More than 35 years later it still stands as one of the great GAA moments – a display of sportsmanship and magnanimity in the face of crushing disappointment.
As Antrim leave the Croke Park pitch after beating Offaly in the 1989 All-Ireland SHC semi-final to reach only the county’s second Liam MacCarthy Cup decider and first since 1943, their Offaly opponents are lined out in a guard of honour at the corner of the Hogan Stand and the Canal End.
Except Johnny Pilkington. But it wasn’t disgust or sour grapes that had the young midfielder didn’t take part. He knew Antrim had been the better team and deserved their place in the decider. He just had no idea it was happening, and wouldn’t until he got home to Birr.
“So the final whistle went, you were well beat, there’s nothing can do about it, so I just walked down to the dressing room,” said Pilkington.
“But I was sitting in there for a while and not a sinner had come in. The way the dressing rooms in Croke Park were is that there was a short tunnel with two dressing rooms to your right then you branched off to your left and there were two more.
“We were in the last dressing room, so I came out to see where everybody was. I came out to where the branch-off was and I looked out to the field and I just saw straight through to the Cusack Stand, but I couldn’t see anybody.
“Later on that night I was watching the Sunday Game and somebody said that the Offaly players had given Antrim a guard of honour. No-one had even said to me after it happened.
“When the last goal for Antrim went in all the Galway and Tipp supporters had come in [for the second semi-final]. There are only a couple of times when I felt the real roar of the crowd in Croke Park and that was one of them because the place was packed and everybody, apart from the Offaly people, were shouting for Antrim.
“It wasn’t anything against Offaly, it was for the underdog, and from that point of view it was marvellous – Antrim deserved that.”
Pilkington, who was in his first senior inter-county season having turned 19 a week before the Antrim match, would go on to become one of the greats of Offaly hurling, winning All-Ireland titles in 1994 and 1998, four Leinster Championships, a National League and an All-Star.
He also won four All-Ireland club finals with Birr – two at the expense of Antrim champions Dunloy, the first as captain after a replay in 1995, the second eight years later.
After that 1989 defeat he crossed swords twice more with Antrim in the Championship in back-to-back All-Ireland quarter-finals in 1998 and 1999.
The latter was a mismatch as Offaly won by 22 points before going on to lose the semi-final to Cork.
They were clear but not so comfortable winners the previous year, but that match was a significant one, even if the details escape Pilkington.
“I can’t remember that match at all, except that it was a shabby performance and there wasn’t anything to suggest what was going to come after.”
What came after that nine-point win over the Saffrons was one of the most remarkable denouements to a Championship hurling season ever seen.
Offaly went into the Antrim match with a new manager, Michael Bond, after former boss Michael ‘Babs’ Keating – whose Tipperary side had hammered Antrim in the 1989 final – decried his players as “sheep running around in a heap” after their Leinster final defeat to Kilkenny.
Pilkington shot back at the manager the following day for throwing the players under the bus.
“You can’t blame ‘Babs’ for everything but you can’t blame the players for everything either. We’re all a team. We go down together and we win together. What he said will only cause trouble,” he told the Irish Independent.
The trouble was for Keating, with the county board backing the players and installing Bond as manager. But still, heading into the Antrim match things were still far from settled.
“Michael Bond came in and there was a pep in our training and it was great but we went down to Kilkenny to play a challenge match before the Antrim game and we got a bigger hiding in that than we did in the Leinster final,” said Pilkington.
“In the Leinster final a couple of frees went against us, they got a couple of goals, we missed some chances, but they really beat the shit out of us in the challenge match, and that rocked us.”
With the unconvincing Antrim victory under their belts, few observers expected Offaly to trouble a Clare side defending their All-Ireland crown and chasing a third title in four seasons.
A remarkable trilogy of games followed. The first was a draw Clare were lucky to escape with, the second a match blown up with two minutes of normal time remaining by referee Jimmy Cooney as Clare led by three in the face of a furious Offaly comeback, and the third, ordered by the GAA, saw a brilliant Offaly display in Thurles dethrone the Banner.
Another upset, this time turning the tables on Kilkenny in the All-Ireland final, gave Offaly, and Pilkington and the rest of that golden generation, their second Liam MacCarthy win in five seasons.
The Cats would gain revenge in the 2000 All-Ireland final, the last time Offaly reached that stage, and Pilkington himself retired from county hurling the following year.
In the quarter-of-a-century since, the Faithful county’s hurling fortunes plummeted. Their last Leinster final appearance was in 2004, while in 2018 they were relegated from the Liam MacCarthy Cup.
The county fell further the following season, dropping to the third-tier Christy Ring Cup, but this year are back in the Leinster Championship, with the feel-good factor in the county right at the top level too thanks to the exploits of “a special bunch of players” Pilkington has worked with alongside manager Leo O’Connor at minor and U20 level since 2021.
In 2022 they reached the county’s first All-Ireland minor final since 1989, drawing more than 20,000 supporters to Nowlan Park to see them lose by a point to Kilkenny.
They reached the U20 decider the following season where they fell to Cork before exacting revenge on Tipp last year, this time selling out Nowlan Park for the county’s first ever U20 or U21 title win.
Senior manager Johnny Kelly has already introduced a slew of players from those teams into his squad, with Donal Shirley, Colin Spain, David King, Dan Bourke and Dan Ravenhill, who all finished last year’s U20 final win, featuring in the Division 1B victory over Laois at the weekend.
But for a groin injury that is likely to keep him out for the entire League, brilliant forward talent Adam Screeney would be leading the attack.
The win over Laois came a week after an opening day draw with Carlow – a disappointing result at the time that was given a little flattering context at the weekend with Carlow’s win over Waterford.
On Sunday they welcome Antrim to Tullamore in Division 1B, with the sides slated to meet again at the same venue in what it likely to be a crucial Leinster SHC encounter in the last round of group fixtures on May 25.
“Offaly’s future is dependent on these lads and I believe that they’re exceptional,” said Pilkington, who acknowledges a balancing act will be required between getting the players into the senior team as quickly as possible and letting them develop at a slightly slower pace as Offaly consolidate their place in the Liam MacCarthy Cup.
“Players who came after us, they were good county players but nothing exceptional and that’s what you need,” he said.
“Anybody who puts on a county jersey is technically a county hurler, but when you look at the dominant teams they have two or three exceptional people.
“Kilkenny had [Henry] Shefflin, JJ Delaney and Tommy Walsh – to me they were three exceptionals. Limerick have Cian Lynch, Aaron Gillane up front and Kyle Hayes in the backs. They are exceptional players.
“Everybody else is pretty good but they’re as good as other All-Ireland winners. It’s those three exceptionals that make a team special.
“I believe that we have four or five lads who can make our Offaly team special and you can build everything else around them.
“Hopefully they’ll stay with it. They seem to have that attitude and that appetite for it, but time will tell.”
As for the immediate future, Pilkington says the arrival of Davy Fitzgerald in Antrim will make the Saffrons a different proposition this season – especially by the time that Championship meeting with Offaly comes around at the end of May.
“I would have fancied ourselves staying up in Leinster until I heard Davy Fitz was up there; that’s put a bigger stumbling block in the way,” he said.
“There’s no doubt that what Davy does with his teams is he prepares them very well, he gets them very fit and his philosophy, I think, is that we’re going to places that when the going gets tough we’re the ones who will come out of it.
“That’s what he’s going to bring to it, the intensity that Antrim are going to bring into the Leinster campaign, and even the League even though Davy’s only been there a short period of time.
“I don’t think Davy is going up there to Antrim just to stay up – he’s going to want that third spot in Leinster.
“[Former Antrim manager] Darren Gleeson has done a lot of hard work and I think for Davy it’s about the next step and the next step is third place or the Leinster final. I imagine he has done his research to know what kind of hurler is up there and there’s no better man to rally what he has.”
