THE MILESTONES AND anniversaries roll around before you notice them.
You recognise the date and you count back. To a time when a city and the country was a very different place. To a time when a sport was well established for almost 100 years, but nonetheless was steeped in antiquity and took some dragging into modernity.
This weekend 50 years ago brought Dublin’s first All Ireland title in 11 years. It brought terrace culture, chanting, singing and banners.
It was Kevin Heffernan’s first All Ireland as manager. It spawned the names that would become the first band of rock ‘n’ roll Gaelic footballers; Mullins, O’Toole, Cullen, Hanahoe, Doyle, Hickey and Keaveney.
They saved Gaelic football.
They did in their arse.
It doesn’t matter.
They hoovered up the casual fan. They invented the occasion junkie. They created a stir around Gaelic football and captured the semi-interested punter who, yearning for something of the Match of the Day feel and escapism, became part of the Hill 16 movement.
It gave football an adrenalin shot and set up Kerry for an intense half decade of rivalry that coincided with the arrival of sideburns, colour television and Glam Rock.
Before you think of 1974, you have to trace the story back another 19 years. To a time when the Dubs struck out on their own journey.
Prior to that, they would bring one and all into the fold. The Dublin senior football team was a cosmopolitan affair of whoever was in and around the city at the time. Country accents mingled through the lines.
All changed in time for 1955. With a team largely made up of St Vincent’s players, their own club enforcing a strict ‘no-culchie’ policy, Dublin made a decision to go with Dubs, and Dubs only.
Perhaps it was coincidence, but 1955 was the first time they wore blue socks, with players wearing their club socks before. They reached the final and lost, to Kerry.
There was an insane level of interest. This being the 1950’s, British Rail had to put on extra trains to Holyhead with thousands returning home from London. The platform at Euston Station became overcrowded at one stage with returning exiles.
They came back three years later and beat Derry in the decider.
Dublin, or rather ‘The Dubs’, were on their way. Heffernan was the on-pitch leader, the corner-forward who would pop up in the Team of the Century and later the Team of the Millennium.
By 1974, he was manager. They hadn’t won an All Ireland since 1963 and in the meantime, Galway’s three-in-a-row team, managed by John ‘Tull’ Dunne wore the ease of champions.
Down had arrived on the national scene and offered something different again. Coaching, formations, physical training and strategy were all on the table now in this new-look Gaelic football.
The purists were unhappy. There was too much solo running. Too much fisting points and to each other. None of that concerned Heffernan.
The sport was trembling before the dawn of a new reality. Across the four American cities of large Irish population; New York, Boston, Chicago and Philidelphia, closed-circuit showings of the final were staged at movie theatres.
Out-of-towners started arriving towards the weekend to secure their £5 tickets for the privilege. Those that couldn’t manage that fee would be able to listen to the RTÉ commentary on an American network. The game could even be picked up in Africa through linking up through a Lisbon network.
Those watching and listening would have been pleased to see the quality of the pictures emerging. Galway got off to an early jump start with a goal from the barrel-chested midfielder Michael Rooney who fisted a ball crossed in.
Watching it back now, the football played has the jarring elements that can strike anyone used to today’s game. Anton O’Toole for example produces a lovely sidestep to evade a tackle, but just before it, gets away with an ugly solo, before a jerky fisted point.
The hand passing is tossing the ball from one hand and batting it with the other closed fist. There is nothing much to be gained by holding on to the ball and so defenders seem bound to putting their foot through it as soon as possible.
It’s not without its’ charms. At one stage Rooney dips down to collect a ball with his left foot. He shimmies and sidesteps and sends Paddy Reilly three different ways, before getting a successful shot off his right.
There are other elements of play that just doesn’t happen anymore. In the first half, Jimmy Keaveney had a free on the right hand side of the pitch. Nowadays it would be handed to the left-footed freetaker to swing over as it is well within scoring range.
Instead, Keaveney delivered a flighted, soccer-style ‘cross’ which Bobby Doyle gets a fist to, sending it over the bar.
The turning point, such as it was, came with a missed penalty at the Canal End.
Liam Sammon was taken down in trying to get a shot off, the Tyrone referee Patsy Devlin instantly making the decision.
Sammon’s penalty kick was given plenty of welly but not enough direction and Paddy Cullen got just enough on it with his left hand to turn it around the post. Dublin were inspired and soon hit the front.
Keaveney was as majestic as he looks unlikely in this day and age of skinfades and Insta abdominals. His final point was a study in economy of effort.
By this stage, those on Hill 16 have made their way to the back of the goal. Sometime at the start of the second half a Garda cordon had formed.
‘Well… the Jacks are back alright,’ proclaims Micheál O’Hehir’s famous commentary line, ‘and the way they are playing right now, the Galway backs are jacked.’
As the Galway goalkeeper is trying to take his kickout, hundreds of people are behind him. The camera just happens to capture a shot of Heffernan, in his customary stylish slacks and jumper, beseeching the crowd to stay back.
Referee Devlin then comes up and points at the crowd to retreat. He runs out to the middle, the ball is kicked and he never stops his run as he blows the whistle and heads straight for the dressing rooms.
“I remember breaking down after the game,” recalled Paddy Cullen years later.
“Jimmy Keaveney’s Dad, Lord rest him, was the first man and Paddy Cole, the great Clarinet player (and leader of the Capitol Showband), the two of them grabbed me. I don’t know how they got out on to the pitch so quick and Sean Doherty with his big hands nearly choked me…”
In the grainty footage, as Sean Doherty raises Sam, you can pick out the strains of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, with banners flying with the witticisms such as ‘Dublin for Deffo.’
One man who took his place in Croke Park that day understood how far things had come. He might have been 80 years of age, but Frank Burke had seen it all.
54 years earlier, he had been marking Michael Hogan when British Auxilliaries came into Croke Park and started shooting, killing Hogan along with 13 others on Bloody Sunday, 1920.
Burke had been in the Easter Rising.
That doesn’t do it justice.
He was up on top of the GPO raising the flag and he was down the front doing the fighting. He had been by Patrick Pearse’s side since Pearse was his teacher in St Enda’s and later gave him his first rifle.
As a result of his involvement, he was interred, but returned in time for Christmas. He won All Ireland titles in hurling and football with Dublin, the superstar forward of his time who went back to St Enda’s to teach.
In Burke’s lifespan, the old Ireland of occupation and rebellion had spun and evolved and finished up as something not quite different enough to what those in the GPO might have intended.
But as it was, the country was heading for a modernity of sorts. Gaelic football was spurred on by a memorable rivalry.
All lurched forward together, into the brave new world.
