Paddy Cullen made an important penalty save in the 1974 All-Ireland SFC Final.
By Cian Murphy
When asked about his favourite moment from his glittering career, the late Hill 16 hero Anton O’Toole had no hesitation in his reply: “The 1974 All-Ireland - because we achieved the impossible dream.”
It is 50 years this September since Dublin crowned their bolt from the blue season as they stunned the GAA world by going from complete no hopers to All-Ireland champions in the space of an historic summer.
The ripple effect from that breakthrough success is still being felt today.
And as they prepare to face the Tribesmen in their All-Ireland quarter-final joust, it is worth marking the impact of that Dublin triumph over Galway in the ‘74 final, and a victory which has often been credited with rescuing the GAA in what the historian Donal Fallon likes to call ‘the Hibernian Metropolis.’
Imagine a time when being a Dublin inter-county footballer was something you strategically chose not to mention to avoid wry smiles and sympathetic glances.
Well, such was life in Dublin GAA pre the summer of 1974.
When asked as part of the Decade of the Dubs commemoration video to reflect on what it was like before the ‘74 success, defender Gay O’Driscoll revealed: “It was a time when you didn’t tell people that you played for Dublin.”
Dublin’s All-Ireland final triumph over Galway in the 1963 final had faded from memory. The county was so far off the radar by the early 70s that the first round of the Leinster championship was a hurdle they often struggled to clear.
Soccer was the popular sport of choice in Dublin. The new phenomenon of TV and the availability of English channels still on a high after England’s 1966 World Cup triumph fed the craze through Match of the Day.
Gaelic games were seen as something the Christian Brothers forced kids into playing in school. ‘Culchies’ and ‘GAH-Men’ were the same thing. ‘Bog ball and stick fighting’ was for them.
At club level the GAA had plenty of stalwarts in Dublin of course, and the GAA had a pulse in the city. But it lacked a team to harness support and there was always plenty of room up on the grassy mound of Hill 16. September showpieces at Croke Park were like the country people coming up shopping and seeing Santa at Switzers on December 8th – something other people did.
Mass unemployment and emigration made it a bleak time devoid of colour. As if things couldn’t get any worse, on the late afternoon of May 17th three bombs planted by the Loyalist UVF ripped through Parnell St, Talbot St and South Leinster St. The murder of 27 people, injury to another 300 and the later bomb blast that evening which murdered another seven civilians in Monaghan covered the Capital city in a shroud.
Dublin’s opening round game in the 1974 Championship gave no indication of the whirlwind that was about to be unleashed. Playing as a curtain raiser to a few hundred spectators at Croke Park before a Kerry-Roscommon league final replay, the Dubs saw off Wexford 3-9 to 0-6.
Dublin chairman Jimmy Grey had broken with tradition the previous summer when instead of sticking to traditional selection committees with several selectors, he appointed 1958 All-Ireland winning captain Kevin Heffernan as manager with respected footballers and coaches Donal Colfer of Synge Street and Lorcan Redmond of St Margaret’s as his lieutenants and trainers.
Heffernan, a gifted footballer, who was also a talented basketball player and fond of innovative thinking, worked with Colfer and Redmond to take a new approach. The plan for ‘74 was not set on Sam Maguire, but instead to be the fittest team in the country which they figured would instantly make them formidable and resilient. And so began a regime of physical preparation that to this day marks Dublin football teams out as being physically fit and strong.
Brian Mullins, a gifted teenager at rugby, cricket and Gaelic football, was on Hill 16 the previous summer selling match programmes. But he was plucked and installed as a new marauding midfield anchor. After having already put several years in the sky blue and having had a prolific club hurling and football career, Jimmy Keaveney was retired but coaxed back after the first round with his lethal free taking a vital asset – so too his presence in the full forward line. A Dublin team that had won the 1971 junior All-Ireland was scoured for talent.
They had good footballers, but the three wise men were looking for other traits as part of the new Right Stuff. In the years that followed the high achieving careers enjoyed by the Dubs of the 70s was held up as the type of high achieving individuals that were needed for what would become Heffo’s Army.
Having played in Division 2 that season, the team was put together slowly. Without a bus they travelled by a fleet of mourning car limousines to Kilkenny to play and were delighted to find a large crowd in attendance and enjoying a minor club hurling fixture curtain raiser. However, by then time the senior football threw in they had a few family and friends and crows for company.
A 2-11 to 1-9 second round win over Louth boosted confidence. But it wasn’t until they toppled the 1971 and 1972 All-Ireland champs from Offaly in the quarter final that people began to take notice.
Substitute Leslie Deegan bagged 1-1 for the Dubs in a 1-11 to 0-13 triumph on June 16. They had a month to prepare for the semi-final with Kildare which they won 1-13 to 0-10 and then on July 28 they saw off Meath to be crowned Leinster champions by 1-14 to 1-9.
A success starved Dublin public were interested, giddy and excited. With the Evening Press and Evening Herald newspapers happy to fan the flames of enthusiasm, the crowds were flocking. Dublin officials responded to a request from RTÉ to make their pale blue jerseys more distinctive for TV and swapped to navy shorts and navy trim.
The All-Ireland semi-final would pit them against another huge challenge in meeting reigning All-Ireland champions, Cork. Heffernan gambled on Cork underestimating his newcomers. On top of that he niggled at his players that Cork didn’t rate them. In the first championship meeting of the counties in nearly 70 years, the Dubs outsmarted the Rebels by 2-11 to 1-8.
Demand for sky blue crepe paper hats was unprecedented in the run up to the September showdown with a strongly fancied Galway. Galway, who had played in the ’71 and ’73 finals, had beaten Mayo by seven pints and saw off Roscommon by 10 in the Connacht final, then beating Donegal 3-13 to 1-14.
Seán Doherty’s huge hands at full back, the clever passing and link play of Tony Hanahoe at centre forward and the genius of Keaveney and David Hickey was backed up by an insatiable appetite for work and support play by the men in blue.
But ultimately the match would swing on a penalty. Liam Sammon, gifted Galway forward and with a perfect penalty record, was denied from the spot by the diving outstretched left hand of Dublin goalkeeper Paddy Cullen. The shot was deflected beyond the foot of the Canal End post and the Dubs would ultimately win 0-14 to 1-6.
Of course a year later the Dubs would be rocked by a new sensation with a young and largely unknown Kerry team under their own general in Mick O’Dwyer beating them in the final, but the Dubs hit back to win in 1976 and 1977 and reached the finals of 1978 and 1979 and Dublin football mania was all the rage.
‘The Jacks are Back’ read the Banners on the Hill as the footballing Jackeens were a force to be reckoned with.
In 2011 Dublin played against Kerry in their first All-Ireland final in 16 years. The gap back to the last final made Anton O’Toole reflect on a similar lean period before Dublin GAA was the entity that we know today.
“We came out of nowhere in ‘74 because we had been in Division Two and lost the league final to Kildare. We had no pedigree at All-Ireland level and so to get to the final meant all hell broke loose in the weeks preceding it.
“There was talk of record deals and all of that, but Kevin Heffernan just nipped it all in the bud and said: ‘this could be your only chance to get to an All-Ireland final and you are not going to throw it away’. That was the end of it and from then on it was just concentrate on the game,” he recalled.
“With Heffo you had to earn his respect and when you came in, he didn’t mollycoddle you. You’d to come in and prove you were able to win the ball and take any hits that were coming your way and if you didn’t have that he didn’t want to know.
“That (1974) was our greatest victory because it came from nothing. We had absolutely no expectation of winning an All-Ireland in ‘74. We played Cork in a league match early that year. They were All-Ireland champions at the time, and I never got a kick in the match, and I remember walking home up Camden Street saying: ‘I’m not going to make it here’. That was six months before we won an All-Ireland.
“That was the most special year for me, because we achieved the impossible dream.”
Although Dublin would go long stretches between Sam Maguire from 1983 to 1995 and from then until 2011, the GAA in Dublin has never been written off to the the extent it was pre ’74. If anything, the legacy of the ‘74 success and its impact on the city played an important role in the GAA supporting coaching and games initiatives that tried to support the surging population and suburban sprawl of the city and county.
In the years that quickly followed the Dublin win over Galway 50 years ago, new GAA clubs blossomed in Templeogue, Naomh Mearnóg, Naomh Olaf, Naomh Jude , Naomh Peregrine and Naomh Barróg to name a few and which saw the GAA move beyond inner city schools to new land and new opportunities north and south of the Liffey.
Paddy Cullen’s left hand landed the Sam Maguire and the Dubs were born 50 years ago.
From there being a time when you didn’t tell people you were a Dublin footballer, the landscape was never the same again. Perhaps the greatest legacy is that the dream of winning the All-Ireland never looked so impossible again.
