The 1984 Centenary Cup Roscommon hurling team pictured at a function to honour them in the Abbey Hotel, Roscommon.
By Kevin Egan
It’s a November night in Athleague, half a mile down the road from Waldron Park, the home of Roscommon hurling. The village is quiet, with no trace of the madness that took over 40 years ago, when Wexford and Cork came to visit for two special Sundays in April.
For yours truly, the first memory I have of seeing hurling was in 1984, but as an Offaly native, it wasn’t the Centenary Cup. My recollection is that of being six years old, watching the All-Ireland final of that year with my babysitter, while my parents were in Semple Stadium.
Expectations were high going into that final, which in the history of Offaly GAA, is not usually a good thing. Sure enough the game was dismal from a Faithful County perspective, with Seánie O’Leary scoring two goals in a comprehensive 3-16 to 1-12 win. That result no doubt played a part in how Maureen, a local teenager from down the road who was always very good to the Egan kids, inadvertently taught me a few new words that probably would have been best kept out of a child’s vernacular for another few years.
The story of how Roscommon hurling was on the crest of a wave at this time, just promoted out of Division Three and about to enter into a run of causing no end of problems for some very established powers, is not one with which I’m as familiar as I’d like, but four members of the panel – Frank Harkins, Kieran Farrell, Anthony Flaherty and team captain Frank Carty are about to relay it.
It's no surprise that all four are keen to refer to the chemistry and camaraderie within the group, notwithstanding a tale from Flaherty about how his accidental breaking of Carty’s hurl forced the premature end of a frosty training session one night! But even if none of them said a word, the tenor of the conversation would tell a lot.
Each brings their own dynamic to the discussion, and it’s immediately apparent that a dressing room with this energy would have the world of potential.
It wouldn’t have been hard to identify Frank Carty as the captain, and someone who would have driven high standards across the board. His recall of games and scores is meticulous, and while we’re here to tell the story of Roscommon’s 3-5 to 2-7 win over Wexford – a victory that led the Roscommon Champion of the time to declare April 15th as “the greatest day in Roscommon hurling history” – he speaks both of the confidence that was in the group (as they all do) but also of the recognition that it was a game where things could all have gone pear-shaped very easily, if they weren’t tuned in and ready to go.
“Of course there was a fear that they could destroy you, they had the firepower and the hurling skill to do that, so for everyone on the panel, it was a huge challenge” he said.
Frank Carty accepts the man of match award after Four Roads defeated Pádraig Pearses in the 1988 Roscommon Senior Hurling final.
It's easy to imagine that it’s precisely because of that attitude, that Roscommon turning up undercooked or unprepared wasn’t a consideration.
Like any good corner-forward, Anthony Flaherty understands the importance of small but crucial moments. Any player of that era who spent most of their playing time with 13 or 15 on their back knew that ultimately, they would be defined by their ability to be ready to pounce when it mattered. A quiet performance with just five or six possessions wasn’t a problem if those possessions yielded 1-3, after all.
He talks of the importance of Jackie Kilroy’s early goal, of a puckout battle with Mick Jacob that yielded a crucial free, and certain big plays that electrified the packed house in his home club.
He also acknowledged that “That same 15 nearly started and finished every game, I often wondered how some of the lads who weren’t getting on used to put up with it”, and for a lot of those big occasions, including that Wexford game, Kieran Farrell was one of those who was on the sideline, always ready but not always deployed.
As anyone who has soldiered in a dressing room will tell you however, there’s a lot more to any successful team than just being the player that picks off the glamour scores. Throughout the conversation, it’s notable that it’s the former Tremane player and current stalwart for Oran and Coiste na nÓg Ros Comáin, is keen to make sure that every player is acknowledged. A tip of the cap is also given to the iconic figures of Roscommon Hurling – Tommy Healy, Johnny Haughey, Mickey Naughton, Mattie Nevin - all men who were driving forces on the Roscommon Hurling board at the time and vital to keeping the show on the road.
Where Kieran also comes into his own is when the topic of Wexford’s state of mind and body comes up. Only the men of the Model County will ever really know the truth of how seriously they took the challenge of Roscommon, and if the stories of their embrace of the Abbey Hotel’s legendary hospitality and vitality the night before were true.
Certainly, the repercussions were felt down in the sunny south east, with a county board meeting scheduled for the Thursday night afterwards to discuss the fallout, a meeting at which three players attended to tell the story of the trip and one which culminated in manager Christy Keogh and his coach Harry O’Connor stepping away.
But as Farrell put it, referring to the team’s record in subsequent seasons:
“Dublin weren’t drunk, Waterford weren’t drunk, Kerry weren’t drunk! It was no fluke”.
Certainly some Wexford players might have decided that admitting to excessive drinking was an easier pill for the county to swallow than the idea that a team that played Limerick a week previously in the National League Final might have simply been outhurled by a team that came out of Division Three, but either way, Farrell wasn’t going to have the achievements of his group disparaged.
L-R: Frank Carty, Anthony Flaherty, Frank Harkins, Kieran Farrell in conversation with Kevin Egan, talking about Roscommon's win over Wexford in 1984.
So that’s the structure, the sharpness and the solidarity boxes ticked. All that remains is the spark.
“I remember the Wexford manager, he was sitting on a fold-out chair by my goal-post, he said it was easy beat a crowd of drunken men! I said, drunk or sober, we’d beat ye!” says Frank Harkins, goalkeeper, and part of the hurling infrastructure in Ballygar throughout the 1980s and for a long time afterwards.
That answers that.
Like many hurling goalkeepers, there might have been a touch of madness in the Tipperary native, but if the men around him came alive with joy and enthusiasm in 1984 the same way they do now, then Harkins was clearly a secret weapon of sorts.
“I refereed in Galway for 13 years, and that was far more dangerous and I'd say I got in more rows than I ever got playing the game” he says, though other tales about altercations with opposing forwards that had the temerity to trespass on his territory would suggest that the academic caveat of ‘citation needed’ is warranted here.
As he says himself however, once he went in between the posts he switched on, and the long career that Harkins enjoyed with club and county, not to mention the number of newspaper headlines that highlight the crucial role that he played in countless big games, would suggest that there was more to the custodian than just boundless resources of positive energy.
Over an hour, and more, the ebbs and flows of the game, from Kilroy’s early goal, through to Wexford taking the lead going into the closing stages, and Paddy Dolan’s winning goal, are all discussed. There are a few slightly different takes on how the game progressed, but this is not a time for nitpicking, because the sense of pride of place, of satisfaction at having been part of this momentous day for Roscommon hurling, and of genuine appreciation for having been part of the group, is absolutely palpable.
We’ll let Frank Carty’s words do the talking here.
“When the final whistle went, to be wearing a Roscommon jersey out there after beating Wexford, it was some achievement for a Roscommon team, and it was something that sent shockwaves throughout the hurling community. It was all the talk in Kilkenny, in Cork, all across Galway.
“That set up a huge prize for the next day, It meant you had legends of the game like John Fenton and Jimmy Barry Murphy coming to Athleague. Really and truly it was a dream time for us. That game against Cork was a serious game of hurling as well, it was tight at half-time with only three or four points in it, we were hurling really well.
“They went on to win the Centenary Cup and win the All-Ireland that year, but to see that red and white jersey running out onto the pitch in Athleague was something really special for all Roscommon hurling people”.
“That put the foundation in for us to believe in ourselves, I could certainly feel what it did for me to have been part of that and to have gone out as Roscommon captain and been part of a team that hurled like that against two of the best teams in country.
“The Wexford game gave us a bit of status and belief that we could hurl at that level. We had a fantastic win over Dublin at Athleague, and Dublin were going nicely at the time. We beat Waterford as well, and I think that the Wexford and Cork games gave us what we needed to win games like that”.
Naturally, the discussion veered into the games that followed, both those big wins, and indeed the near misses, including the potential of promotion to Division One that was spurned by a poor showing in what was effectively a promotion decider against Westmeath in Mullingar, and the group’s failure to pick up an All-Ireland ‘B’ title.
But it never takes long for the conversation to come back to April 15th 1984, and the Centenary Cup tie that arguably made more headlines than any game played in that special one off competition.
I was lucky enough to learn a lot about this special part of Roscommon’s GAA heritage and tradition from this conversation, both from what I was told, and from the unmistakable chemistry that these men still share. If you were there, you’d have felt it, but it feels right to let Frank Harkins’ description of how everyone in Athleague felt at that one magical moment.
“What I enjoyed mostly was after the match, when the whistle was blown, it took us one hour and ten minutes to get into the dressing room. You had people hugging you, shaking hands with you, beating you on the top of the head they were so delighted! It was like winning an All-Ireland!”