CO’K: I watched the whole game back a fortnight ago when the GAA released it. Have you seen it yet?
OMcC: “I’ve never actually watched the whole game before. I just fast-forward it to my bit! [Laughing] I don’t think I’ve ever watched the full thing.”
CO’K: What struck me was remembering how many goal chances Armagh missed that day?
OMcC: “We did. We had one, Diarmuid [Marsden] went through and gave it to Aidan [O’Rourke], I think he had the shot and I came in and went to bury the rebound, it went out for a 45’. We scored the 45’ but we had loads of opportunities. Anyone who left the game that day would have said ‘that’s one Kerry left behind’ but we had loads of chances.”
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CO’K: It doesn’t seem even watching it back now like one that got away for Kerry, more one that Armagh would never have forgiven themselves for not winning?
OMcC: “I wasn’t so sure after the game and then a lot of the reporting on it would have been around ‘Jesus, it’s great for Armagh but…’ The commentary, nobody thought we had a chance until the final whistle went. I think it was Ger Canning and Martin Carney and right up until the end they were saying how great we were doing, but I don’t think they could believe it. I’m not sure they still believed it when the final whistle went. It’s only in time when you look back, we definitely had chances.
“When I chat to Tomás [Ó Sé] or Dara Ó Cinneide, they’d say they felt they were completely pummelled in the second half, completely dominated. It will be interesting to watch that back and see if it is the case. A lot of people have said to me it was like that, and in a way it felt like that, but we still didn’t get a run. There was no real flow to what we were doing and that was probably the reason why we ended up crawling over the line, as we normally did.”
CO’K: We’ll get to the goal but in the next attack after it, you were like a dog in heat. You got the ball and threw Tomás Ó Sé off like a rag doll…
OMcC: “I remember that, and then I kicked the f***ing thing wide! [laughing] The great thing about the Kerry lads is that they’re very self-deprecating. They’re very down to earth, very real. Maybe it’s easier when you’ve won as much as they have but when you talk to them about it, they’re very good at taking the piss out of themselves. It’s a nice trait to have because a lot of people take themselves very f***ing seriously these days. That part of it, we would have had a bit of chat about it. Myself, him and [Peter] Canavan did a thing in Belfast one night and Tomás mentioned about marking me in 2002 and I got man of the match, and whoever he marked in 2003 from Tyrone got man of the match. He said he wasn’t on a great run at that time! [laughing]”
CO’K: He was an unbelievable attacking wing-back but did you feel you could trouble him defensively?
OMcC: “Tomás was brilliant at driving forward but when it came to man-marking, he was trying to impose his game on me the way I was trying to do on him. He thought like an offensive player, and that suits. But I tell you what, he was a hard man to get up and down the field with. I remember thinking ‘I’ll have this guy for pace’.
“We were going for a ball out on the wing in the first half. He was two yards behind me when we started and by the time we got to the ball we were level. I’d marked him before and thought I’d have him for pace, but his pace had improved, he was fitter than he had been, a lot more tuned-in than I’d ever seen him. I found it hard that day on him, to be honest.
“He didn’t really impose himself that much going forward but they kicked a lot of ball into the forward line that day, they didn’t run much through the channels. I was thankful of that because it meant he didn’t get on the ball as much.”
CO’K: If you’re on the Sunday Game, how do you analyse the goal? Do you pick out the number of steps Andy McCann took?
OMcC: “I tell you the first thing I’d highlight – that’s a training ground move. That’s the first thing about the kickout, that we’d worked on it. Diarmuid had made those runs a lot of times, Benny had picked him out a lot of times, other times he didn’t pick him out. It was such an obvious run. People afterwards would have seen that they saw Diarmuid getting across and how someone didn’t pick him.
“Now, if that was the case, he’d just be passed along, whereas then his man chased him from one side of the field to the other and was 10 yards off. Fitzmaurice never left his man, I pulled Tomás a little bit towards the goal and he didn’t go and pick him either. Diarmuid had a free reign.
“Andy McCann’s steps, I’ve never heard that mentioned before, but I will have a look at it. Andy was that easy going that you couldn’t blow him up for it.”
CO’K: That Armagh side always had a kickout routine for times when you really needed a ball?
OMcC: “11 went for that kickout. Usually John Mac, though he had gone off at that stage. Whoever was at 11 after a goal, everybody pulls left and 11 went right, or vice-versa. It was 11 dictated it, he put up his right hand or left hand. It sounds very simple but it’s very difficult to mark. Six is trying to mind the house and he’s not gonna go until 11 goes. It worked fairly well. There are a lot of teams still use it, not necessarily after a goal. Dublin use it quite a bit.”
CO’K: In terms of it being a training ground move, you’re just talking the kickout?
OMcC: “Ah, the rest of it’s a f***ing mess, yeah. It’s just made up on the spot. It was such a bad ball I gave [Paul] McGrane that he’d no other option! It was very intelligent on his part. A lot of players would try and catch that. Once he flicked it, I’m in. You talk about Diarmuid’s part and Andy’s part, but it was the flick really that took about three players out of it. Darragh Ó Sé had the chance to poleaxe me if he really wanted to. Tomás said that to me, and Darragh might have mentioned it in his book that he should have floored me as soon as I got the ball. I jinked a bit left and I was in, and whatever after that. People say they’re surprised I didn’t go across the ‘keeper but there’s no way I could have. He would have saved it.”
CO’K: You’d have had to go with the outside of the foot to go across him?
OMcC: “There’s so many things could have gone wrong. After the debacle of the penalty, I said the one thing I would do is get it on target. I knew he wouldn’t have been expecting me to go there. It sounds like a lot of thoughts in a short space of time, but when you’re after missing a penalty in an All-Ireland final, you do have a lot of thoughts. You start thinking a wee bit more deeply about things.”
CO’K: Were you able to brush the penalty off fairly quickly?
OMcC: “No, I wasn’t able to brush it off fairly quickly. I was glad I got half-time. I remember nobody really said anything to me, the only person that did anything was [Ronan] Clarkie, slapped the back of my head and said ‘you’ll get a goal in the second half’. Like, he was only 19 at the time. A few boys came over and maybe hit me on top of the head or slapped me on the back, they didn’t say a lot. There wasn’t a lot said about the penalty, people just presumed I’d deal with it myself.
“We had Hugh Campbell and Des Jennings, they were sports psychologists with us at the time, and they told me to go out after half-time and take a ball with me, stick it in the net at Hill 16. I said ‘right’. As I was running down the tunnel with the ball, I thought ‘this is gonna look f***ing stupid’, so when I came out I just wellied the ball as far as I could down the field! Maybe that’s what it was about, just one way of getting it out of my system. As far as going up sticking it in the net, naw, I just couldn’t do it to myself [laughing].
“But that was it, you’re ready then. I was lucky I got a few touches at the start of the second half, a few simple things. A few frees. That’s one thing I loved about taking free kicks. Times you’d miss or not have a great day with them, but other times they take you into the game.
“That’s why I love to see forwards taking frees rather than goalkeepers. If a forward’s not having a great day, a 30-yard free, a 20-yard free, a tap over, you’re in the game and it has a different complexion. It’s not that I don’t think ‘keepers are good at taking frees, some of them are very good, but it’s just too much of an opportunity for a forward to get into a game.”
CO’K: Your celebration, you look like you hadn’t a clue what to do. There’s even a second when you looked to be considering blowing a kiss?
OMcC: “[Laughing] I never! That’s one thing I never did was consider blowing a kiss. I wouldn’t have been allowed back into the house, or anywhere near Cross if I had’ve done that. It’s something I never rehearsed. When you score a goal, you don’t expect to end up behind the goals. I really hadn’t a clue what to do. Maybe Tony Mac was on the pitch, or Stevie or somebody shouting at me ‘right, enough, let’s get back in the game, we’re still behind’. We were still a point behind.”
