Reviving memories of Centenary Year

KILLINAN END

The return of Cork and Offaly to Semple Stadium for the latest chapter in their infrequent championship rivalry may, tentatively at least, signal the Faithful County's return to hurling's aristocracy. We say tentatively because in this championship margins were tight and room for manoeuvre little.

Kilkenny went off the cliff and, in all truth, it was coming to them for a while. They had been surviving on the mistakes of others – slip-ups by Dublin and Wexford, for example – which enabled the Black & Amber to escape the slings and arrows of their own misfortunes in losing to Galway and Wexford, even on home soil, over several years.

Despite visiting the famous ‘depths of despair’ that Ger Loughnane lamented three decades ago, margins were tight for them as well. Though unable to beat the Joe McDonagh runners-up last year and garnering just one point from six against Offaly, Galway and Dublin this year, they were still just a puck of a ball away from qualifying for the All-Ireland series.

That's the converse of Offaly's situation. This was a skin-of-the-teeth judgement. They may sit at the top table right now but would need to enjoy the menu to its fullest because dining there regularly is not a guarantee.

If “Cork love Thurles” has a time-honoured place in any list of GAA clichés, Offaly has enjoyed a few memorable days there too. The extraordinary trilogy between themselves and Clare in 1998 had its final chapter there as Offaly went from mid-summer stumbles to autumn gold. The closing chapter of Offaly's golden years followed this All-Ireland triumph with a last hurrah against Cork in the semi-final two years later.

The subsequent years featured consistent decline, but not without occasional highlights. In a scenario unimaginable over the past decade, Offaly beat Limerick in a qualifier in Thurles in 2003. Apart from an unlikely close run in a Leinster Final against Wexford a year later, this was about as good as it got until the present day.

However, a cohort of Offaly hurlers has the remarkable claim to fame of having hurled in an All-Ireland Senior Hurling Final outside Croke Park. When the Centenary Final was played in Semple Stadium, it was bang in the middle of Offaly's golden era – or at least its first great flowering. They had won their breakthrough Leinster hurling final in 1980 when five goals sank Kilkenny and came off the ropes to deliver Johnny Flaherty's knockout blow against Galway a year later for a maiden All-Ireland success.

They were dethroned by Kilkenny in 1982 in the Leinster final by a Matt Ruth goal scored only after a wide ball was brought back into play by Liam Fennelly. When Noreside debaters mused on the merits of Offaly's late 65 in Tullamore recently, you can be confident nobody mentioned the daylight robbery of four decades earlier. But it likely deprived us of a first Offaly-Cork All-Ireland Final.

It took a few years for the Faithful County to recover lost ground, which they did by beating Galway in the 1985 final. A year earlier, however, these nouveaux riches found themselves in the ultimate old-money experience – a championship final against Cork in the Home of Hurling.

In history's mirror, the 1984 All-Ireland Hurling Final has always paled in comparison with the electrifying spectacle that was the Centenary Munster Final. While the southern decider was an energy-sapping roller-coaster of a match, the All-Ireland Final ebbed away to a one-sided outcome. Offaly trailed by just a point at the break but failed to score for sixteen minutes of the second half, by which time the Cork horse had bolted.

Yet the Faithful County had a team of fine hurlers – Pat Delaney, Ger Coughlan, Eugene Coughlan, Pat Carroll, Joachim Kelly and Damien Martin, among many others. They met a Cork team of huge experience and talent, not least their captain John Fenton – arguably the finest hurler in Ireland between 1984 and 1987. It was also a Cork team which knew how to survive a storm, having come through severe tests against Limerick in the previous two years and pickpocketing a Munster Final from Tipp after playing second fiddle for most of the second half.

Offaly could have served it up any way they liked. It was a Cork team which would hurl or scrap and, on the day that Tipperary GAA had its best China out to welcome the hurling world to the cradle of the GAA, they took full advantage of a flat Offaly performance.

An audacious Kevin Hennessy goal saw the Midleton player flick the ball directly from Damien Martin's hurley into the net. The other two came, perhaps inevitably in that Centenary summer, via the wrists of Seánie O'Leary.

It's almost forgotten now that Offaly and Cork nearly did the dance again twelve months later. On a day of biblical rainfall in August 1985, the emergence of new stars like Peter Finnerty and Tony Keady saw Galway turn over Cork in a nine-goal semi-final. One can only imagine how a rematch between Cork and Offaly in Croke Park might have transpired but, given that Cork came back and won again in 1986, perhaps there was an undetected three-in-a-row on the line on that wet summer day in '85.