam Maguire, is available to purchase in all good bookshops and online.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
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