When they say a team’s name is on the cup, it can seem like an exaggeration, but not in the case of Kerry football champions Dingle. Not alone did it appear that their first All-Ireland senior club football title had been preordained, but the method of winning it had been prescribed.
Having recovered from situations identifiable on the spectrum of sporting challenge as between daunting and impossible, they overcame big deficits in both the All-Ireland semi-final and Munster final to leave Dublin champions Ballyboden and their Cork counterparts St Finbarr’s dazed and confused as to how they had lost.
To that uncomprehending list can be added St Brigid’s of Roscommon. Having pulled a spectacular equaliser out of thin air to force the match to extra time in front of a 25,392 crowd at Croke Park, they looked in better shape to push on and add their second title but again, the men from west Kerry were having none of it.
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Mikey Geaney, a veteran replacement now living in Dublin, provided two grace notes in the last three minutes of extra time: a crucial intervention when trailing by a point to turn over Brian Stack’s attacking possession in the 79th minute and then, with the match level and penalties beckoning, he ran on to land the winner in the 82nd.
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The drama wasn’t quite done. Referee Martin McNally blew what everyone thought was the final whistle, except it wasn’t; it was a free in for a technical foul. Winning captain Paul Geaney exultantly blasted the ball wide and there it ended.
He explained the decision to ignore the score.
“Colin Trainor [Kerry analyst] would be proud of me with that one. We’ve had discussions about that and he reckons that players don’t take into account the probability of the crossbars and stuff.”
So, percentages played, he got to raise the Andy Merrigan trophy.
It was a phenomenal contest, the advantage tilting one way and then another with big momentum switches along the road. Some of the Brigid’s players could have done no more, chiefly Ruaidhrí Fallon, who got up from wing back for 1-6, including two two-pointers.
“That was going to be the way of the game, ebbing and flowing ... It’s just when time is ticking down and you see fellas starting to go down with cramp, it’s like, we have to make hay when we get chances here.
“Most of the time, when you get up, you don’t execute, but we executed every single time we went up, which gave us a chance. Then Tom [O’Sullivan] took the game by the scruff again and we saw the inside of his boot today.”
O’Sullivan delivered another big performance, combining his scoring acumen with defensive duties, kicking five points in the process, including two to tie up the match in the dying moments.
“He was cramping up,” said his captain, “and he had the composure to go past fellas and slot them over. Didn’t drop them short, didn’t put them wide, his accuracy was still in and he dragged us over.”
Mark O’Connor has been on a particularly noteworthy journey, from Australia where he plays in the AFL with Geelong, several of whose players came to support him at Croke Park.
“It means the world,” he remarked. “As Paul said, the club is everything. With the stuff of inter-county fellas who will come to the weddings and all that kind of stuff, which is great, but it is the Dingle boys that will be under the coffin someday. It just means the world.
“We have such a small population but it’s a quality population. It was just great to see all those faces in the stand today. It means the world.”
For Brigid’s manager Anthony Cunningham, performance was no metric of consolation for a team that also lost the final to a late score two years ago,
“Yeah, it was a brilliant club game but the finals are there to win. We don’t really care how good or bad the game was, as long as you win. Margins are so small and if you play that game 101 times, again, in your mind, when you look at it back, yeah, what can you say?”
In the hurling final, Waterford’s Ballygunner pulled away to defeat Loughrea and seal a second All-Ireland in five years. Platformed by a terrific display from goalkeeper Stephen O’Keeffe, the Gunners prevailed after a few years of coming up short in their quest for another title.
Former Wexford and Kildare football manager Jason Ryan took over this season and appears to have turned the key to unlock that ambition – not that he accepts that.
“You often hear about managers coming in, but in Ballygunner, the senior players create the environment and set the standards. It’s an ideal situation.
“When you hear the high performance teams, be it the All Blacks in their pomp, it’s the players that create the environment and the Ballygunner players deserve the credit for doing that.”
