Neil Loughran: Okay, the final itself – September 18, 1994. Miceal, how was it decided that you would be marking Charlie?
Miceal Magill: We had our press night on the Wednesday and at training the following Tuesday Pete and John Murphy approached myself and Paul Higgins. DJ Kane and Ross Carr were with them too.
They had toyed around with the idea of maybe moving myself to four and Paul to two, specifically because of this man and his threat, but Pete basically told us to make the decision ourselves, to sort out who we wanted to pick up.
Paul being Paul, he said he felt I was the right man for Charlie and he’d take Dessie. He says to me ‘if you keep that man scoreless from play, we’ll win the All-Ireland’. He scored his first point from play in the 71st minute…
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Charlie Redmond: Did I?!
MM: You did, so I didn’t keep him completely scoreless from play. But for Pete and John to have that faith in the players to make that decision, I don’t think you would have that now. Times have changed totally on that front.
NL: With the disappointments of previous years, what was the build-up like for Dublin, Charlie? Did Pat O’Neill have any specific plans up his sleeve to deal with Down’s forward power?
CR: We approached it like Dublin approached every game – we knew Down were a hell of a football team, we knew their forward line was exceptional. In those days, there’d be one night where Pat would take the backs, and another day the forwards, but we only found out Paul Curran was marking Mickey Linden the day before the game.
We knew it would come down to the last 10 minutes, maybe the last couple of minutes, and that’s what transpired. We didn’t make any changes to what we normally did.
Even in ’95, the only thing we changed was that our training session on the Saturday always corresponded with the game-time on the Sunday so you got used to what you were doing on the morning and preparing for the game. Before that we’d just have trained at 11 in the morning.
But, individually, every footballer does what suits them and makes them feel comfortable to try and alleviate some of the nerves going into games.
NL: Given the history of that team, and what had happened in previous years when Dublin had fallen short, are those ghosts swirling around your head on the day, or before you run out on to the field?
CR: You have to try and banish them. They don’t go away, but you have to try and put them out of your thoughts and concentrate on the game you have to play.
If you let all the skeletons come upon you, you wouldn’t be able to function. Of course it’s there, but you have to put it out of your mind.
We had ’91, ’92, ’93, but you can’t carry that baggage around with you all the time. At the end of the year, only one team ever went unbeaten, so the other 31 counties have baggage of some sort.
Even for the Down boys, they had the baggage of what happened in ’92 and ’93.
NL: And you both had the weather to compete with as well - best laid plans often go out the window to a point when the heavens open and there’s torrential rain for the whole game...
CR: It was a shocking day, and it was the worst time of the year for that to happen because the ground was still hard, yet you had a wet surface. Coming into any All-Ireland final, you were wondering what studs you were going to wear… you were transitioning between your mouldies and your screw-ins.
MM: There’s a time rota in Croke Park on All-Ireland final day, and when we got to Portmarnock golf club for the pre-match meal, the rota said 3.06pm for Down to take the field. The Dubs were 3.04pm.
Just after the minor match there was an absolute deluge and Jimmy Cousins, who was chairman of the Down County Board at the time, ran in and told us about the weather and that delayed us coming onto the field until 3.12pm – because we all had to change our boots. Well, most of us did.
Some of the boys were very superstitious. Ross wore the same boots in ’94 that he wore in ’91, and he wasn’t for changing them. He didn’t even change into the pre-match suit in Portmarnock, he wore the same jeans that he wore in ’91.
But that deluge made the top of the surface like a skating rink. If you watch the game back, you can actually see Gary Mason was the last Down player out of the changing room and when he comes from the tunnel he slips; completely wipes out.
CR: It was just chaos. From a forward’s point of view, if you’re getting out to the ball first, which is hard enough, you’ve got to make sure it sticks. If you lose control the guy behind you is going to sweep it up.
It probably favoured the back more because the back doesn’t need to win the ball, he just needs to get his hand in and knock the ball away.
Jim Brogan was one of our selectors, and I remember before the ’95 final he turned around and said ‘everyone’s to wear their screw-ins tomorrow, and don’t anyone f**king dare defy me’. That was because of what happened the year before.
******************
WITH 18 minutes gone, Mickey Linden drew John O’Leary from goal before leaving James McCartan with the simplest of finishes as Down surged into the driving seat, 1-5 to 0-3.
Even in the slippery conditions Linden was sublime, skating effortlessly across the turf and leading the Dubs a merry dance. Yet even his brilliance couldn’t stop the boys in blue creeping back up on the scoreboard heading towards the last.
Then the unthinkable happened. With eight minutes left, and only a point between them, Dublin won the ball at midfield.
Paul Curran swept up the break and sent a long ball towards Charlie Redmond. Miceal Magill slipped as Charlie rose, the ball ending up in the hands of substitute Johnny Barr on the edge of the small square.
He offloaded to the waiting Dessie Farrell, who engineered a yard and drew back his trusty left peg, only to fall to the ground under a challenge from Brian Burns. Referee Tommy Sugrue threw back his arms straight away: penalty.
Up stepped Charlie. Two years earlier, he had skewed a penalty horribly high and wide as Dublin slipped to defeat against Donegal, but there was no doubt in his mind this time around.
“Every night in training, during our practice game, I would have been taking penalties against John O’Leary who, in my opinion, was the greatest goalkeeper who had every played GAA at that time,” says Redmond.
“I had a good success rate against him.”
Neil Collins, the Down goalkeeper, had other ideas, diving to his right to keep the ball out. Redmond winces slightly as he talks through his thought process.
“That week of the game I was practising putting penalties to the goalie’s left, and even when I was doing that back in Erin’s Isle I was thinking ‘if this happens, am I actually going to go to that corner?’
“I’d practised putting the ball in the corner all the time... I’d scored earlier on the year in that corner, against Kildare, so I was going to put it in the other corner. Now I know Neil obviously had watched it, and they had practised with me going to that side.
“I thought with the ground being so damp, if I just kept the ball low it would travel fast along the ground. Unfortunately I put a little bit of height in it.
“Even at that, the ball came straight back to me, and I was deciding whether to tap it in, or catch it and kick it in, then out of the corner of my eye I saw Johnny Barr and DJ coming...”
NL: Miceal, the penalty was obviously a huge moment in the game, in deciding who went home with the Sam Maguire. What are you thinking waiting, watching from your station?
MM: If Charlie scores the penalty, we don’t win the All-Ireland, plain and simple. Neil talked about his practice along with Tom Potter, our goalkeeping coach, and he explained that they had practised penalties and obviously studied Charlie.
One of the nights at training Neil had asked Pete could he take one of the players out of one of the match games we were playing to do some penalty practice. So he sent up Linden, and Collins turned round to Pete and said ‘what are you sending him up for, sure he missed against Tyrone?’
The next thing they sent up Gary Mason. Now Mason was one of the sweetest dead ball kickers you’d see. On county final day in Down there was always a penalty kick taking competition for upcoming talent, and I think Gary Mason went six or seven years unbeaten.
So Gary was Neil’s practice partner before that game. Fair play to Neil and Tom, they had studied this man. That’s the small margins you talk about in an All-Ireland final.
NL: But even after the ball came back out, your heart must have been in your mouth before DJ got his toe to that ball...
MM: Well, 25 years on, the truth finally came out last night…
NL: About what?
CR: It was the vital tackle that won the All-Ireland, but it was actually Johnny [Barr] who kicked the ball wide. He’s a club-mate of mine and I constantly remind him of that – ‘at least when I kicked the ball I was 14 yards out and there was a goalie in front of me; you were six yards out, the goalie was lying on the ground and you missed!’
MM: DJ had to walk up to the stage past our table last night. On his way he looked across at us and under his breath just muttered ‘I f**king kicked that ball’.
CR: Yeah exactly – ‘I’ve been dining out on that for years, I’m going to continue dining out on it’.
NL: And there was another half goal chance even later in the game Charlie, into added time...
CR: I actually can’t remember. I remember the penalty, I remember their goal, but my memory of the game is lost. I don’t remember games. Like, the Donegal game, I remember the penalty but that’s about it.
NL: Presumably you remember the Tyrone game the following year [Redmond was shown a red card but remained on the pitch for a further 10 minutes before referee Paddy Russell realised]?
CR: Well, I haven’t been allowed to forget that…
NL: So you shake hands at the end of the game, but it’s Down’s day and another devastating defeat for a Dublin team that is fast running out of chances. You were almost 32 at the time Charlie. How, in the middle of the conflicting emotions you two were experiencing, is a friendship forged?
MM: It goes back to the day after the All-Ireland final. Back then, Bank of Ireland had a banquet the next day where the two teams went to the Burlington and I remember this man and the rest of the Dublin team walking in.
Obviously their heads were down, they’d all had a few beers, but he came up to me and said ‘c’mon and we’ll have a chat, just you and me’. Gregory McCartan was talking to Paul Curran, Barry Breen was talking to Jack Sheedy and Charlie said ‘let’s have a pint’.
It was just instant respect; I looked up to this man so it was an honour for me to mark him.
NL: But what do you actually talk about in that time?
CR: ‘You pay, no you pay - get your hands out of your pocket!’
MM: I don’t even know who paid…
CR: I paid of course! ‘I don’t have any money on me’, he says.
MM: Haha. But no, it was nice to have that bit of time, and then you head back up the road and the Dublin lads were up in Newry on the Wednesday to play in the Goal Classic, and we ended up in Ross Carr’s pub, the Brass Monkey, until the early hours.
CR: We went to the Cove as well; I remember playing pool against Mickey’s mother and she beat me. I’m thinking ‘Jaysus, this week can’t get any worse...’
NL: Thankfully from your own point of view Charlie, Dublin got over the line the next year. Does the fact you finally got your Celtic Cross make it easier to come up to celebrations like this, even when it’s celebrating a team that beat Dublin?
CR: Yeah, there’s no doubt it does. If you hadn’t got up the steps the following year or whatever, it would be difficult. Of course it would be difficult – but you still have to come.
There’s more important things in life than football, your health is your wealth and your family is your wealth as well. As long as you have them, that’s what matters. Football is an important part of life but it’s not the most important.
MM: That was one of the things that came out of that particular era; the friendships made through football. I’m not so certain whether the same friendships would be made among current players, and a lot of that is probably down to the world we live in.
I had lunch with Bernard Flynn down in Malahide last year, and he was saying that’s one thing about the GAA; you’ll make friends for life. No truer words were spoken.
CR: It’s the same no matter where you go in the country – the GAA unites people. I was talking to Miceal’s wife, Nuala, and we were saying ‘what would Ireland be like without the GAA?’ Take the GAA out of Ireland and what sort of country have you left? We’d be England.
What are you going to do on a Sunday morning? What are you going to do on a Tuesday and Thursday night? What are you going to talk about in the bar? It’s such an integral part of Irish society and Irish life. It’s hard to see what Ireland would be without it.
One thing’s for sure, it would be a far lesser country.
