Winter is a different game
Killinan End column
In the midst of all the discussion around the new football rules and the vote coming up the club football championship rumbles on.
The progress of Loughmore-Castleiney to the Munster Football Final shows the character of the club once more coming just a week after a demanding game in Waterford in their hurling guise. The club football competition, including Dr Crokes’ struggles in Waterford, provides a timely reminder of the contests and clashes that have illuminated the winter over the years.
In 1993, Éire Óg of Carlow reached the All-Ireland final by virtue of two one-point wins in a Leinster semi-final and final, a two-point win over Knockmore - the Mayo champions - in the All-Ireland semi-final before losing the final by two points to O’Donovan Rossa of Skibbereen in a replay. An epic campaign that just came up short of the ultimate prize. For perhaps the greatest saga of them all we have to rewind to late 1975 when Nemo Rangers, fresh from a semi-final demolition of Kilruane MacDonaghs, met the Kerry champions, Austin Stacks in the Munster Final. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see the extraordinary record of Nemo Rangers in this competition in winning seventeen Munster titles with their first in 1972. Even as early as 1975, they were emerging as specialists having won two Munster Finals and an All-Ireland title in the previous four years. The club has won 23 Cork Senior titles and come through Munster on all bar six of those occasions.
Austin Stacks are footballing royalty of a different hue. If Nemo’s success story is a modern tale, Stacks are old money. Is it the only club named after an All-Ireland winning captain? Austin Stack captained the Kingdom to its maiden All-Ireland title in 1904 but made his name as a revolutionary figure in later years. Were ‘Rock Street’ (Tralee) club to be named after a mere footballer the club’s choice would be extraordinary. Some fourteen players from the club have three All-Ireland medals or more – considerably more in the cases of Ger Power (8), Mikey Sheehy (8), and John O’Keeffe (7), all of whom lined out in the 1975 Munster club final against Nemo Rangers.
The clubs had done the same dance just eleven months earlier in the Gaelic Grounds when Nemo won the game with a late penalty. On a day in mid-January the Munster Council was adventurous enough to play the two Munster Finals as a double-header. St Finbarr’s won the hurling title to ensure the double for their county beating Newmarket-on-Fergus. By the time of the rematch in December 1975, Stacks had Cork midfielder Denis Long in their ranks as well, and Kerry football was on a high having won Minor, Under-21 and Senior All-Irelands just months earlier.
Nemo Rangers, however, were on a perpetual high themselves in those days. If Austin Stacks could take solace from a long tradition with Joe Barrett and the Landers’ brothers reaching back to earlier Kerry greatness, no team struck fear into a Cork outfit that represented a new confident tradition that would go from strength to strength in the coming years.Nemo included Jimmy Barrett, Frank Cogan, Billy Morgan and Brian Murphy from Cork’s 1973 champion team, as well as Denis Allen who would captain an All-Ireland winning Cork team sixteen years later. Another inclusion in the Nemo team hardly designed to weaken their attack was the great Séamus Leydon of Galway 1964-66 fame and an All-Star just four years earlier. He was working in Cork with Cantrell and Cochrane and the decision to choose Nemo hardly tormented him. The teams must have had one eye on the Turkey and Ham when they lined out in Limerick on December 14th. With eighteen minutes to go it looked like Stacks’ day as they led by six points. The magic of Denis Allen was a significant element in the Nemo comeback and the match ended in a draw.
The following Sunday the attendance had doubled as they took the field for another joust. Again, Austin Stacks led the way and were hauled back late on as the game ended in another draw. The teams declined to play extra-time such were the demands of the day and went to the Christmas break still intact.
Hostilities resumed again in January – the fourth time they had met at the same venue in twelve months; all four games mediated by the great John Moloney of Bansha. This game followed a similar pattern with Stacks leading by a point at half-time and a strong wind at their backs to come in the second-half. Any prospect that this would see the Kerry champions stretch forth and win well proved illusory. Instead, it was Nemo who showed resilience and character in abundance with a goal four minutes for time giving them a two-point win; 1-9 to 0-10.
It remains one of the great examples of what the winter club game can produce when there are genuine man-to-man contests for possession and a sense of individuality and randomness about it all. What the new rules, assuming they are carried, will bring remains to be seen but they are well worth a try. Loughmore-Castleiney might go down in history yet as one of the last teams to play under the old rules.