Meath and the Odyssey of the Christy Ring Cup
Failure to compute score denied Meath of the most momentous moment in its history, in one of the GAA’s most enthralling recent epics.
4th June 2016 — Christy Ring Cup Final, Croke Park
It was only really in the car home, when we heard it on the radio, when the magnitude of it all really sank in.
So many times in childhood we’d driven home from Croke Park, buoyed by hearing Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh’s post-match report outlining the heroic exploits of Meathmen who had nudged their way towards more silverware. In more recent years we’d become altogether too used to hearing successive RTÉ reporters talking about how facile Meath had been in losing to Dublin, or worse, a ‘lesser’ county like Wexford or (God forbid) Westmeath.
But here we were, driving past Busáras with Des Cahill on the radio, talking about what a stunning evening it had been for Meath, surprise winners of the Christy Ring Cup with a one-point win over Antrim, with the sort of late comeback that we’d become used to during our footballing heyday.
At one stage Antrim had led by nine points and it seemed like any notions of getting promoted to the Liam MacCarthy tier of hurling were fanciful at best. But a brief rally before half-time planted a seed of hope, and a flurry of second-half scores had created the sort of momentum that the men in saffron simply didn’t have an answer to.
Meath — as the man would say, hardly a hurling stronghold — were lifting All-Ireland hurling honours in Croke Park. The band of loyal Meath hurling followers, maybe a thousand strong, could barely believe it.
Sadly, neither could Antrim, and neither could the press box. Oddly, for a brief period, neither could the Meath management.
Somewhere in the frenzy of second-half scores, some of us noticed everything was not quite what it seemed. Only the lower section of the Hogan Stand was open on the day, and some of us were sat far back enough in the seats that we could see the TG4 coverage on the feed above our heads. With around three minutes to go, the scoreline in the corner of the screen carried a different total to the Croke Park scoreboards. We were confused and, for a few minutes as we entered the closing stages, completely unsure as to what the true state of affairs was. The points were being scored with such ferocious pace — and we were so drunk with the possibility that fucking hell! We might actually win this thing! — that we simply couldn’t keep tabs on the true score.
The Croke Park scoreboards were eventually adjusted, and after a few minutes the TG4 one was amended to agree with it. To be honest, we just had to trust them. So many scores had been slotted over in the meantime that, without a pen and paper, it was simply impossible to know for sure. Surely, somewhere in GAA officialdom, a man with a suit was keeping an authoritative tally.
And so we found ourselves in the lower Hogan Stand, watching Sean Quigley nail a point in injury time to win it for Meath — the most unlikely hurling comeback our county was ever going to have, and All-Ireland silverware in our hands.
I saw grown men cry that day. Grown men who barely shed tears at family funerals were openly weeping, too distracted by this foreign sensation to bother wiping them away.
This can’t be right. We’re Meath hurling people. We don’t get days like this.
And yet there’s the big screen in Croke Park, with the Meath crest, the words ‘Christy Ring Cup Final’, and the banner: Comhghairdeas.
Fucking hell. We did win! Even Des Cahill said so.
One of the great fallacies of GAA among the general public is that most counties are perceived to be strong at only one code or the other: that the people of Donegal have no time for hurling; or that a Kilkennyman, on sight of a size 4 Gaelic football, would be quicker to assume he had travelled to Lilliput and that this was a giant novelty sliothar. The perception is that only a handful of strong dual counties — Cork, Dublin, Galway — are competitive in both codes, or even care about them in significant measure.
Those from the counties will know it’s not at all true. You need only look at the Tipperary footballers — and how honestly gutted they were to lose to Mayo in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final — to see that every county has its own pocket of loyalists to the minority code.
There’s a few such pockets in Meath. My father is from one (Kiltale), my mother from another (Rathmolyon); we grew up in my mother’s native parish and moved to my father’s when I was in college. And yes, of course we followed the footballers to Croke Park and shared their joys in 1996 and 1999, and cried bitter tears when Galway snuck through the back door in 2001 to deny Sean Boylan his third Sam Maguire in six seasons. Sure why wouldn’t we? They were our men.
It’s not as if we didn’t have history as football followers either. I was born in late 1986; the three of the next four All-Irelands were contested between Meath and Cork. One of the first things I was ever taught to say, in the run up to the 1988 final, was “Up Meath, down Tompkins”, in a cute infantile swipe at Cork’s star player.
But success breeds glory, glory breeds interest, interest breeds passion, and passion breeds heritage. Meath had always had strong football teams, with three All-Irelands before the Sean Boylan era and four more under his reign. In the era before the back door, when provincial championships carried much more weight, the near-annual clash between Meath and Dublin was one of the biggest draws of the summer.
Success, in time, breeds heritage. But in Meath the football heritage lies with the county. The hurling heritage lies with the clubs. And that, in turn, infuses the DNA of the Meath county board. Hurling is more than an afterthought, but less than a priority. It is a secondary project, with a secondary presence in the minds of those who lead.
How do we know? The only silverware won by a Meath side, in the five years after that Joe Sheridan goal, were four Kehoe Cups — the second-tier Leinster pre-season hurling competition. Most of the players involved haven’t had a sniff of their medals.
The Meath senior footballers, currently in near-permanent residence in Division 2 of the football league, are almost always given overnight accommodation on the Saturday before a major match on a Sunday — sometimes even when the match is a local derby with Kildare or Louth. When foul weather meant the postponement of a League match away to Donegal a few years ago, money was found for a second overnight stay to accommodate the refixture.
But in the heritage-free world of National Hurling League Division 2B, where the hurlers have been similarly rooted for a few years, games aren’t held in better-known venues like Clones, Ballybofey or Salthill. They’re held off-piste, in exotic climes like Owenbeg or Arklow, in the dominant grounds of the small ball. (Meath are no exception: most hurling matches are staged in Trim.)
A couple of years ago, Meath faced a make-or-break League fixture against Down — held in Ballycran, a journey of three hours or more, where the shortest journey literally includes a boat ride — the money could not be found for an overnight stay. The hurlers duly came up short, missed out on another League final, another opportunity for promotion.
That’s been an all too frustrating factor of Meath’s hurling fate in recent years: either losing the occasional Division 2B final, or narrowly failing to qualify for it at all; or falling short in a Christy Ring Cup semi-final. The usual fate of a modern Meath hurling season is to set everything up brilliantly, but lose one League match and fail to make the final, or to win the opening two Christy Ring games, but lose in the semi-final where there is no second chance. (Usually to Kildare. It’s always bloody Kildare.)
2016 was already remarkable because Meath had actually qualified for the final. And now, improbably, it had won.
It was perhaps half an hour after his first joyous announcement that Des Cahill returned to the Christy Ring Cup final. Antrim, he suggested with a note of mystic caution, were set to appeal the result on the basis that the scoreline had been wrongly calculated.
Uh-oh. It was hardly a bolt from the blue, but it was a dagger. An hour ago, men were openly crying at a scene they never thought they’d see. It now turned out they mightn’t actually have seen it at all.
Incredibly, both the TG4 and Croke Park scoreboards were wrong — for independent reasons. With ten minutes to go, the stadium scoreboard incorrectly added a point to Meath for an Antrim score. Two minutes later, after a point by Antrim’s Niall McKenna (number 9), TG4 cut to an image of Meath’s Stephen Morris (number 9). The confused graphics operator assumed the TV feed was showing the scorer, and gave the point to the wrong team.
In short, both the GAA and TG4 had given Meath a point they never scored. When concern was raised, and corrective action taken, the stadium scoreboard gave Antrim back its point but never deducted it from Meath. TG4, assuming the stadium scoreboard was authoritative, then corrected their graphics to match. Both, therefore, had given Meath one more point than they had actually scored — and the one-point victory was, in fact, a draw.
The GAA-watching public were understandably aggrieved at Meath, pointing to the similar furore at the end of the 2010 Leinster football final when Joe Sheridan’s nakedly illegal goal granted Meath a two-point victory. Meath had refused to offer a replay at the time — believing that, if there had been a grievous officiating error, it was the duty of the Leinster Council to order it. The Leinster Council were reluctant to do so, knowing it meant every game in future was subject to a replay if a referee had cocked up. The lingering public image, however, was of Meath grabbing an undeserved trophy and brazenly refusing to give it back. 2016 suddenly bore similar hallmarks.
The lesser-reported tale was that Meath too had concerns about the scoreline. With eight minutes to play, Meath’s backroom team had heard there was a dispute, and asked the sideline official to query the scoreline with the referee. The referee replied to say that the stadium scoreboards were correct, and whatever TG4’s screen was showing, it must have been wrong.
Evidently the Antrim players and staff thought so too: at the final whistle there were no frantic appeals to the referee, no hysterics, no protests. Meath captain James Toher had collected the cup while the Saffrons sat dejected on the Croke Park turf. And when rumours of a scoreline dispute were raised in the dressing rooms afterwards, Meath simply shrugged them off: the referee had already assured them everything was fine. Besides, Meath also believed themselves to have been robbed of a legitimate point in the first half which was waved wide. There were complaints that Hawk-Eye should have been consulted; it was forgotten that the Hawk-Eye operator always intervenes to tell the ref if a review is needed anyway.
On the Tuesday night the GAA’s Central Competitions Control Committee decided the matter needed to be taken out of Meath’s hands, and a replay was ordered for the following Saturday — not for Croke Park, but rather for Páirc Esler in Newry. Meath immediately cried fowl: a lot of the team weren’t going to be around. These are young fellas: when they know for certain they have no championship hurling for the summer, they arrange J-1 visas. James Toher was due to leave only four days after picking up the trophy.
More pertinently, most of the squad had spent the weekend on the piss, celebrating a landmark victory and an unexpected ticket into the Leinster championship for 2017.
This was the big day Meath had been anticipating for so long. It had been in Croke Park. The referee awarded them the fixture. There was a trophy. Grown men had cried. It was unthinkable to take the trophy back off them and ask them to win it back at four days’ notice, in a stadium that few would consider neutral.
The replay eventually took place back in Croke Park three weeks after the drawn game, on June 25th. This time there was no TG4 scoreboard error — there were no TG4 cameras. The game clashed with the final weekend of the Under-20 Rugby World Cup in which Ireland had been doing well. The fact there was no DVD is a national tragedy.
25th June 2016 — Christy Ring Cup Final, Croke Park
The second game began in similar fashion to the first. Antrim raced into an early lead, scoring 1–2 in the first three minutes, and were eight points ahead at half time. There was even another controversial moment: an early point was originally waved over by an umpire, who stopped a moment later and decided to consult Hawk-Eye instead. Referee Cathal McAllister over-ruled him, decided Hawk-Eye would not be consulted, and awarded the point.
But, channelling their football heroes of old — and the memory of three weeks previous — back came Meath. The Royals scored 1–4 without reply after the break and pushed ahead with ten minutes to go, thanks to Neil Heffernan’s second goal of the afternoon.
We can’t possibly do this again. Can we?
But Antrim were not done yet. Niall McKenna hit the net with three minutes to go, poking their noses back in front. Meath, after a first-game comeback and a second-game renaissance, were behind again. The machinery of fate was kicking in. Antrim, a team with a proper hurling heritage, were surely on their way now.
But somehow there was more in the Meath well. Substitute Stephen Clynch went back who hit 1–1. We were five minutes into injury time and Meath were leading by three.
Holy fuck. We’re going to do it again.
Oh no we’re not. Ciaran Clarke hit a 30-yard free right at the goalmouth and Darren Hamill poked it past Shane McGann to bring Antrim level. Meath 3–15, Antrim 4–12. 150 minutes of hurling couldn’t split them and we were going to extra time.
The sad truth is that extra time became a bit of a blur. I’d been trying to live-tweet the scores as they happened but it was becoming clear that watching the phone was detrimental to watching the game.
All I can remember is Gavin McGowan scoring a goal five minutes into the first period, and being struck by the symmetry of both teams somehow managing to get goals with 74 minutes on the clock.
Meath led by two at the extra time interval, and scored another point from the first attack of the second period.
How many more times can we keep coming back?
We’d have to do it again. From their puck-out Antrim scored their fifth goal and the sides were level again. Another two frees followed. Antrim 5–17, Meath 4–18.
At this stage Meath looked finished. Meath had shot woeful wides in the first half but virtually none since then. And suddenly, in quick succession with three minutes to go, two bona fide chances went wide. Meath were down by two.
Fate has cast its dice. Fuck.
And yet, and yet, and yet…
Stephen Clynch hit a free on 88 minutes to reduce the deficit to one. James Toher — far removed from the J-1 beaches he might have planned — equalised from a sideline ball on the 45. 90 minutes on the clock and the sides were level.
And fate had written a blockbuster. McAllister awarded a harsh free on the 65-metre line, near the Hogan Stand sideline, on 93 minutes.
Up stepped Kilmessan’s Stephen Clynch, a man almost reviled among rival hurling parishes (including my own). He calmly scoops, lifts, and strikes.
It’s over…
It creeps over the crossbar.
It’s over?
The umpire waves the white flag.
It’s over!
93 minutes on the clock in the replay. Meath lead by one. The referee blows it up. It’s over.
It’s over.
Jesus.
Jesus!
I managed to stand almost directly behind Toher as he raised the Christy Ring Cup for the second time in three weeks, and shot the presentation in slo-mo. We were all too aware that moments like these didn’t last long. This one needed documenting.
Fucking hell. We won it.
The prevailing wisdom is that the Leinster championship draw has been as kind as could be. Meath have home games against Laois and Kerry, and the sole away trip is next-door, to face Westmeath. All three games are mammoth challenges, but one win should be enough to avoid relegation. Two wins, unlikely as they are, would mean progression to a Leinster quarter-final against Offaly or Wexford. A full-strength Offaly side only just beat a full-strength Meath side in the Walsh Cup in January.
Having won the modern incarnation of the Senior B All-Ireland, Royal sides also went on to win the Under-21 equivalent, and to lose in the final at Minor grade.
There’s still no sign of those Christy Ring medals being presented. But last weekend, when Meath faced Mayo in Division 2B of the National Hurling League at the home ground of the Ballina Stephenites, the money was found for an overnight stay. And Meath won, by ten points.
Meath’s hurling heritage is coming, be it ever so far away.
