As a long-suffering Monaghan GAA supporter, I can only dream of experiencing the levels of pain endured by Mayo Gaels during my lifetime as they reach All-Ireland final after final, only always to lose.
Like most living Monaghan fans, I have never seen our (men’s) senior team on the ultimate stage. They reached that only once in GAA history, and it’s so long ago now that the game, a somewhat violent affair, was dubbed “the last battle of the Civil War”.
It was 1930 and our opponents Kerry were going for four-in-a-row. Their team included prominent anti-Treaty republicans, who had still been on the run (excellent training for football, it turned out) a few years earlier.
Monaghan, by contrast, were seen as a pro-Treaty side, thanks to Eoin O’Duffy, the Garda commissioner who was also a fine GAA administrator before his late and unfortunate flirtation with fascism.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night – Frank McNally on a heady month for Monaghan GAA supporters, 40 years ago
Murder most vulgar: Frank McNally on an infamous case of the 1820s
Boyne Companions – Frank McNally on why the road from Dublin to Slane lies mainly on a plain (allegedly)
A life’s work reviving the Irish language - Oliver O’Hanlon on Liam Ó Briain
The game was a massacre, on and off the pitch. Kerry won by 3-11 to 0-2 (an embarrassing scoreline only bettered by the second half of last month’s hurling decider). My namesake and anti-Treaty grandfather may have been among the Monaghan supporters scarred for life.
Since that dark day, we have never reached another All-Ireland senior decider. But the nearest we’ve been to experience such heights was a dizzy fortnight 40 years ago, in the two-part semi-final saga of August 1985.
[ Hot Wheels - Frank McNally on the mystery of why anyone would steal a Dublin BikeOpens in new window ]
That was against Kerry too, but this time, having had 55 years to plot revenge, our lads sprang an ambush. Defending with (almost) controlled savagery, we held the Munster aristocrats to two scores in the first half: one of those a lucky goal from a rebound off the upright.
Then of course Kerry regrouped and seemed to have done just enough in the second half to win before a famous late, long-distance equaliser by Eamonn McEneaney. His free was only 51 metres out in 1985. The distance has grown with every year since, however, and is currently estimated to have been nearer 70.
Our performance wasn’t a complete surprise. The team were reigning league champions that summer – a first national title – and although the cliché was newer then, they had been “punching above their weight” for a while.
Speaking of punches, the county was also emerging as a global sporting superpower thanks to Barry McGuigan, who had won a world featherweight boxing title two months earlier and brought Dublin to a standstill with his homecoming.
So to be a young Monaghan exile in the city then was to walk with a swagger, and to expect victory in all things, or pretend to anyway.
On the other hand, I’ll always remember a headline in the Evening Press before the first game. Kerry had been making the usual respectful noises about the opposition – “Yerra”, “Sure Lookit”, “We’re under no illusions”, etc – and the county chairman Frank King had been especially humble.
Hence the Press’s riposte: “Come off it, Frank, Kerry will murder Monaghan”. That felt personal, even if it wasn’t.
Anyway, for a fortnight after the draw, we luxuriated in newfound respect and dreams of the final. But in the replay, it was Kerry’s turn to mount an early ambush, blitzing us for 2-3 in the first quarter.
Then some good counter-insurgency work caused Kerry’s crack forward, the “Bomber” Liston, to detonate prematurely and get himself sent off. After that, we won the rest of the game 10-6. But the goals we needed never came. Kerry defended deep and held on by five points.
Part of the price I paid for attending the replay was missing the start of holiday with friends on a Shannon cruiser. So immediately after the full-time whistle I headed for Athlone, using the then popular free transport scheme known as “thumbing”.
And the desolation of that day’s defeat is all the more memorable now because it coincided with the only time in my hitchhiking career I got stranded somewhere overnight.
This was a rookie tactical error, not unlike the ones we’d made in Croker earlier. One of my lift-givers was from Mullingar and when we reached his turn-off from the old N6, he gave me a choice. I could get out here and stay on the main route west. Or I could get a bit nearer my destination but be left on a back road to Athlone.
The evening being young yet, I opted for the latter. But a stop for food meant it was almost 9pm when I started thumbing on the ominously quiet R390. An hour passed without a lift. Then two hours. Then three. I was still there at 1am, by which time people who had walked by me earlier on the way to a dance were again walking by me on the way back.
Eventually I was offered asylum in a house full of young lads who were still playing cards and drinking beer at 4am when sleep overcame me. I finally reached the Shannon next morning. In the meantime, probably the closest I’ve ever been to experiencing the plight of Mayo fans was that long, dark night of the soul in Mullingar.
