The county’s emergence in the 1960s was a seismic event

IT USED to be a staple of big-match programmes: looking back through the years in convenient, quarter-century intervals. The idea appealed to hard-core nostalgia but its random nature struggled for topicality in football All-Irelands (apart from Kerry who could easily have been in attendance at Croke Park in late September on at least one (if not each) of the highlighted occasions 25, 50, 75 and 100 years previously).

There has been a bit more noise about such anniversaries this year with the golden jubilee of Down’s first All-Ireland win being commemorated with gusto. And it’s not hard to understand why they were one of those teams who stand out as time relentlessly pushes on, decade by decade.

At a reception held at lunchtime on the Friday of the GAA annual congress, hosted last month in Newcastle, county Down, the 1960 team were celebrated. Guest of honour was President Mary McAleese, for whom this was an evocative event.

For everyone involved in Gaelic games in the six cross-border counties of Ulster, the emergence of that Down team was a seismic occurrence.

Ulster and Connacht were late arrivals to All-Ireland success and for much of the first 50 years of the association’s history these triumphs were the preserve of Munster and Leinster counties.

Even when the picture expanded it was left to Cavan to represent Ulster at the higher reaches of the game. Virtually monopolising the province, Cavan won five All-Irelands in the space of their 20 years at the top, 1933-’52.

That must have been encouraging for the nine counties but there was a qualitative difference between developing Gaelic games in the counties across the border and in the southern enclaves of the province.

Former Northern Ireland deputy first minister Séamus Mallon, has often recounted the story of how he accompanied his father to their own county’s first All-Ireland, Armagh’s agonisingly close encounter with Kerry in 1953. They missed a penalty – as weirdly they would do again in both the finals of 1977 and 2002 although on the latter occasion revenge was sweetly taken against the Kingdom – and lost.

According to Mallon, his father hurled his cap to the ground and stamped on it, tears rolling down his face – it was the first time he had ever seen him cry.

Tyrone had a good team in the mid-1950s and Derry actually did beat Kerry in the 1958 semi-final only to fall to Dublin in the final. By the time the 1960s arrived, even Down had lost their first senior All-Ireland semi-final, against Galway.

There’s nothing new in the theory that the success of Ulster teams in the early 1990s raised the morale of northern nationalists and created the confidence that lent momentum to the peace process.

Ironically, given the awful decades that were in store, there was something of that optimism in the air in the early 1960s. The thaw in relations between Stormont and Merrion Street, most vividly evident in the meetings of the respective heads of government Seán Lemass and Terence O’Neill, came just a couple of short years after Down had transformed football with the sheer novelty of their achievements.

Mallon has also spoken of the excitement he felt, even as an Armagh man, at the sight of Down bringing record crowds to Croke Park, taking on and humbling the might of Kerry. Suddenly it was as if the whole association was properly integrated by equal access to optimism and ambition.

I remember talking to a hotelier in Down 20 years ago and he remembered motoring as a young man down to Dublin and not just for matches in Croke Park but to attend dances at weekends. The island belonged to everyone.

President McAleese touched on this in Newcastle but also at greater length during an interview when she was still Pro-vice chancellor of Queens with Eamonn Rafferty for his book Talking Gaelic – Leading personalities on the GAA.

In this she talked about meeting Seán O’Neill, who 10 years ago was selected on the GAA’s Team of the Millennium, at a wedding.

“In the 1960s, Seán was one of our heroes, someone who gave shape to the importance of our culture, of winning and feeling good about ourselves.

“Those early days of Gaelic football success were the perfect contrast to the culture of suspicion that seemed to envelop the game in the North.”

Speaking of Down’s 1991 success – in its way as epochal within the game as the 1960 breakthrough in that the Munster-Leinster duopoly had reasserted itself for the previous 23 years – she recalled the impact of that later All-Ireland when the team, complete with local heroes, arrived at the town where she then lived.

“We had won for Rostrevor, won for Down, won for Ireland and won for nationalism. We had gone to Dublin and come back with the Sam Maguire, which every county in Ireland aspires to having and here it was coming up the streets of Rostrevor with big Liam Austin, smiling from ear to ear along with Pete McGrath.”

Fifty years ago this coming Friday, Down raised the curtain on their momentous year by defeating Cavan in the NFL final, having disposed of Kerry in the semi-final.

The crowd of 49,451 at Croke Park was a then record – which Down would incrementally raise in the following four years to the 70,126 figure that still stands – for a league final. In the previous two years both Kerry and Dublin had gone on to win the All-Ireland after first winning the league and so the form had to be taken seriously.

Down brought another record crowd, 87,768, to the 1960 All-Ireland and the following year, when retaining the title against Offaly, topped even that with 90,556 – an attendance that has never been equalled.

President McAleese said in Newcastle that she hadn’t given up hope of receiving Down as All-Ireland winners at Áras an Uachtaráin at some stage in her tenure, which ends next year.

Fifty years ago her predecessor Eamon de Valera did just that and, according to contemporary reports, reminded the Down footballers he had once been an MP for South Down.

On their way home, the team stopped in the Ballymascanlon Hotel on the Carlingford Road where the Sam Maguire was filled with champagne, something that won’t be happening if the last motion passed at the Newcastle congress – to turn cups into colanders so they can’t be filled with alcohol – is eventually given effect.

It was cruelly observed at the time that the proponents of this strange proposal, Cavan, may have given up on having the opportunity again to pour anything into the Sam Maguire. But Down probably haven’t.