WHEN Down blazed a trail across the Gaelic footballing world in the early 1960s, the formidable figure of James McCartan was never far from centre stage.
When the then Glenn clubman buried the ball past Willie Nolan in the Offaly net in September 1961, a goal still considered to be one of the greatest to feature in an All-Ireland final, McCartan was at the pinnacle of the game. Two-time All-Ireland winner, twice Footballer of the Year, McCartan was a national icon.
But leaving it at that would do little justice to the feats which McCartan and his team-mates achieved for Down. Theirs was a triumph of self-belief as much as anything else. When James made his Championship debut against Armagh in Newry in 1956, Down had yet to win an Ulster senior title. In 1958, he played at centre half-back on the team that lost to Derry in the provincial decider.
McCartan remained at half-back on the team which made their first bit of history a year later, hammering Cavan by 15 points to get their hands on the Anglo-Celt Cup for the first time.
But it was in a famous half-forward line where McCartan really made his mark on the national stage. Playing alongside the prolific Seán O’Neill and Paddy Doherty, McCartan was the driving force in the 1960 All-Ireland semi-final replay comeback against Offaly. History was duly made on September 25 1960 when McCartan’s second-half goal was the catalyst in the final victory over Kerry.
What many consider to be McCartan’s finest half-hour came in the 1961 Ulster final against Armagh. Not fit enough to start, McCartan was introduced at half-time with Down trailing the Orchard county by five points. He thereon produced a swashbuckling display to rattle the Orchard defence and score what proved to be the winning goal as the Mourne men captured their third Ulster title on the trot.
Kerry were defeated in that year’s All-Ireland semi-final and, before a record attendance of 90,556 at Croke Park, Down had one point to spare over Offaly to retain the Sam Maguire. Yet again, it was McCartan who reigned supreme with that majestic major underlining his insatiable appetite for the big occasion.
McCartan first announced his retirement from the inter-county scene in the autumn of 1964 but he was back to help Down win another Ulster Championship medal by the summer of ’66 before retiring for a final time at the end of the 1967 season.
At club level, McCartan helped Glenn sweep to a series of county championship wins in 1959, 1962 and ’63 before his move to Donaghcloney led to him taking up with Tullylish, where he was joined by his brother Dan. Soon, the fortunes of the west Down club turned for the better and in 1971 they reached the county senior football championship final for the first time.
Age couldn’t dim McCartan’s passion for the game and, in 1977, he returned to manage Down’s senior and U21 footballers. Suddenly there was an upturn in the county’s fortunes. An Ulster Senior Football Championship title followed in 1978 before the 1979 All-Ireland U21 Championship success. There was another retirement and another return in 1982, allowing McCartan to round off his Down career with another success, winning the 1983 National Football League title against Armagh.
The Gaelic footballing heritage of the McCartan family in Down is a rich one. James’ father ‘Briney’ captained the Mourne men in the 1920s and early 1930s, while his brother Dan played alongside him on those famous All-Ireland winning teams of 1960 and ’61. The McCartans’ cousins, Seán and Kevin, also starred on those teams. Then of course, there was James junior emulating the feats of his Da in those stirring All-Ireland final victories of 1991 and ’94. James the younger was also the last manager to lead Down to an All-Ireland final.
There is material there for generations’ worth of yarns, and James McCartan the elder will be at the centre of most of them. As GAA president Larry Murphy said over the weekend, “James was a true giant of our games.”
