Time moves on. This club football season marks 36 years since Baltinglass emerged from Wicklow to win both the Leinster and All-Ireland championships.
A red-letter day for both club and county but, in a way, also for the province.
In March 1990, Baltinglass became the last non-Dublin club from Leinster to win the All-Ireland title.
In the meantime, four clubs from Dublin have won seven All-Irelands between them and reached the final a further five times. Just three clubs from the rest of Leinster have made it even that far.
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During that period, Carlow’s Éire Óg lost two finals (1993 and ’96), Portlaoise one (2005) and, most recently, Westmeath’s Garrycastle in 2012, who took serial winners Crossmaglen to a replay.
Such is the domination of the capital’s clubs that you have to go back seven years for the last time they didn’t win the provincial title, which they have lifted 10 times in the past 12 seasons.
Nor is it simply one dominant team. Five different clubs have shared those 10 championships.
The passage of time makes the Wicklow club’s achievement all the more striking, but has that kind of breakthrough now become realistically impossible? Martin Coleman is a well-known GAA administrator within Baltinglass, Wicklow, and at Croke Park committee level, and was a member of the club’s backroom team during the 1990 run.
While he acknowledges the changed environment, he hasn’t given up on the possibility of a club like Baltinglass winning the All-Ireland again.
“Everything would have to be in place – obviously a good group of players who have come together at the right time. But I believe it could be done. We were lucky that we had three families supplying eight players, three Kenny’s, three Murphy’s and two O’Brien’s, all good footballers in their own right.”
One of the Murphy’s was Tommy, a mainstay of UCD Sigerson winning teams in the late 1970s who also played for the county. The O’Brien’s were corner back Seán, returned from the US, and his brother, Kevin, who later that year became Wicklow’s first All Star.
Kevin O’Brien answers the question much the same as Coleman.
“I probably do, yes but I think you probably have to have had a few stabs at it. We were knocking on the door for a number of years at that time – winning championships. That was nearly enough and then we got a taste of a Leinster final against Portlaoise back in 1986.”
In August, there was a get-together for the 1990 All-Ireland champions and they posed for a photograph in the same positions as they had occupied 35 years previous – “all looking a little balder and a little rounder,” says O’Brien.
There was a poignancy to the reunion in that selector Ken Browne, whose coaching work as a teacher in Scoil Chonglais developed many of the players, was unwell. He died a few weeks later, the first of the 1990 group to be lost.
“He was a catalyst for a lot of the players who played in that famous eight-in-a-row team, winning the All-Ireland in 1990. He was chairman when the club opened its new grounds in 1983. He loved to see the game played at a nice, skilful pace, and he always encouraged players to practice off both feet, off both hands,” said Robert McHugh, the team’s deadeye place kicker who is now club chair.
McHugh had pneumonia the weekend Baltinglass faced Castlehaven in the All-Ireland semi-final in Aughrim. The Cork team had stars of the county’s back-to-back All-Ireland earlier that year, Larry Tompkins and Niall Cahalane.
O’Brien remembers being down at the field on the Saturday, practising frees.
“It was a really bad day. I believe the people down at Lawless’s (Hotel) were helping to clear the water off the pitch so they wouldn’t miss their big day. No way to prepare for an All-Ireland semi-final but that’s how tight our numbers were.”
Baltinglass won nine Wicklow championships in 10 years between 1985 and ’94. The provincial final they lost went to a replay, as did the one they won in 1989 against Thomas Davis.
They had plenty of experience.
As regards other credentials, two of the last three All-Ireland champions were south county Dublin neighbours Kilmacud and Cuala. The former had a tradition of winning and were also beaten in the previous year’s final – Cuala, despite never having won a county football title.
“It’s interesting,” says O’Brien, “when Ballyboden won the county final, the first thought I had was they’re nearly favourites for an All-Ireland, or definitely favourites for Leinster. You wouldn’t have backed them to win the Dublin championship this year and suddenly now they’re favourites for Leinster. Is that the way it’s gone, is it?”
Quite possibly. Before a ball is kicked in Ballyboden’s opening Leinster fixture this Sunday against Castletown in Wexford, the Dublin club are favourites to win the All-Ireland. The standard in the capital, as well as the reputation of the clubs, gives the county champions both confidence and a psychological edge.
As it happens, Baltinglass were also in this year’s championship but were well beaten in the first round by Athy, something that concerns O’Brien.
“We just have to be honest. Our intermediate champions Hollywood and senior champions were beaten badly by Kildare teams this year in the championship. To me, that should be an alarm bell for the whole county. We’ve got to start getting this right because is it one or two things: is it the standard or it’s just an acceptance that that the Wicklow championship is more important?”
‘Never forget’
Baltinglass faced Roscommon’s Clann na nGael in the 1990 All-Ireland final. Clann had lost the previous three and O’Brien acknowledges that their opponents didn’t play well that day.
But the Wicklow team did. Con Murphy got two goals against the wind in the first half and they never looked back, winning 2-7 to 0-7.
O’Brien recalls being beside Tony McManus, the distinguished Roscommon forward at the end.
“When the final whistle went, he happened to be standing there. I know him from intercounty and had played with him in America. I just went down on my knees, and said, ‘Tony, what can I say’?
– “There’s nothing to say.”
The new champions had nothing planned for the aftermath. “Some stayed for the hurling final and others went drinking. We met up later.”
Paddy Hickey, the late journalist, went down to Baltinglass the following day.
“He and his wife came down, he said, just to experience it. I said to him, ‘This has just happened, hasn’t it?’ He said, ‘It has and you guys don’t realise it yet. Never forget.’”
It was unforgettable.
