NIALL McKENNA knows a thing or two about the Ulster Club Senior Football Championship.
Having played with the Scotstown club during a period when the storied north Monaghan club claimed a three in-a-row of Ulster titles from 1978 to 1980 and another in '89, he is well placed to appraise the current crop donning the famous blue jersey. He also vividly recalls a previous meeting with Sunday’s opponents in the quarter-final of the competition. The date was October 16 1983 and the Monaghan champions met the Armagh champs in Gavan Duffy Park, Monaghan.
To describe the clash as feisty would be an understatement. The Irish News report from the time details the dismissal of three Scotstown players and one Crossmaglen player. The report adds that referee Jim McCorry of Cavan had to be taken to the safety of the dressing room by a delegation of Scotstown players led by Gerry McCarville. A number of “very strange decisions… incurred the wrath of both sets of supporters” it notes, with the Monaghan contingent, it would appear, particularly aggrieved.
The game looked very likely to end in a draw until Aidan Short knocked over a 30-metre free from out on the wing to clinch a dramatic 1-6 to 1-5 win. McKenna recalls that, even though the sendings-off certainly didn’t help, Scotstown only had themselves to blame, such was their profligacy in front of the posts. And as regards the tempestuousness of the tie, McKenna simply states that, back then, it was “a different game”.
“We had a lot of chances and we missed a lot of scores and the sendings-off had a big influence on it,” recalled McKenna.
“They would have been an older team than us at that time, with Joe Kernan and Frank Kernan and boys like that. Larry Kearns was playing and David McKenna’s father would have been playing too, I think.”
McKenna, who also had a spell on the Monaghan senior team, lined out that day alongside Brendan Lillis in the middle of the field. Following a burst of Cross scoring, including a great Jim McConville goal, which made it 1-2, Scotstown’s Séamus McCarville and McKenna himself steadied the ship for Monaghan with two points.
Indeed, he and his midfield partner were mentioned in dispatches as follows: “At midfield, Scotstown were well served by Niall McKenna and Brendan Lillis.”
“I didn’t get them too often now,” laughed McKenna.
“We would have had a good team that time. We had Gerry McCarville and Jack McCarville, Brendan Lillis, Seán McCrudden, Brendan Beggan, three of the Caulfields - Michael, Gerard and Fergus - Ronnie McDermott, Jim McCabe. We had a lot of boys who played county football. I would have played maybe three championship years for Monaghan, but I hadn’t the pace.
“There would have been one time that I played with Monaghan in Croke Park that there were 11 Scotstown boys playing.”
The game was played in front of a large crowd recalls McKenna and the report notes that, despite adverse weather, the teams “served up some fine football”. Although Scotstown would win another Ulster title in 1989, with McKenna a substitute after damaging a cruciate ligament, there have been no further final appearances and McKenna gave a flavour of just what it means for the club and community to be back in the Ulster showpiece.
“It has taken a long, long time. We are in dream land with this,” he declared.
“I was down at the Ulster Club final last year and if somebody had told me that we would have been in the final [this year] – I would have taken the hand of them.”
Although the game which was played 32 years ago was clearly a ‘no quarter given’ affair, McKenna believes this current Scotstown team is well equipped to put it up to Crossmaglen playing football, although he conceded it may be coming a little too soon for them.
“Scotstown are young and they’ve come on a lot under Mattie McGleenan,” he said.
“They’ve definitely matured and it’s down to boys getting older and wiser. We have young boys now who know what they have to do to be winners. They enjoyed themselves a lot more in years gone by, but this team saw when they won a championship what it took to win it, so they’ve definitely put in a serious effort, I would have to say.
“They are a committed bunch of boys, but it might be too soon for them. We’ll play football the way that I like it played - we’ll go man to man and if we’re good enough on the day, so be it but Scotstown will certainly need luck to beat them.
“[Scotstown are] a tough team. There’s a good tradition there - they’re from families where their fathers would have played. They know what it takes. You have to go maybe a step further, but they can play football - all of them.”
