The fans who never came home from Croker

In this extract from Death On A Country Road, Des Fahy describes the idyllic start to a GAA Sunday that ended in tragedy

The first sound Colm McCartney heard was the cutlery drawer of the press downstairs in the kitchen being opened. There was the clink of knives and spoons and the rattle of cups and plates as they were moved from the cupboard to the kitchen table. Then the sound of the kettle being plonked down on the cooker. Great stuff. Mammy was getting the breakfast ready.

He shifted from one side of the bed to the other and rubbed the corner of his eye before wriggling back under the blankets. Big day today. The All-Ireland semi-final. Derry had to have a chance - the boys in Ardboe last night thought so anyway. Dermot had been in good form. It was great to be able to see him and catch up, having been away in London.

Colm was tired and he had the drive to Dublin ahead of him. Jesus, it was a late one last night, but weekends like this don't come along too often. Better make the best of it - it was back to work tomorrow.

Ten more minutes, maybe he could get 10 more minutes. He was expert at squeezing out the last possible second, that's what Mammy always said. He could hear heavy, uncompromising footsteps, first in the hall outside his bedroom and then on the stairs. Daddy was up now too.

This was going to be a day for men to stand up. "Couldn't Derry do with Jim McKeever now!" someone had said last night as they sat round a table just beside the stage where the band were taking a break, standing around having a smoke. Jesus, they could. They still talked about his performance in the 1958 final. A giant of a man. Gentleman Jim. Wouldn't he make a fair difference in Croke Park? They nodded their heads in silent agreement.

Colm had only been a cub then, too young to travel and no memories at all of it. He wasn't even sure if his father had made it down. But he'd heard it talked about so often he had almost convinced himself he had been there, standing on his tip-toes in the Canal End trying to sneak a look through the hulking bodies in front of him and the wire that framed the pitch.

Maybe he had time for five more minutes. What time was it? He stretched across to the travel alarm-clock propped up on the locker beside the bed. He hadn't set it last night - that was the great thing about weekends. Seven. Jesus Christ, I'd better get a move on. I've to collect Seán in Moy at eight. Don't be late, he'd said, after he'd reminded me that it was my turn to drive and hadn't I volunteered anyway. No matter. It would be a chance to get a long spin in the new car.

Colm smiled a sleepy half-smile. Seán was a terrible man for getting on the road early. "The traffic will be mental," he'd insisted, "and if we beat it we could squeeze a pint or two in before the first match."

Always the same line or something very like it. He'd probably have sandwiches and a flask as well. Colm used to laugh at that when he saw it on the site at lunchtimes, everything wrapped neatly in tinfoil.

"Jesus, you're well looked after," he would say, "you're getting old before your time." All the same, he never refused one of the sandwiches when they were offered.

Colm pushed the blankets off his legs, pulled his feet out from under the sheet and hopped down on to the lino floor. He pulled one half of the curtain back and looked out. No rain anyway. That was something. He had put his clothes out on the back of a chair before going to bed. A green striped shirt and brown trousers. He pulled on his brown shoes and reached back for his favourite bottle-green velvet jacket. Now he was all set. This was going to be some day. A mighty day.

MARGARET FARMER HAD been up early too to get Seán his breakfast. Anyway, with the boys there wasn't much chance of a lie-in these days. Early risers all four of them. She was tired after the trip to Portrush the day before. Well, it had worked out grand, with Colm, this boy from Seán's work, bringing him down.

Seán was glad of the company, and the driver. Maybe sneak a pint or two in somewhere along the line. He had got friendly with Colm McCartney almost without noticing. There was a gap of 10 years between them, but it made no difference at all.

Colm seemed to be the kind of boy who could talk to anyone, get on with everyone. He had no airs or graces about him and underneath everything he seemed like a soft kind of fella too. Seán liked him and enjoyed his company. A quiet fella, but good fun once you got to know him.

They had a lot in common as well, what with work, the football and the time they'd both spent over in England. Seán got the impression Colm had had it easier over there than he had. Then again, he had Margaret and the children back at home while Colm was free and single. London sounded like a great place. It had to be better than some of the dives Seán had finished up in.

Still, he had got through it, mostly by thinking about the money. That had been good, much better than what there was at home, and he needed it with a house and children to look after.

When it came to the job, Colm was the best mechanic they had, no doubt about that. The two of them worked well together. Seán knew his diggers and if there was a problem he was usually able to point Colm in the right direction. After that, the star mechanic did the rest. Colm was young, but he had learned well, wherever he had picked it up from.

He had said something about working with a lot of heavy plant in England, and it showed. There was very little he couldn't take on. He was worth his weight in gold, what with the big machines and the heavy-moving work that was needed to clear this new road.

He seemed to have the best of both worlds, Colm. Treated like a lord in those digs in Newry during the week and then back up to his home place in Derry at the weekend. Great man for the dancing. The tea-breaks on Monday morning were full of stories of the latest dance in Ardboe or Kilrea, what the fun had been like and whether there had been any women about.

Seán liked listening to the tales and laughed at the thought of how long it had been since he had been out and about like that. It reminded him of when he had been courting Margaret. Times were changed now, for the best probably, but it was good to hear what was going on out there.

Seán was happy at his work now - for the first time in a long while, he thought. The journey down in the morning wasn't too bad at all and he could be back home in Moy at a reasonable hour. He knew Margaret liked having him about the house and it took a bit of the pressure off her when he could help out with the boys. Life was a bit more settled, but Seán had to be planning ahead as well.

The way things were going he might have to head off again in a wee while. The work with Blackwells was great, but the new road to Armagh wasn't going to go on forever. Sooner or later they were going to get there and he needed to have something up his sleeve for when the job was finished. He remembered the talk about heading off to the rigs in the North Sea. There was plenty of work there. Four weeks on and four weeks off was the deal.

It was a terrible place and lonely too, but the money was fantastic. "Silly money" somebody had called it, and that was just about right. And with four children in the house you couldn't knock that. Anyway, he would see.

Seán heard a car pulling up in the yard outside the kitchen window and a quick toot of the horn. That must be Colm. Good man, early as well. They could make good time now. Seán looked out and saw his friend in his new Cortina. The boys at work had been slagging him about it, about him using it to chase the women. But Colm just smiled back and said nothing, like he always did.

Then Seán saw a second car pull in. Colm hopped out and went to speak to the driver. That must be the cousin Colm had talked about on Friday. He had some business to sort out down near Bessbrook Road in Newry and he wasn't sure of the way, so he was following them down as far as Newry.

Depending on how that went he might come on down to the match with them and then pick up his own car on the way back. The more the merrier, as far as Seán was concerned.

Margaret was just finishing up one of the boys' breakfasts as Seán got his blue jacket from the hall. It was a lovely day and he probably wouldn't need it, but you never know - better to be safe, just in case.

"I'm away. I'll see you tonight."

He was excited, eager for the match. Margaret watched Seán walk out the door and heard the soft thud of a car door as he got in beside this Colm he worked with. Yes, she thought as she turned back to the kitchen, she would see him tonight.

"All set then?"

"Yeah, let's get going. Is that the cousin you talked about in the other car?"

"That's him. He's going to come as far as Newry to try and sort out this deal with the shoes, and sure we'll see what happens after that."

Colm inched his car out of the yard of the Farmers' house and turned left towards Moy. It was just coming up to nine o'clock so they were still in good time. They would stop off in Newry, get Eddie sorted out, and then turn south for Dundalk.

There was hardly a car to be seen in Moy as they made their way straight through town and out the road to Armagh. Seán looked about for match traffic to see if any of the local boys were on their way yet, but there were few signs of life. Too early for those Tyrone boys, but they would get there all the same.

Colm was full of chat about the big night he'd had out in Ardboe the night before. Seán listened to the tall tales. He was a terrible man for the dances and the late nights and it didn't seem to take anything out of him. Lucky man, but wait until he had a few children in tow.

Seán had a good feeling about the day. It was a bit strange heading down without anyone really to support because Armagh weren't in it, but at this stage you had to get behind the Ulster teams, didn't you? Colm was well up for Derry, of course, and it would be interesting to see how they fared against Dublin. The Dubs were a coming team - Mullins, Brogan, Hanahoe and those boys - and they would be a fierce test for Derry.

And weren't Kerry - John Egan, Mike Sheehy and the rest of them - the team to beat anyway? They'd given Sligo an awful hammering in the first semi-final a fortnight ago, scoring something like 16 or 17 points while Sligo had only managed seven. Hopefully, Derry could avoid getting a hiding like that, whatever else.

All the talk in Moy was about this minor team of Tyrone's. They knew fine well he was an Armagh man, but they liked to wind him up.

That was the problem about living on the county border; if there was slagging to be dished out or boasting to be done, they always knew where to find you.

Still, Tyrone had the makings of a fine team - Kevin McCabe and Damien O'Hagan were the two that stood out a mile as boys for the future. Despite everything, Seán hoped they would do all right as well.

At the end of it all, they were still Ulster men when it came to days like this in Croke Park.

Des Fahy

I'm not sure where the germ of the idea for writing Death On A Country Road came from, but I do know that the story of what happened to Seán Farmer and Colm McCartney on that summer night in August 1975 on the way back from the All-Ireland football semi-final between Dublin and Derry has been part of my life for a long time.

There was something in the whole episode which was so elemental to the Northern GAA experience it couldn't but strike a deep and resounding chord.

Séamus Heaney, a second cousin of McCartney's, clearly felt that, and his poetic treatment of the killings wove them still further into the cultural fabric.

There was a terrible sense that, after the murders of these two men on their way home from a football match on a country road in Co Armagh, nothing could ever be quite the same again.

The banality of the circumstances in which the men died was chilling. Travelling to big GAA occasions in Clones or Dublin then, as now, really involved only three important considerations. One was who would drive and did they know a good place to park. The second was where would they eat later. And the third was what would the traffic be like on the way home.

Colm and Seán negotiated the first two with little or no trouble, but then found themselves facing seemingly interminable tailbacks as they tried to trace a way back home from Croke Park.

Veering off the main road at Dundalk, seemingly at Seán's suggestion, they seemed to have hit on the perfect way to by-pass the worst of the traffic.

What they had not accounted for was Loyalist gunmen were alive to the alternative route home being taken by some of the GAA travellers. The men were diverted right into a bogus security forces checkpoint.

Everyone on the roads at night coming back from high-profile GAA matches was a potential target. That was what made the effect of the murders so enduring and ensured it entered into the collective GAA consciousness.

As with every story, once I started to delve a little deeper it scurried off at many different tangents. These were men thrown together by the circumstances of work who found common ground in the GAA experience.

Seán was the father of four young boys who had spent time away in England seeking out work when there was none at home.

Colm, eight years younger, had just come back from a similar stint in England and was just about to set down more permanent roots back at home.

Bit by bit, largely from talking to their family and friends, I was able to piece together a coherent picture of the lives the men had built for themselves and of the day they had together travelling to that All Ireland semi-final.

The book is an attempt to give Seán and Colm back some of the dignity that was wrenched away from them on that isolated road.

Des Fahy is a Belfast-based barrister and former columnist with The Irish Times. Death On A Country Road, published by Mercier Press, costs €12.99 (£9.99). See www.deathonacountryroad.com