Football

'If it wasn’t for that win, Dublin wouldn’t have dominated as much...'

He is happy playing his football with Cremartin in Monaghan these days but, eight years ago, Kevin Nolan was on top of the world as the Dubs ended 16 years of hurt to down old foes Kerry. Neil Loughran hears his story...

Kevin Nolan holds aloft the Sam Maguire Cup after Dublin's 2011 All-Ireland final victory over Kerry. Picture by Seamus Loughran
Kevin Nolan holds aloft the Sam Maguire Cup after Dublin's 2011 All-Ireland final victory over Kerry. Picture by Seamus Loughran Kevin Nolan holds aloft the Sam Maguire Cup after Dublin's 2011 All-Ireland final victory over Kerry. Picture by Seamus Loughran

ON the fourth of November last year, Cremartin swept past Clones to take the Monaghan junior league title. For a small townland on the edge of the Clontribret parish, any such success is to be savoured.

It also represented something special for the man wearing number 11 on his back that day at Gavan Duffy Park.

In 2011, Kevin Nolan was part of the Dublin team that finally cracked the code to lay sky blue hands on Sam, ending 16 years of hurt.

That is a day best remembered for the late, late Stephen Cluxton free that sailed between the posts to sink Kerry, and the decisive impact of Kevin McManamon as he sprung from the bench to break Kingdom hearts.

But who was the official man of the match as Pat Gilroy’s men achieved immortality on a September Sunday that signalled the start of the blue wave? You guessed it: Kevin Nolan.

Seven years later and the same Kevin Nolan - having swapped city for country - was just happy to be back kicking ball after a combination of injuries and different health issues stripped him of what should have been his best years.

Better still, he was delighted to play any part in a day to remember for his adopted homeplace at Gavan Duffy Park.

“I had an operation on my back in April 2018 and I tried driving up and down to Kilmacud Croke’s, but the drive wasn’t doing me any good,” said Nolan, who still works as a secondary school teacher in Dublin.

“Cremartin is the club my wife Lorna’s brothers would play for, the house is right across the road. I got the transfer last October and got a chance to play in a league final with Cremartin - that was really nice.

“There’s been hip and back issues but I’ve been able to play a few matches in the last month or six weeks, which has been great. That’s the focus now – just trying to get back to play a few matches and to enjoy it...”

Despite the ill-fortune that has befallen him, there is no hint of bitterness about how things have turned out in the years since 2011.

In fact, Nolan is only too delighted to reflect on the greatest summer of his life, and a day that would prove a huge turning point in the Dublin story. The context of where they were compared to where they find themselves now, as dominant a force as inter-county football has seen, is provided by that time spent in the wilderness.

Nineteen years old when first asked on to the panel by Paul ‘Pillar’ Caffrey, Nolan got a small snapshot into the mental barriers that faced Dublin towards the tail end of a decade controlled largely by the twin powers of Kerry and Tyrone.

“Not only did I sense it, I actually heard it from some of the players,” he says.

“In 2010 we beat Armagh in a qualifier, then Tyrone in the quarter-final, and I remember speaking to Bryan Cullen before those games and he was saying he had never beaten Ulster opposition in the Championship.

“So for him, straightaway he was thinking ‘We’re up against it here’. But for the likes of myself, Rory O’Carroll, Michael Fitzsimons, Cian O’Sullivan, we didn’t have the mental baggage he had, and those wins gave us massive belief.

“In 2011 we beat Tyrone and then Donegal; by then we had the belief we could beat northern opposition in Championship.”

Arch-rivals Kerry, however, were an even greater demon to be slayed.

Nolan had been watching from the stands as the famous ‘startled earwigs’ debacle unfolded in 2009. In front of a crowd of almost 82,000, a Colm Cooper goal 40 seconds in was only the beginning of a miserable afternoon as Jack O’Connor’s men cantered into the All-Ireland final with 17 points to spare.

Something had to change and, as Nolan explains, Gilroy opted to look north for inspiration when they came up against their familiar foes in the 2011 decider.

“We nearly adopted a sort of northern standard of play.

“There was a strong defence and then we were giving the ball up to Bernard and Alan Brogan, Diarmuid Connolly to allow them to do all the attacking work.

“We were scrappy enough in that game but people only remember the result. We were a point up at half-time, heading into the last 10 minutes we were sort of out of it, in a way that we had nothing to lose...”

Ahead by 1-10 to 0-9 with seven minutes left, Kerry looked on course for a 37th title.

For Dublin sides of days gone by, it might have been all she wrote by that stage – but this crew had different ideas.

McManamon cemented his super-sub reputation by burrowing into the square and driving beyond Brendan Kealy in the 64th minute. Point game.

Sixty-two seconds later, Nolan got in on the act to level it up. Bursting up the left flank, he took a hand pass from Connolly 40 metres out before stepping inside and smashing over the bar.

The posts barely received so much as a glance.

“I just found myself in a bit of space that maybe I wasn’t used to as much in the previous couple of matches.

“It was down to basic instincts; I would’ve played as a forward as a young lad so I would’ve been confident kicking the ball over the bar from that position. I got the ball in a position I felt I could score – that it was an All-Ireland final meant nothing to me at that stage.

“It was just a ball and a set of posts. The occasion never came into my head. Diarmuid Connolly was looking for the ball back, but thankfully it went over because I can only imagine what I would’ve got from the likes of Diarmuid if I’d missed.”

The moment that changed everything as Stephen Cluxton's last-gasp All-Ireland winning point sails between the posts in the 2011 final. Picture by Sportsfile
The moment that changed everything as Stephen Cluxton's last-gasp All-Ireland winning point sails between the posts in the 2011 final. Picture by Sportsfile The moment that changed everything as Stephen Cluxton's last-gasp All-Ireland winning point sails between the posts in the 2011 final. Picture by Sportsfile

Croke Park held its breath when McManamon was felled within scoring range as the final moved into a second minute of added time, time seeming to stand still as Cluxton made his way up to take the free.

Nails were being chewed to the quick at every turn but, even in that pressure cooker environment – especially in that pressure cooker environment – Nolan had no doubts.

“From 2008, in my earliest days with Dublin, I’d have seen Stephen kicking frees from that kind of position. It’s not as if he just started practising it in 2010 or 2011 – he’s been working on that for years.

“The likes of ‘Mossy’ Quinn and Mark Vaughan were the go-to free-takers because goalkeepers never came up the field back then, and he changed that. Thankfully when he was called on in the dying seconds of an All-Ireland final, all those hours of practice were for this moment.

“When you’re standing there, obviously you’re hoping it goes over the bar but, beyond that, you just want it to go dead. You’re powerless, but you have the belief in Stephen having done the work.

“The hairs still stand on the back of your neck any time you think about it. About the ball going over, getting yourself ready for the next ball, the ref blowing it up.

“After that... just hysteria.”

The breakthrough at last, and the moment that finally lifted the clouds around the capital – but does he ever consider if history had taken a different course and Kerry had seen that game out, adding another chapter to the catalogue of disappointments? Would Dublin still be the unstoppable juggernaut they have become?

“It was a young enough team and you’d like to think we would have come back if the result hadn’t gone our way, but the previous year – having lost to Cork in the semi-final – it gave us the belief that we were so close but just hadn’t got over the line,” adds Nolan, who picked up an Allstar for his exploits that year.

“Since then, all the things that went right for us in 2011, lads have been able to use that in 13, 15, 16, 17, 18…

“If it wasn’t for that win, Dublin wouldn’t have dominated as much in the last number of years, I don’t think. That was the bedrock, the foundation of it all and without that happening, Dublin wouldn’t have had the belief.”

Just 23, the world was at his fingertips as the horizon spread out in front of the Dubs. But while so many of his contemporaries remain behind the wheel as the ‘Drive for Five’ heads for Croke Park on Sunday, Nolan can only see his county career in the rear view mirror.

Three days after his man of the match performance he was diagnosed coeliac before being told he had type 1 diabetes months later. Despite losing two and a half stone during this period, Nolan battled back to fight for his spot on the Dublin team before eventually being cut from the panel in 2015.

Still only 30, there is little doubt that he too would have been an integral part of that journey had injuries and health issues not played such a devastating effect on his career.

“It’s tough,” he admits.

“Any player who is doing well in Dublin club football would love to be there, and I would have belief in my head that I am good enough to be there.

“But different things have happened, whether it’s injuries or operations I’ve had… if it was down to football, I’d like to still think I could be there.

“There were no hard feelings at all [towards Gavin], it was purely football and I wasn’t up to the level Dublin footballers needed to be at.

“Unfortunately because of the things that have gone on, I haven’t been able to be at 100 per cent, and you have to always be 100 per cent to be involved with Dublin.

“I still support them, but obviously I’d still love to be involved. The fact I’m a teacher, I’ve been away to New York a couple of times through the summer, but I’d swap it all to be part of the squad again.

“Different things happen in life and you just have to accept it and get on with it. The enjoyment I got from it, and bumping into lads now, sharing those stories, going through those six o’clock training sessions and the work we put in, it all paid off.

“It was the best time of my life.”

A possible return to the inter-county stage with Monaghan was mooted at one stage, though never seriously examined as injuries continued to take their toll.

For now, he is happy to listen to his body and take it one game at a time with Cremartin before entertaining any grander plans.

“I don’t think there’s any GAA player who wouldn’t want to play at the top level, but unfortunately to get to the top level you have to be able to play football and I haven’t been able to play enough in the last couple of years.

“Based on reputation alone, I would never expect a call – it’s all based on performance, and that’s the way it should be. Just because I’ve won an All-Ireland doesn’t give you a God-given right to come into a new county or a new team and expect to play or start.

“I’m looking down the line and if football causes me any other issues, I might have to call time on that and go into coaching or management a bit earlier. Thankfully the body has held up a bit better so my focus is to get back playing with the club here and if other doors open up, brilliant, but if not…

“I’ve been asked to look after the U14 development squad in Monaghan, myself and Rory Beggan have been out with them the last couple of weeks.

“Football is a religion up here, and everything is going well – work, life, football. I’m a happy man.”