DERRY hadn’t won an Ulster title since 1987 and went into the 1993 season having been beaten provincial finalists the previous year. Eamonn Coleman’s Oak Leaf side lost by two points to Brian McEniff’s Donegal who went on to win their first ever All-Ireland title but Damian Cassidy looked ahead to the season with a unshakeable belief that Derry’s time had come. In the first of a new series recalling great club and county campaigns, Andy Watters recalls the Oak Leaf summer of '93…
The pivotal moment…
I really couldn’t put my finger on one. I couldn’t look at a particular game and say: ‘That was the game that made the difference and gave us belief’. I genuinely believe, and I think most of the other fellas would say this, that we knew we were good enough going into the campaign.
We had beaten Down in 1992 and they were the All-Ireland champions and we were the National League champions at the time. We beat them at Casement Park in an absolute belter of a game on a classic June day. I don’t think Casement Park was ever as stuffed since - it was a different level of a game and Casement was literally jammed. We got past them and we played Donegal in the Ulster final but it was one of those games when everything just went against us.
We lost Anthony (Tohill). He broke a bone in his foot 20 minutes into the game and went off at half-time. Dermot McNicholl was sent off… It was just one of those games.
Donegal went on to win the All-Ireland, Down had won it in ’91 and we knew we could compete with them so we just knew we were good enough to win the All-Ireland. Going into the 1993 season we had a spring in our step, we were confident we were there or thereabouts and we just had to make sure we improved again and cut out areas that had let us down.
After the League campaign there was a butting of heads, so to speak, in Ballymaguigan and some of the issues were trashed out and our training evolved from that meeting. There was a sense of unity and purpose in the group going into that season. I remember meeting Sean Donaghy, God rest him, of Donaghy brothers in Kilrea in January 1993 and saying: ‘Sean, I’m telling you now, we’re going to win the All-Ireland this year’.
I was absolutely certain about it and I knew that the vast majority of the squad were mentally in the same place I was in. When you’re involved in sport at that level you know when a player has the bit between his teeth and that’s where we were at by that stage.
The stand-out match…
Our first big test was Down in the Marshes and then Donegal, the All-Ireland champions, in the Ulster final at Clones. People talked about the pitch and the conditions but it was the same for both teams and our training before it was so intense that I couldn’t imagine how we were going to lose that game.
Donegal people have referred to the state of the pitch since and my position on that is: They were lucky they played us on that pitch because if it had been a better surface the margin (of their defeat) would have been much greater.
But I’d have to say the Cork game has to be the stand-out. After all it was the All-Ireland final and from a players’ perspective it was such a unique experience because none of us had ever played in one before.
It maybe sounds a bit daft but when you’re mentally in the right place as a player and a competitor you just do not see yourself getting beaten and no doubt that’s the same for the opposition.
You have to produce the goods to win finals and we came back from five points down but when we went behind we knew as a group that we had it in us to come back. We had come back in the semi-final against Dublin so we knew that those qualities were there. I’ve been lucky to be involved in teams as a player and manager when you just know: ‘This team is not going to lose this game’.
We were just on a mission and things could have happened that could have changed the pattern of that final but I still think we would have found a way out of it. We would have found something that would have got us over the line – there were a lot of footballers in that team and an awful lot of personalities and characters who contributed to that success.
The opponents…
Cork threw everything at us and if you put yourself in their place you’d ask: Will they have any regrets? I’d say their regret would be the referee sending off Tony Davis.
But they had been five points ahead before that and they had an awful lot of things set up for them to go on and win that game. When you get a platform like that in an All-Ireland final and you don’t take advantage of it, you can’t really be looking at anyone other than yourself. As a player and in management, if you’re five points up in a match and you don’t get over the line you can’t blame anybody else.
That Tony Davis red card (for a reckless tackle on Dermot Heaney) was a bubbling point in the game. About five minutes before it, Niall Cahalan had poked Enda (Gormley) a fair slap (a left hook off the ball) and although I’ve never watched the game back in full, or any of those games back in full, I’ve seen that clip a few times on Twitter and Enda was well poked by Cahalan.
The Davis tackle happened shortly afterwards and I suspect the sending off was a combination of the two things. Strictly-speaking that shouldn’t be the case but we’re all human and the referee had a duty to be fair to people. The pressure was on him to deal with the level of aggression that was coming from Cork at that stage and that’s how he took control of the game.
That sending off stopped that, that was the end of all that nonsense and it was back to the football then. Their aggression was how they had reacted to losing a five-point lead and the fact that we were all over them in the first half. That’s how they were reacting to that siege that was going on.
The star…
How do you pick one? Seven players - Tony Scullion, Johnny McGurk, Henry Downey, Gary Coleman, Anthony Tohill, Brian McGilligan and Enda Gormley - won Allstars, a haul which had only been bettered by Dublin (1977) and Kerry (1981) before then.
And there could easily have been eight more. Cassidy himself had an outstanding season and his forward colleagues Seamus Downey, Joe Brolly, Dermot Heaney and Damian Barton were all unlucky to be overlooked, as was goalkeeper Damien McCusker (who hadn’t conceded a goal before the final) and several others.
Cassidy says: You couldn’t name one player as the star because that’s not how teams work. There’s no doubt that different players come to the fore in different games but every team has a core group of players who are critical to it and that group – those four or five players – are, in truth, irreplaceable. If you lose one or two of them then the rest of us will do our bit and bust our guts to make up the difference but the quality that they have is irreplaceable. There are very few teams who can win a Championship without their key players. You can maybe cope without one but you’ll struggle without two and you’ll certainly not cope without three of them.
The year after…
When I look back at ’94 in comparison to how we were the season before, that steely determination, that quiet, but absolute, confidence and underlying ambition within the squad just wasn’t the same. It might have kicked in if we’d got over that game (Down in the Ulster Championship) and progressed with a bit of momentum.
The circumstances were completely different in the 12-month period and those circumstances – the fact that we had won the All-Ireland, we had been on a holiday, we had done the club circuit… certainly played their part in changing that group dynamic.
Gary (Coleman) had picked up an injury in the League, we had three or four players carrying injuries into that Down match and it was just not the same. If the Derry team had stepped onto that pitch with the mentality of 1993 I’m confident we would have got over Down but the same hard focus wasn’t in the group. There’s no doubt there were individuals who were still in that place but in the overall group we just weren’t in the same place.
That’s the ingredient that makes the difference because there are plenty of good players out there and good teams. What separates them? That psychological approach that comes from within themselves or within the group. That’s what makes the team that much better and that much harder to beat.
Looking back…
I look back on it with massive fondness. To be honest I’m so grateful that I was fortunate enough to be there in that group of players from Derry. Some people might said we could have won another one – potentially ’92, maybe ’94 and definitely ’95 if the circumstances had been right but that’s life. It was an honour to be involved in it and I’m massively grateful to have been around in a fantastic time for Derry football.
Ulster SFC quarter-final: Down 0-9 Derry 3-11 (Newry)
Down scorers: R Carr 0-5, G Mason 0-2, M Linden 0-1, P Withnell 0-1.
Derry scorers: E Burns 1-1, A Tohill 0-4, R Ferris 1-0, D Heaney 1-0, D Cassidy 0-3, E Gormley 0-2, D Barton 0-1.
Ulster SFC semi-final: Derry 0-19 Monaghan 0-11 (Casement Park)
Derry scorers: E Gormley 0-7, A Tohill 0-5, J Brolly 0-3, K Diamond 0-1, B McGilligan 0-1, D Cassidy 0-1, D Heaney 0-1.
Monaghan scorers: R McCarron 0-3, G Mone 0-2, E Murphy 0-2, M Slowey 0-1, S McGinnity 0-1, G Flanagan 0-1, G Hoey 0-1.
Ulster final Derry 0-8 Donegal 0-6 (Clones)
Derry scorers: E Gormley 0-3, D Cassidy 0-2, A Tohill 0-1, D Barton 0-1, D Heaney 0-1.
Donegal scorers: M Boyle 0-2, D Bonner 0-1, J McMullan 0-1, M McHugh 0-1, J Duffy 0-1
All-Ireland SFC semi-final: Derry 0-15 Dublin 0-14 (Croke Park)
Derry scorers: E Gormley 0-7, A Tohill 0-2, H Downey 0-2, G Coleman 0-1, B McGilligan 0-1, J Brolly 0-1, J McGurk 0-1.
Dublin scorers: C Redmond 0-8, P Gilroy 0-2, P Clarke 0-1, P Bealin 0-1, P Curran 0-1, E Heery 0-1.
All-Ireland SFC final: Derry 1-14 Cork 2-8 (Croke Park)
Derry scorers: E Gormley 0-6, S Downey 1-0, T Tohill 0-3, J McGurk 0-2, J Brolly 0-1, B McGilligan 0-1, D McNicholl 0-1.
Cork scorers: C Corkery 0-5, J Kavanagh 1-1, J O'Driscoll 1-0, S Fahy 0-1, T Davis 0-1.
