1998 All-Ireland Football Final

GALWAY 1-14 KILDARE 1-10

By John Harrington

The night before the 1998 All-Ireland SFC Final between Galway and Kildare, Padraic Joyce and Michael Donnellan were watching Match of the Day in their Berkley Court Hotel room.

The highlights of Newcastle United’s 2-0 victory over Nottingham Forest featured a moment when Alan Shearer was put through on goal, but had his shot saved by Forest ‘keeper Dave Beasant.

Donnellan and Joyce agreed he should have tried to round Beasant instead of shooting, and promised that if either of them had a similar opportunity the following day against Kildare that’s exactly what they’d try to do.

Visualisation was a mental tool the Galway players had been encouraged to develop by team manager, John O’Mahony.

Sports psychology was more or less unheard of in Gaelic Games at the time, but O’Mahony was a cutting-edge manager who left no stone unturned to ensure his team was as best prepared as they possibly could.

He’d recruited a man by the name of Bill Cogan, a Scot who worked in human resources with Digital in Galway, to improve the mental strength of the Galway players through the power of visualisation.

And before that All-Ireland Final against Kildare, he also brought in Irish rugby international, Keith Wood, to further emphasise the power of being mentally prepared for a big challenge.

Before the Championship campaign started the Galway team had spent a weekend together in the Glenroyal Hotel in Maynooth where, among other team-building exercises, they’d watched video clips from the 'Living with Lions' documentary to illustrate the themes of hard work and team-spirit.

Keith Wood had been the star of many of those clips, so, when Galway returned to the Glenroyal for their All-Ireland Final training camp, O’Mahony uplifted his players by bringing in Wood for a surprise team-talk.

“That Sunday morning we brought the players into a meeting room, turned off the lights, and played some of the video clips from the Living with Lions documentary again that featured Keith,” recalled O’Mahony in his autobiography, Keeping the Faith.

“While the players watched, we brought Keith into the room without them noticing so that when the video was finished and the lights were turned on he was sitting there in front of them.

“There was an audible intake of breath from all of the players. Our surprise couldn’t have worked out any better. Keith spoke to them about how to best prepare for big matches.

“He described how Irish rugby teams would almost tear the heads of each other in the dressing room before matches, and he described that as emotional over-arousal. Ireland would stay with teams for 60 minutes before fading away, and Keith was convinced that was because they had expended so much energy in the dressing room before the game.

“He really put a big emphasis on how important it was for our lads to stay cool, calm and collected on the day of the match.

“He also spoke about his own background in Gaelic games, and his whole talk was really inspirational. He really connected with the players, and stayed on with us for dinner afterwards. The lads were hanging on his every word, and afterwards I had a really positive feeling about how the whole thing went.

“Our preparations could not have gone better.”

Kildare’s preparations for the All-Ireland Final, in contrast, couldn’t have gone any worse.

Their Leinster Final win and subsequent All-Ireland semi-final victory over Kerry saw the county go half-crazy with hype in the weeks before the All-Ireland Final.

It was difficult for their players to escape it, but what hurt their preparations even more were injuries to key players.

Ronan Quinn was ruled out with injury, Niall Buckley hadn’t been fit enough to train properly for weeks, while Anthony Rainbow and Brian Lacey were nursing hamstring niggles.

Then, two days before the Final, Glen Ryan pulled a thigh muscle while playing golf.

"When I saw the way things were going in the last few days before the match, I knew our luck had run out and that, barring a miracle, we couldn't win," admitted Kildare manager Mick O’Dwyer in his own autobiography.

"We should never have played Buckley. He was clearly unfit but we gambled on his fitness and made a serious mistake.

"While it was, of course, a joint decision by the four selectors, I must accept most of the responsibility.

“I had been faced with a similar situation in the 1976 All-Ireland final against Dublin when we took a chance on the fitness of Jimmy Deenihan and Ger O'Keeffe with disastrous results."

O’Mahony knew exactly what was going on in the Kildare camp thanks to a network of ‘spies’ he’d cultivated over the years to help give him the inside track on opposition teams.

“We knew that Ryan pulled a muscle in his thigh while out golfing on the Friday before the All-Ireland,” revealed O’Mahony.

“They did their best to keep that under wraps, but I had such good contacts in Kildare that he was hardly off the course before I had been given the news.

“I was revelling in the intrigue that you always get before an All-Ireland final. Both teams are always trying to get the inside-track on their opponents, and we definitely did a good job of doing that.

“My contacts were on duty at all of their training sessions, including their last one.

“They had practised penalties that day and the feedback I received was so detailed that I knew who had taken them all and what corner of the net they had shot into.

“We were told they had booked RTE’s Michael Lyster to be the Master of Ceremonies at what was meant to be their post-All-Ireland celebration banquet.

“Apparently, a car was due to whisk him to Kildare after the match, and this sort of information was great ammunition for us in terms of firing up our lads.

“As well as trying to unearth all the information we could about Kildare, we also made a point of putting out some disinformation about ourselves.

“We let it be known that we were staying in The Burlington Hotel and even had the hotel erect a big sign welcoming the Galway football team.

“We wanted all the supporters and particularly the media to think that was our base so they would congregate there on the day before the match, when in reality we were staying in The Berkley Court Hotel.”

O’Mahony’s confidence looked well founded when Galway surged into an early three-point lead in the All-Ireland Final, but for the remainder of the half it was Kildare who played the better football.

A Dermot Earley goal put them in control, and had they taken another goal-chance before half-time they might have buried Galway.

Instead Padraic Joyce knocked over a free that reduced the gap to three points at the break.

O’Mahony took the starting 15 into the warm-up room at halftime, gave them a pep-talk, and then left the players alone to talk through what they had done wrong in the first-half and what they needed to improve in the second-half.

Then came a moment that seemed to give the give them a vital psychological lift.

“When the players emerged from that room, the corridor that led back to the pitch was lined on both sides by our 15 substitutes,” recalled O’Mahony.

“They did that off their own bat. There was no instruction from me. It was a spontaneous gesture, but it could not have been organised better.

“It just sent out the most positive body-language possible. I’m sure when the lads ran down that corridor with their friends and teammates shouting encouragement they must have been bursting out of their skins.

“Our credo all year had been that everyone had something to contribute to the cause, whether they were on the field or not.

“This was the perfect illustration that there had been a total buy-in to that mind-set. As the starting 15 ran back out onto the pitch, it was as if they were taking the baton off our subs and were ready to run.”

Ja Fallon kicked a brilliant point from under the Hogan stand to set Galway on their way, and then came the goal that really shifted the balance of power.

John Divilly won a free and immediately launched a kick deep into enemy territory where it was won by Michael Donnellan.

He had the presence of mind to immediately put Padraic Joyce through on goal with a defence-splitting pass.

Joyce was faced by Christy Byrne in a one-on-one situation and did better than Alan Shearer had done the previous afternoon against Dave Beasant.

Rather than shoot on sight he had the coolness to sell a dummy that took him past Byrne and allowed him to kick the ball into the empty net.

“It was a special moment,” John Divilly told GAA.ie.

“We would have been friends anyways and we still are good friends.

“Mikey Donnellan would slag me sometimes that he knew where I was kicking it but I didn't know where I was kicking it, it would be good banter.”

Galway were on fire now as Fallon kicked another point and then Sean O’Domhnaill landed a monster from around 50 yards out. In the space of 12 minutes the Tribesmen had turned the game on its head.

“There is nothing more satisfying for a manager than to watch your team suddenly click and blow the opposition away,” said O’Mahony.

“For it to happen in an All-Ireland final is something very special indeed. The 12 minutes of football that Galway produce at the start of that second half was as close to perfection as you will ever see.

“Ja Fallon suddenly came to life when he kicked a brilliant point from under the Hogan stand. That was the first spark. Almost immediately, the whole team just caught fire.

“The goal that put us in the driving seat was a thing of beauty and a perfect example of the philosophy that our style of football was based on."

O’Mahony had the luxury of being able to relax in the final few minutes of the match safe in the knowledge that his team were about to be crowned All-Ireland champions.

“I enjoyed a couple of minutes of pure bliss on the sideline,” he said. “I had been at all the great Kerry v Dublin matches of the 1970s when Mick O’Dwyer and Kevin Heffernan had pitted their wits against one another.

“In the closing minutes of those matches I always closely watched the manager who was about to win, and I tried to imagine how he felt in those moments? It was always my dream to experience that sensation for myself.

“Now, here it was happening for real. It was just heaven on earth. I’ll remember it to my dying day.”

So will every Galway supporter who was in the stadium that day.