Kerry and Tyrone's underage connection

By Micheal Clifford

Making their own piece of glory on Sunday will be foremost on the minds of the Tyrone minor footballers, but if they do so they might remind once more of history’s capacity to rhyme.

With the Dalata Hotel Group U20 title already in the bag, a win over Kerry in the All-Ireland minor final at Newbridge will take the Red Hands to within two games of completing Gaelic football’s Grand Slam, of an All-Ireland minor, U20 and senior treble.

The opposition is timely too and not just because it is Kerry that is also next up for Malachy O’Rourke’s senior team in the Sam Maguire semi-final on Saturday week, but also, inevitably, it is the Kingdom who are the only county to have ever completed the treble, exactly 50 years ago.

The impact of that three-pronged success in 1975 would weaponise a decade of unprecedented dominance, providing the game’s most successful force with its golden era.

Back then the game rocked to a different schedule. The minor and senior double - their first in 13 years - were wrapped up on the fourth Sunday in September, with the, then, U21 final taking place two weeks later.

In another nod to history’s rhyming beat, it was Tyrone that provided the opposition to Kerry in the minor final where the Ulster champions were blown away on a 1-10 to 0-4 scoreline.

It would set just the tone for a great afternoon for the Kingdom, which would see their “team of bachelors” dethrone Dublin in the main event, on a 2-12 to 0-11 scoreline later than afternoon, but there was enough on the minor team-sheet to provide the hard evidence as to why Kerry were on the brink of their greatest age.

Five of the starting minor team would graduate to become senior champions, Charlie Nelligan, Vincent O’Connor, Mick Spillane, Sean Walsh and last, but hardly least, four-time Texaco footballer of the year Jack O’Shea.

While Jacko would redefine the role of a midfielder, on that September afternoon he played as an orthodox full-forward to telling effect, blasting home the only goal of the game while racking up 1-3.

The stand-out talents in that minor team were so obvious so early that four of them, Charlie Nelligan, Mick Spillane, Sean Walsh and, of course, Jacko were also on the team that started and comfortably defeated Dublin by 1-15 to 0-10 in the U21 final at Sean Treacy Park, Tipperary, a fortnight later.

There was little surprise about the comfort of that winning margin given the star studded nature of that U21 team, backboned by the senior winning side with which it shared the same manager in Mick O’Dwyer.

Along with the quartet of All-Ireland winning minors, Paidi O Se, Tim Kennelly, Denis ‘Ogie”’ Moran, Mikey Sheehy and Pat Spillane (the latter having lifted the Sam Maguire two weeks earlier) were all starters, as was Ger O’Driscoll who came off the bench in the senior final to score the match sealing goal.

And while Tommy ‘the Private” Doyle would not have been a household name back then, six All-Ireland medals and his role as Kerry winning captain in 1986 would ensure that his anonymity perished early and often.

In total that All-Ireland U21 winning team would yield a collective haul of 71 All-Ireland senior medals.

Inevitably when Kerry’s golden age ended and invited an 11-year famine, it went back to 1975 to pick up the threads again.

When Kerry ended that fallow period in 1997 with Paid O Se as manager, by his side on the sideline was Seamus McGearailt, the man who had trained that minor team to beat Tyrone in 1975.

It is a long road to travel, but the history that Tyrone are chasing down over the next month is the kind that has the capacity to echo through the ages.

And they won’t have to look too far on Sunday to be reminded of that.