AN outstanding performance for his club Pearse Óg against Armagh Harps in a Cathedral City derby in 2001 saw Ronan Clarke drafted into an Armagh panel that had conquered Ulster and was hammering at the door for an All-Ireland breakthrough. He forced his way into the Championship side the following year as a 19-year-old full-forward and played a pivotal role in the Orchard County’s thrilling run to their first-ever All-Ireland triumph.
Near misses
I CAME into the Armagh panel under the two Brians (Canavan and McAlinden) and the two of them were streetwise and they had been there for numerous years. Everybody was singing off the same hymnsheet.
I didn’t play in the Championship under them. I remember we played Down in the Qualifiers at Casement Park and I was told to warm-up but then Down got a flurry of goals and I was told to sit back down again.
We played Galway (the eventual
All-Ireland winners) a couple of games later and we got into Croke Park late, we only had a few minutes to get out onto the pitch, we had even togged out really. There was no teamtalk or anything, we had to be rushed out onto the pitch and in the first half we were down by nine or 10 points but then we took it back but we couldn’t get over the line.
No ordinary Joe
JOE Kernan came in and Paul Grimley (assistant-manager) was a big factor for me. I grew up with Paul coaching me, he’s a real players’ man, he told you straight and that’s why he got on with so many players. You just had to keep your head down and keep going and players respected that.
Joe organised everything in the background and John McCloskey (coach) was in too and we were doing strength and conditioning. It was probably the most professional set-up I was ever involved in. I was young but the likes of Kieran McGeeney, Paul McGrane and Aidan O’Rourke had been doing it a lifetime – training and trying to get to the peak to win an All-Ireland – so the intensity of the training was a culture shock to me but they knew we had to do a bit extra to get there. They knew we could win Ulsters but it was a different story when you got to Croke Park and everybody just had to buy into it and that’s what we did.
All you need in a game is one per cent over the opposition and that’s the one or two-point margin for winning a game.
Turning point
LA Manga. The first day we went out against Tyrone in the Ulster Championship we had great belief in ourselves. We got a bit of flak because we’d been to La Manga but Joe knew what he was at. We had five days of great preparation over there and it benefited us for the whole year.
All the other teams jumped on the bandwagon of doing it then but that year I think it gave us the edge and we knew we had put in the preparation for a long road ahead. It served us well.
Lady luck
UNDER Kernan (left), Armagh were able to turn narrow defeats into draws and draws into narrow victories. They needed to win two replays, against Tyrone in Ulster and Sligo in the All-Ireland quarter-finals, and then got past Dublin and Kerry by a point. Lady luck was a welcome visitor too.
Clarke explains: “You need a bit of luck, the rub of the green to win All-Irelands and we had a bit of luck that year. Against Sligo in Croke Park the first day and then the Dublin game when Ray Cosgrove hit the post. They were the bits of luck we needed.”
One that stands out
Ulster SFC quarter-final:
Armagh 1-12 Tyrone 1-12
FOR me it was coming on in a Championship match for the first time. Tony McEntee got injured and Paul Grimley looked up and called me down from the bench. He’d said to me the previous night in training: ‘There’s a chance you could come on’ but I wasn’t really thinking about it because the likes of Cathal O’Rourke were there and there were other experienced players in front of me. But ‘Grimo’ was like that – if you were playing well in training you got your chance and I got mine and I took it.
The atmosphere that day was unbelievable. The whole intensity… I was totally drained when it was over.
I put in a good shift, scoring two points, but the next day wasn’t so good for me and I was taken off but they stuck by me.
The Ulster final was a big game for me too and all through that year, every game, I was thinking: ‘I mightn’t get this chance again’ and I just threw caution to the wind and went at it, trained hard and hoped I’d stay in the team because there were a lot of boys nipping at your heels looking in.
The training games were intense. I used to love going to training, we played 15-20 minute games and they used to be fierce-competitive. I remember Cathal O’Rourke telling me: ‘In Championship football you’ll probably only get two-three seconds on the ball’ and that’s the way it was in our training games. The intensity was that high and then, when you went into a Championship game, it didn’t phase you because you were well prepared.
We knew that if we played to our capability we would beat any team and that attitude got us through many a day, even on a lot of tough days when we weren’t playing well we still scraped through.
The final
THE build-up was something that I had never experienced before. I am a private person, I try to keep myself to myself, and I tried to stay away from it but it was just mental around Armagh at that stage. Was I nervous before the game? No. I just couldn’t wait to get out there and play. I think we took a lot of confidence from the Dublin game, getting through that semi-final and we started the final well but then, just gradually, it got away from us in the last 15 minutes of the first half. Diarmaid Marsden popped up for a couple of scores just before half-time and it settled us a bit going in at half-time.
The flying plaque
THAT’S well documented! The story of Joe throwing his plaque (a memento for losing the 1977 All-Ireland final) against the changing room wall. He smashed it and psychologically it just perked us up. There were a few words said: ‘You don’t want to be remembered for losing this…’ and I just knew, deep down, that we had only really played for about 10-15 minutes of the first half and that if we put a shift in for the second half we would be very close. Thank God we got over the line.
Oisin [McConville] had missed a penalty in the first half and then he stepped up and got the goal in the second half which was crucial for us. It gave us that bit of impetus to drive on and after the goal I just said to myself: ‘We’re not going to get beat here’. I just knew we weren’t going to lose.
The feeling
I DIDN’T know how to react because we were just surrounded by Armagh supporters hugging and pulling at you and I was just mentally and physically exhausted after it. Then there was the buzz when you get back into the changing rooms and meet all the boys again because you are totally separated on the pitch until you get up to lift the Sam.
It was a great day for everybody. My family all met up in the hotel after the game and we celebrated for the next couple of days.
The unsung hero
ARMAGH were awarded six Allstars that year and could have had more. The team included household names like McGeeney, McGrane, McConville, Marsden, Stevie McDonnell, Francie Bellew and many others. Clarke himself was outstanding and was named Young Player of the Year.
He explains: “Looking back at that final and that campaign, a big factor for us would have been our workrate and John Toal would probably have been the benchmark for all of that. His workrate around the middle of the field was phenomenal.
“After that injury he sustained I thought we lost it around the middle a bit without him. He was the unsung hero in that team and him and McGrane had a great partnership together.”
Defending the crown
ARMAGH lost their Ulster title in the first game of 2003 when Monaghan won 0-13 to 0-9 in Clones.
However, Kernan’s side regrouped in the Qualifiers and forced their way back into another All-Ireland final – this time against Tyrone.
Clarke explains: The Monaghan game was the turning-point of that season. We said: ‘Right, standards have slipped here and we need to push on again’. Losing that game was probably a blessing in disguise for us and after that went on a good run.
We got a win over Waterford in the Qualifiers and it was just about getting that win under our belts and keeping going, getting the whole momentum back into the team again because you don’t become a bad team overnight after winning an All-Ireland.
We realised we had to back to basics and try and concentrate on ourselves. After winning the
All-Ireland you are pulled form pillar to post, people want you to do this and that and we probably took our eye off the ball a bit. The turning point for that was the Monaghan game – we just said: ‘Right, we’ll have to cut all the shit out boys, we have to go at this again’.
Looking back
I REMEMBER the great coaches we had and the great friends I made. I learned an awful lot from them all.
We reached the pinnacle in 2002 and we were always trying to get back them but we just fell short. In 2003 we got to the final but Tyrone beat us (0-12 to 0-9) and then in 2004… (lost to Fermanagh in All-Ireland quarter-final).
The 2005 team I thought was the best team we ever put together. Tyrone beat us in the All-Ireland semi-final. We had beaten them in the Ulster final that year in a replay and they should have beaten us but in the semi-final we were by far the better team all day, we just couldn’t put them away and we fell short again.
People thought Armagh would fade away but we kept going and even when Geezer left and Paul McGrane left, that intensity was still instilled in boys like Ciaran McKeever and myself. We knew that training had to be at a certain level of intensity and nothing below that standard would suffice.
