During the summer and autumn of 1991, red and black flags flew from the top of Slieve Donard, to the green fields of Aghaderg and thousands of homes in-between as Pete McGrath’s Down swept all before them to clinch the Mourne county’s first Sam Maguire since the 1960s. Ballymartin clubman Paul Higgins played at corner-back in that great side and he recalls a season of thrills and spills, writes Andy Watters.
Something was brewing...
PAUL Higgins had played minor and U21 football for Down and had a brief spell in the senior panel in 1986 as a 19-year-old. In 1989 he returned to the fold and nailed down a place in the team which he held onto until 2000, fulfilling an ambition to play across three decades.
Looking back, Paul says the county was packed with talented players but the unity of purpose needed to have success was missing until Pete McGrath took over as manager.
“You were playing against these fellas in club football every week and you could see how good they were – they were outstanding footballers,” he said.
“I knew there was a bunch of good players there but at the time they weren’t making a good team for some reason. In 1990, we got to the National League final against Meath who were probably the top team, and there was only two points in it so we knew we weren’t far away.
“We were playing against the Kerrys and Dublins and Corks in the National League as well and we were fit to beat them. So we knew we had the nucleus of a good team, it was just combining it all together and getting organised and when Pete came in he brought it to a whole new level.”
Master McGrath
SCHOLARLY and passionate, Pete McGrath had played for Down and was a highly-regarded young manager at St Colman’s College and with the Mourne County underage squads. He replaced Jackie McManus as Down senior manager in 1990.
“I’ll not say he was obsessed, but he gave everything to it,” says Higgins.
“As a player you look at the manager giving his whole being to it and you follow suit. He would never asked him to do something he wouldn’t have done himself and I had him with Down minors and then the whole way through the ’90s.
“We spent a lot of time together and I don’t know if he’d say that was a good thing or a bad thing! But you have to tip your hat to him, he brought us to that level where we were successful.”
’Oul buck from Rogers
BEING from the Ballymartin club that sits cheek-by-jowl with rivals Longstone on the county Down coast, Higgins knew the great Ambrose Rogers (who sadly passed away in 1999) very well and the pair of them shared some great laughs on Down duty.
“When I started I shared a taxi with Ambrose and he was some craic, some character,” says Paul, who spent the lockdown learning the piano (he’s now at grade six).
“We had grown up beside each other on the Valley Road. I think everybody on that Road likes to have a bit of craic – there’s definitely something in the air! The banter was unreal and Pete sometimes just shook his head.
“Pete might have been in the middle of a serious conversation but you daren’t have sat across from Ambrose because he would have been doing everything he could to make you burst out laughing in the middle of a teamtalk. I think Pete understood it – in a room full of 30 fellas, there’s always different characters.”
The auld enemy
ARMAGH had beaten Down in the 1990 Ulster Championship. The game had gone to a replay after James McCartan conjured up two late goals in the first meeting but the Orchardmen won the second duel at Casement Park.
The rain poured and the wind howled at the Newry Marshes the following year when the sides met again in 1991 and Mickey Linden’s goal meant Down got over the line in a low-scoring, scrappy encounter.
Despite the win, only the most optimistic Down supporter would have been tipping their county for the Sam Maguire that year.
“We got over the line and we improved after that,” says Higgins.
“Our big aim was to get out of Ulster because Down hadn’t won an Ulster Championship since 1981.”
Ross to the rescue
ROSS Carr came up with a late equaliser (one of nine points he scored) in the semi-final against Derry and he repeated the dose in the replay with nine more scores which this time were enough to send Down through to the Ulster decider.
With confidence soaring after that five-point success in the replay, the Mournemen prepared to take on reigning champions Donegal in the final at Clones.
“There’s five teams in our parish – the place is football-mad,” says Paul.
“When any of the teams meet everybody is out to kill each other but leading up to the Ulster final, everybody got behind you from all the different clubs – they were wishing you well all the time.
“When we ran out at Clones, it was great to see (the support) and no matter what game it was, Down fans always seemed to out-number the opposition. The support we got was unreal.”
The Ulster final finished 1-15 to 0-10 and, after lifting the Anglo-Celt Cup in triumph, the Down players left St Tiernach’s Park with no doubt that they were the best team in the province and with confidence they could go a step or two further.
“We played really well, everything clicked into place and it gave you a real sense of confidence going on to the semi-finals,” says Paul.
“That was one of our best performances that whole year. From the start we got on top of Donegal and played some great football.”
The Brazilian corner-back
PAUL played his club football for Ballymartin at midfield or in the forward line and was a regular scorer. However, at county level he was remodelled into a corner-back and those were the days when corner-backs stayed in their corners. However, his attacking instincts resulted in occasional forward forays and he did register a point in that Ulster final. He could have had more though…
“I never thought of myself as a corner-back - I hated the position to be honest,” he admits.
“It was needs-must but when you’re in training and marking boys like Mickey Linden and not giving him a kick of the ball you’re not afraid to mark anybody.
“So I did it but in the first half I took a notion to go up the field and Wee James (McCartan) passed the ball to me. There was just me and Peter Withnell. I was thinking: ‘Will I shoot, or will I pass?’ and at the last minute I passed to Peter. He hit the shot, the ’keeper saved it and it rolled out to me.”
He’s laughing as he continues: “I was about 10 yards out in front of an empty net. Instead of just pulling on it, I tried to place it in the corner (I had played a bit of soccer) so I hit it and it hit the umpire’s feet. I turned round and ran back down the field thinking: ‘I’m gonna get some stick over that!’ I was glad I got the point in the second half to redeem myself.
“I always tell the boys I was a Brazilian corner-back – like Roberto Carlos!”
Different animal the day
DOWN had played Kerry in the National League that year and the Ballymartin club ran a bus to the match. They arrived on the Friday and made the most of the local hospitality.
“Myself and Gregory McCartan told Pete that we’d be keeping ourselves right for the match but we went on an absolute bender when we got down,” says Paul.
“The Down senior team arrived in Kerry on the Saturday evening and I went over the team hotel and just went straight to bed.
“The next day I was marking this wee fella called Pa Dennehy and for the first 20 minutes I was absolutely roasted. I was dying! The whole bus load of supporters from Ballymartin were sitting at the corner-back position where I was and they were roaring and shouting. I was thinking to myself: ‘Get me out of here’. I shouldn’t have been out before the game but, like I said: We’re all a bit mad on the Valley Road!”
Fast forward to the All-Ireland semi-final eight months later and Dennehy had been man of the match in the Munster final.
“I ran out and it was the same boy again,” say Paul.
“He was probably thinking he was going to roast me again but I ran over to him and said: ‘Listen boy, I'm a different animal the day…’ I don’t think he even understood what I was talking about! Lucky enough the game went ok.”
Dennehy didn't score and Down restricted Kerry to just eight points – one of the Kingdom’s lowest returns ever at Croke Park – and that defensive stability gave Down the platform to win the game. 2-1 from Withnell sent Down through to their first All-Ireland decider since the halcyon days of the 1960s.
“As a unit, I thought our defence was very strong,” says Paul.
“That Kerry team wasn’t in its prime, they were still quality footballers, but that was their last year. We were young and hungry and we played very well in patches and Peter’s two goals were the icing on the cake.”
Ready for the Royal
SEAN Boylan’s Meath, beaten finalists in 1990, were the opponents in the final. With Bernard Flynn, Colm O’Rourke, Brian Stafford, Tommy Dowd… the Leinster champions were an outstanding side and the Mourne county caught Sam Maguire fever in the weeks before the game.
“The build-up to that match was crazy,” says Paul.
“Everywhere you looked there were Down flags – you went to Mass on a Sunday and you’d have spent half-an-hour after it talking to people wishing you well.
“Looking back, I’m so glad we achieved what we did for those people – it meant as much to them as it did to the players. You see people who go to club games and they live for it. There were banners everywhere, I got letters from all over the county and from America. There’s no money in the world could buy those sort of memories!”
Written in the stars?
MEATH, champions in 1987 and ’88, had been taken to three hammer-and-tongs replays by Dublin in that year’s Leinster Championship, beat Roscommon in their semi-final. They went into the decider as favourites but Paul had an innate confidence that it would be Down’s day
“I always used to tell my friends at school that I was going to win two All-Irelands. This is when I was 15!” he says.
“It was only bluster at the time but when I see those boys now I always say: ‘Why did I not say three or four?’
“I got ready for that game totally convinced that we were going to win it and nothing was going to stop us even though they were raging-hot favourites. I thought: ‘No matter how good they are, we’re as good and better’.”
And that’s how it turned out of course. Down were superior all over the field and looked to be home and hosed when they extended their lead to 11 points in the second half.
“There was a big clock on the Canal End and I was looking at it thinking: ‘When it’s 10 to five, this game’s over’. Unfortunately it was only about 20 to five then and in the last 10 minutes they put us under an awful lot of pressure. But at the same time I never felt we were going to lose.”
Sam Maguire on the physio table
HE sank to his knees when the final whistle went, thinking: ‘We did it!’ Then he was engulfed by a horde in red and black who streamed onto the pitch.
“There was a couple of my cousins and boys from round home and they just lifted me straight up into the air,” he says.
“I still don’t remember whether I went up the steps (of the Hogan Stand).
“It didn’t hit me until I was back into the changingrooms and we were all together again. Sam Maguire was sitting on the physio table and we’re all looking at it and touching it and dancing around it. Even then I don’t think it sinks in for a couple of days.
“That night we had a big dinner – it was one of the best nights of my life. I gave my father a big hug and lifted him clean off the ground. It was great to see what it meant to everyone.”
Looking back
THIRTY years on from that Sam Maguire summer, the Mournemen of 1991 remain good friends.
“We’re on a WhatsApp group and the banter back and forth sometimes is hilarious. You do miss walking into the changingrooms and the craic starting because they were a great bunch of fellas – every single one of them.
“There was nobody you wouldn’t have got on with and no real bad feeling at any time. It was: ‘Right boys we’ve a job to do and this is what we’re going to do…’
“You have to give credit to Pete, the late John Murphy and Barney Trainor - a happy changing room is a good place to be and it bears fruit.”
