GERRY McRory floated a free-kick into the square from 40 yards and Sean Rice got a run on his marker. He jumped, met the ball with a deft flick and it sailed into the back of the Armagh net.
It was June 14, 1964 and thanks to 1-1 from Eire Og clubman Rice, Antrim beat Armagh 2-6 to 1-8 at Casement Park.
Now 81, Sean scored in every game of Antrim’s run to that summer’s Ulster semi-final. Before the Armagh victory, the left corner-forward who stood 5’5” had scored a point in the preliminary round 1-9 to 0-8 win against Tyrone.
“In those days Antrim had a half-decent team,” says Sean, an Ulster finalist in football and double Ulster winner in hurling at minor level.
“The only two teams we would have feared were Down and Cavan.”
In the semi-final Antrim played a Down side that included many of the men who had won back-to-back All-Ireland titles in 1960 and 1961. Indeed it was one of them – James McCartan – who scored the match-winning goal that Sean maintains should never have stood.
“We were very unlucky that day,” he says.
“The referee gave a very controversial goal against us. Our goalkeeper dived and pushed the ball against the post but the referee gave a goal – it never went across the line.
“We should have beaten Down, we were four or five points ahead but when the goal went in it just seemed to deflate the whole team. It should never have been allowed.”
He adds with a chuckle: “Mind you, I was at the far end of the pitch!”
Sean played on for Antrim until 1967 but his club career went on. And on. He played football for Eire Og until he was 42 and hurling until he was 50 in a full-forward line with Danny McNeill and Mickey Murphy. The combined age of the strikeforce was 130!
“People mention the goals and the points I scored but I can’t remember them and it’s not because it’s later in life - I couldn’t even remember them when I was young!” explains the former St Gabriel’s PE teacher who once worked as a bus conductor in Great Yarmouth, England.
“I never really took much notice, I played the match and that was it, I went on to the next match. In those days, when you’re young, you takes things for granted, you just go out and play and you don’t think much about it.
“But it must have meant something to people. I was in the library yesterday and this man came over to me out of the blue. He says: ‘Are you Sean Rice that used to play for Antrim?’ How he recognised me I don’t know because I’m 81 now and I’ve changed a fair bit since then!
“I says: ‘I am’. He says: ‘I used to go down and watch you playing for Antrim in Casement Park’ and then I had a yarn with him, I couldn’t believe it.”
He may not remember much about his own exploits but he does remember his club winning the Antrim title in 1948. Brought up in Ardoyne, Sean followed in the footsteps of his father and his uncles (all on the ’48 team) by lining out for the west Belfast club alongside his three brothers.
His five sons all did the same and these days his nephew Ciaran (his late brother Patrick’s son) and grand-daughters Aoife and Eimear are continuing the Rice family’s connection with the club.
“There has been a Rice playing for Eire Og in some capacity every year since the 1930s,” Sean explains proudly.
He admits he’s not a fan of modern football and finds it “very boring at times” but he will be cheering on his county on Saturday evening. Does he predict a repeat of 1964?
“Not really, no,” he says.
“They’ve been playing up and down and Armagh seem to be going pretty well. But you never know, you can always hope.”
