1997 Leinster Semi-Final Replay
MEATH 2-20 KILDARE 3-17
By John Harrington
The second match in a classic Leinster Semi-Final trilogy between Meath and Kildare in 1997 was one of the most dramatic games of football Croke Park has ever seen.
Kildare, then a rising force under Mick O’Dwyer, were very unlucky not to beat reigning All-Ireland Champions Meath in the first drawn match which ended 1-9 to 0-12.
Fortunate to survive, it was expected that Meath would assert their authority in the replay. Instead, once again, it was the Lilywhites who played the more consistent passages of effective football.
They led by 1-7 to 0-7 at half-time and then a stunning Brian Murphy goal early in the second half put them further ahead.
Reduced to 14 men after Graham Geraghty was sent off, Meath looked like they were going to be dumped out of the Championship when Trevor Giles missed a late penalty and they trailed by four points with just a minute remaining.
An exhausted Glen Ryan of Kildare following the 1997 Leinster GAA Senior Football Championship Semi-Final Replay match between Kildare and Meath at Croke Park in Dublin.
Typical of the Royals though, they found a response and narrowed the deficit to three points before Giles made amends with a last-gasp palmed goal to bring the match into extra-time.
The memory of that goal still stings for Kildare defender, Davy Dalton, who won an All-Star for his performances with the Lilywhites that year.
“I made a terrible error in the second game myself and it took me a while before I could even look at that game again,” he told GAA.ie
“We were winning by three-points and the game was up. I should have passed the ball to Anthony Rainbow but I didn't.
“The game was well into injury-time and I thought it would have been blown up if I just kicked the ball out over the sideline.
“But the ball came straight back in and ended up in the back of the net and the game was drawn and went to extra-time.
“Now, we went four or five points up in injury-time, but were pegged back again.
“Jody Devine went to town that day and we were probably a bit slow on the line that day because they left the same lad marking him the whole time.”
Kildare looked home and hosed when they led by 3-16 to 2-13 lead after the first half of extra-time, but they hadn’t reckoned on Meath sub Devine doing his best Superman impression.
He launched over four long-range points, three of them in a row, to incredibly edge Meath ahead with time almost up.
Willie McCreery of Kildare in action against Trevor Giles of Meath during the 1997 Leinster GAA Senior Football Championship Semi-Final Replay match between Kildare and Meath at Croke Park in Dublin.
“You’d talk to people around the country and there are still people who remember me from that game,” said Devine in an interview with the Kildare Nationalist in 1997.
“I’d still know a few Kildare people and they would be slagging me about it, you’re always reminded about it.
“It was just one of those days, on another day I might have kicked one or two of them and the others would have went wide but it just happened to go right for me on the day, in the last ten or 15 minutes nothing could go wrong for me. It was just part of an amazing three game series.
“I think it was 45-50,000 in Croke Park for that game. There was a slight breeze into the Canal End. The first shot I had went over the bar and things just went on from there. If I was asked to do it again I’d probably never do it again even I had 100 chances to do it. It was just one of those things, on that particular day everything seemed to go right.”
It looked like Devine’s intervention would steer Meath to an incredible win, but there was time for one last piece of drama as Kildare substitute Paul McCormack found an equaliser at the death.
Not surprisingly the second replay wasn’t nearly as dramatic as its predecessor as Meath slogged their way to victory in an ill-tempered match.
Jody Devine was Meath's super-sub in the 1997 Leinster SFC semi-final replay against Kildare.
By the time they had finally made it through to the Leinster Final though they were a spent force and slumped to a meek defeat to underdogs Offaly.
“Darren Fay, Graham Geraghty, Mark O’Reilly were all suspended and we had a couple of injuries too,” said Devine.
“Offaly were probably fresh and were fresher on the day. We might have taken our eye off the ball a little though, after beating Dublin and Kildare we thought we were probably going to win it.
“It just shows you can never underestimate a team, not that we underestimated them but I think everything just took its toll going into that Leinster final.”
Kildare’s defeat to Meath in 1997 felt like a devastating blow at the time, but Davy Dalton believes it ultimately hardened them sufficiently to finally win a Leinster title the following year when they had the satisfaction of beating the Royals in the Final.
“Meath were All-Ireland champions so the fact that we could compete with them in ‘97 gave us a bit of belief and impetus to go back and put in the work again,” says Dalton.
“I think the three games against Meath in 1997 were crucial to the development of that team. We got loads of experience from playing in those games and that stood to us going forward.
“Even though we lost the last of those three games, they really stood to us.”
