Paddy Christie has never watched the moment back but he can still see himself on Owen Mulligan’s heels, muck spraying up from their studs as they race to meet the incoming ball. Just another battle for possession. But eight seconds later Mulligan would score what many believe is the greatest Croke Park goal of all time.
There are plenty of contenders for that accolade and parochial subjectivity tends to add a couple of postcodes to the distances shots were struck from, but it is impossible to have a debate on this topic without including Mulligan’s double-dummy goal from the 2005 drawn All-Ireland quarter-final against Dublin.
The backdrop to that strike was as follows: Dublin led 1-11 to 0-11 with just more than 20 minutes remaining in front of 78,514 spectators. Mulligan had not been enjoying a stellar season, he didn’t start the drawn Ulster final or replay and was subsequently taken off in Tyrone’s qualifier win over Monaghan having managed a single point.
Moments before his quarter-final goal against Dublin it appeared Mulligan was to get the curly finger again as Peter Canavan prepared to enter the fray. However, a brief chat between Canavan and Mickey Harte purportedly altered the details of the switch. What followed changed Mulligan’s season and arguably changed the course of Tyrone GAA history.
Here is the anatomy of that goal:
48 mins 12 secs: Canavan is introduced, replacing Ryan Mellon.
48 mins 33 secs: Dublin have possession at the Hill 16 end but Alan Brogan is swallowed up just outside the D and his shot is blocked. Ryan McMenamin secures the loose ball, works it out wide to the Cusack Stand side from where a long foot-pass is delivered forward.
48 mins 45 secs: Stephen O’Neill gets out in front of Paul Griffin but the ball skids off the surface just inside the Dublin 65m line, bounces off the Tyrone forward’s shin and he fails to gather possession. The ball bobbles back out the field.
48 mins 49 secs: A brief scramble for possession ensues before O’Neill flicks the ball up with his left foot. Standing between the two 65s, he takes a look forward and sends a left-footed pass inside.
48 mins 53 secs: Mulligan races out ahead of Christie, allows the ball to bounce off the turf and it canons back up into his arms. He collects the ball about 35m out and facing away from goal. Mulligan’s momentum carries him close to the 45m line by which point he has decelerated sufficiently to turn. Christie slips. It’s on.
48 mins 55 secs: Now facing goalwards, Mulligan takes a left-foot solo.
48 mins 57 secs: Stephen O’Shaughnessy comes out to meet him. Approaching the D, Mulligan holds the ball in his left hand, looks left and feigns as if about to handpass in that direction. O’Shaughnessy buys the ruse. Mulligan immediately switches direction, moving possession over to his right hand and as he darts by the Dublin defender he bounces the ball on the edge of the D.
48 mins 58 secs: He takes another left-foot solo
48 mins 59 secs: As Mulligan approaches the 20m line, Paul Casey – with arms outstretched – takes position to stop his progress. Mulligan looks left again, lets the ball sit in his left hand and draws his right arm back away from his body indicating he is winding up to fist it across the face of goal. Casey buys it and commits to intercepting what turns out to be a phantom pass. Mulligan leans back to his right foot and powers forward.
49 mins 00 secs: Mulligan enters the large square.
49 mins 01 secs: He unleashes a thunderous right-footed shot beyond Stephen Cluxton, just before Barry Cahill arrives with a shoulder that knocks Mulligan to the ground but it’s too late, the damage is already done. 1-11 apiece.
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The game finished in a 1-14 to 1-14 draw. Two weeks later in the replay Mulligan scored another memorable goal, famously celebrating by staring defiantly towards Hill 16. Tyrone won that contest by seven points and progressed to win the All-Ireland.
Christie was the Dublin captain in 2005 and picked up Mulligan in the drawn game. A groin injury kept the Ballymun man out of the replay but it had also been a factor in the build-up to the first match, having suffered the problem during the Leinster final.
After a frenetic opening passage of play against Tyrone, the matchups settled and Christie found himself keeping Mulligan company.
“Straight away I thought, ‘This is going to be a problem now.’ Mulligan hadn’t been going well but he was a classy player and I wasn’t sure how I’d hold up sprinting and turning,” recalls Christie.
The pair largely cancelled each other out in the first half, engaging in their own mini battle as the war went on around them.
“We were sort of hanging out of each other, there was a bit of off the ball stuff but there wasn’t really anything major happening. Neither of us were really in the game.
“I was kind of frustrated in one way but relieved in another because early on I’d been fearful I was going to get roasted, carrying an injury and marking Owen Mulligan in Croke Park, that could go badly wrong.”
The first half passed without any major hiccups. Dublin led by five at the turnaround and Christie v Mulligan was a stalemate.
But in the dressingroom at half-time, members of the Dublin management set-up had a different view of Christie’s performance.
“I was told, ‘He’s destroying you, are you okay out there? You are miles off it.’ I was questioning myself then. I’d normally pride myself on being fairly straight when it comes to self-analysis, I’d have an idea if I was going well or not.”
Mulligan gathered a couple of balls early in the second half so when O’Neill sent in another pass in the 49th minute, and with the half-time analysis still swishing around in his head, Christie gambled.
“I was adamant that no matter what I’d win the next ball, so I went really hard for a ball I had no entitlement to win. He was in front of me so I tried to get a fist to it but he won the ball, I fell and he was gone,” Christie says.
“I got up and ran after him but I was out of the equation. I just remember seeing the dummy handpasses with the two lads and then the stadium erupting.”
Some 13 years later, on the eve of the 2018 All-Ireland final between Dublin and Tyrone, Christie and Mulligan were reunited for a segment on RTÉ’s Up for the Match programme. Inevitably, the chat wound its way to 2005.
“I recounted how I’d been told in the dressingroom at half-time that they thought I was struggling. Then Mulligan interjects and says, ‘They told me exactly the same thing in our dressingroom at the break, they said I was struggling.’”
Seán Cavanagh watched the move for the goal unfold from near the middle of the field.
“Mugsy always had that show with the wee fist pass, we’d seen it hundreds of times in training but if I’m honest I didn’t ever think it was going to work as well as it did on that day,” Cavanagh says.
“What made it extra special was that Mugsy wasn’t having the greatest of games that day and I think he was about to be taken out, so to produce what he did in that moment when we needed it so badly was special.
“It just was one of those magical moments in Croke Park. Mugsy obviously enjoyed the big games and the pantomime element of them – the bleached blonde hair made him stand out.”
Collie Moran set up Dublin’s goal just before half-time, his lung-bursting run opening the Tyrone defence and leading to Mossy Quinn poking home.
Going off the pitch at the break Moran remembers the energy bouncing around the stadium but Mulligan’s goal in the second half wrestled everything back in Tyrone’s favour.
“You could just see the move building and building,” recalls Moran.
“When he turned Paddy and ran towards the goal the crowd started to get excited, then when he beat Shocko they got louder again, he went by Paul and everybody got out of their seats, he planted the ball to the net and the place went wild.
“That goal changed the momentum of the match, we were lucky to get a draw in the end.”
So many variables had to align for that goal to come to fruition.
“Occasionally I wonder if my memories of it are actually from being there on the pitch that day or are they from seeing replays of the goal so often over the years,” adds Moran.
“But there were chances to stop the move developing. The ball got caught under Paul Griffin’s legs initially and it just kind of all snowballed from there.”
Christie believes had Dublin denied Mulligan a goal in that moment, then the outcome of the match – and consequently the All-Ireland – would have been different.
“To this day I would say it was great play by him, the finish was even better than the dummy handpasses, but as players we should never have sold ourselves,” says Christie.
“I should never have committed myself in the first place, I broke one of my own rules – I went for a ball I should never have challenged for. What was he going to do if I’d just let him get the ball 45m out with me hanging out of him? Not an awful lot. But instead I sold myself and then unfortunately the two lads inside sold themselves.
“I remember afterwards thinking if I had stood him up or if the lads didn’t commit perhaps Tyrone might have gone away with a point from the attack and that wouldn’t have been a big deal. But the goal changed everything.”
Everything.
