CROKE Park can just as quickly become chamber of nightmares as theatre of dreams and, during the guts of a decade either side of the Millennium, Dunloy were acquainted with both.
After all, the 1996 demolition job on a star-studded Glenmore side ranks among the best days Dunloy have ever had. The Kilkenny kingpins were strongly fancied to finish the year as All-Ireland champions, only to come a cropper against the north Antrim upstarts.
Holding court in the Cuchullain’s changing room afterwards, Glenmore manager Tom Ryan offered nothing like the patronising pats on the back Gary O’Kane had grown weary of any time Antrim upset the applecart.
Ryan’s words may have fallen on deaf ears at the time, but their simplicity would resonate more with each opportunity that passed.
“You taught us a hurling lesson out there,” said the man who steered clubs to three All-Irelands, thumping the table before him, “but it will all be wasted if you don’t go and win the final.”
Over a quarter of a century on, that warning still rings in the ears because, for the most part, Croke Park has meant only misery.
County domination, kings of Ulster, but All-Ireland glory proved elusive across four cracks at the big one. Sixmilebridge ensured Glenmore mattered for little more than bittersweet memories with a rampant display in the final weeks later.
Twelve months earlier Dunloy had led Birr by three at half-time and were still ahead with eight minutes to go, only for the Offaly champions to show their class at the close. After reeling them in and taking Dunloy to a replay, it was Johnny Pilkington who lifted the Tommy Moore Cup a fortnight later.
There was no let-up in the Noughties either as brilliant All-Ireland semi-final wins over Mount Sion and Portumna were followed up with gallingly below-par showings in defeat to Birr (2003) and Newtownshandrum (2004).
Those days sicken the stomach still.
“We were actually talking about this the other night,” says O’Kane, the beating heart of those Dunloy sides at centre-back, “after Birr in ’03, me and Alistair Elliott had been upstairs in Croke Park in the function room getting something to eat.
“Everybody was heading to the bus and me and him were walking across Croke Park – I don’t know how we even got on to it. We had two bottles of beer each, and he looks up halfway across and says ‘f**k but I never want to see this place again’.
“Then a year to the day the two of us are walking across the same field, saying the very same thing again after being beat in another All-Ireland final…”
The hurt from each twists the knife in its own unique way. Birr in ’95 was a chance to write an entirely different story from the strart - “but then the weather turned, and it worked for them…” – before a day to forget against Sixmilebridge.
After making it back to the St Patrick’s Day stage seven years later, Birr were simply too good. Even then, though, regrets last a lifetime.
“I marked Ken McGrath in the semi-final that year and done alright on him, then the final I would say was one of my worst performances ever.
“I had a total nightmare.”
O’Kane was 34 by the time his last All-Ireland final appearance came around in 2004.
He suffered a broken hand nine days out and spent the entire build-up running back and forth to an oxygen chamber in Larne – and thankfully that rapid rehabilitation paid off.
“As long as I was able to houl a stick, and the manager was okay with it, I was grand.”
Yet O’Kane remembers the concern in the camp about Cork stars Ben and Jerry O’Connor, and he was moved to full-back in one of several positional switches designed to curtail the influence of Newtownshandrum’s dynamic duo.
“We changed the team more or less to suit them, rather than concentrate on our own game and our own players, and it didn’t work in our favour.
“But look, of all the days, we just didn’t perform to our ability. That’s what stings most. Our belief never changed from the semi-finals, we had a brave record in them… when you’re getting by them kind of teams, sure why would you not believe?
“Unfortunately we could never replicate that when it came to the final.”
It took Dunloy 19 years to get back there and, uninhibited by dark days gone by, Gregory O’Kane’s class of 2023 bid to do what he and his contemporaries never could against Ballyhale Shamrocks on Sunday.
All have grown up on stories of the exploits of their fathers and family friends, figures who have been ever-present either in the club or out on the field helping hone their skills as young hurlers. But memories of All-Ireland final build-up, or the days themselves, are scant at very best.
“I saw Ryan [Elliott] saying he barely remembers ’03, ’04… that’s shocking, isn’t it? That just shows how old we are.
“Sometimes they ask some of the ouler players in to speak to U16s or underage, and you can see the young boys looking, saying ‘did them boys ever hurl at all?’
“Even one year we were sitting in the house and the ’89 match [Antrim v Tipperary, All-Ireland final] was on, and my young girl says to me ‘daddy, you’d hair and a moustache in them days’ - I says ‘pet, do you think I was born bald?’ It just shows how those days and those memories pass.
“This crowd of young boys, they might know their history but they’ve never looked much into it. They’re that sort of group of players who are so used to winning everything themselves that there’s no care in them – they just go and enjoy themselves.
“What would I say to them? What would be the point? Sure they could turn around to me and say ‘you lost four All-Ireland finals, what are you talking about?’ They’re out to write their own history.
“We’ve a generation of young people who have never been in this position, looking forward to an All-Ireland final. My young lad’s 10 – him and others have grew up watching this team here do four in-a-row, winning an Ulster title, and that has planted a seed for the next 20 years.
“That’s all you can hope for.”
And there would be no prouder man than Gary O’Kane if, come Sunday evening, Dunloy are – at long last - travelling up the road with club hurling’s most prized possession at the head of the bus.
“That would just surpass everything else,” he says, words no longer tumbling out at the rate they once were.
“I can speak for the whole club, especially all generations I played with, from the ’90s up… even the thought of it, I can feel it in my throat now. It means that much.”
