Deadlock

‘The world turned upside down by four matches. Rewind.

Shocked Dubs. Exhausted players.

Beggy’s point flying back to his boot.

Green flag flying. Foley, Dowd, O’Rourke, Dowd, Gillic, Foley, Beggy, O’Rourke, Harnan, McCabe, Lyons, O’Connell—Dublin leading by five with nine minutes to go.

Fans flying backwards through the entrance. The psychologist who thought it was a bad idea to bring the Meath team to Scotland.

The Leinster Council deciding a date for the fourth match before the third match was even played.

Four Dubs with cramp. Tommy Howard with cramp. No Meath men with cramp.

The ball hopping back over the bar to create the Deadlock in the first place.

Two names coming out of a jar at a Leinster Council meeting and everyone saying, That has never happened before.

Nor had it. Nor would Gaelic football be the same again.

 

The summer of 1991 saved Gaelic football. Just in time too.

The country had spent the previous summer in a mood of elation when Ireland qualified for the soccer World Cup finals for the first time ever. Gaelic football was in danger of being left behind — a jaded casualty of Ireland’s new status as a top ten soccer nation.

Instead, it was saved by three unlikely events. The GAA decided not to seed the stronger teams in the Leinster championship. Two of the best supported teams were drawn against each other in the opening round. And incredibly, it took four matches and one of the most dramatic finishes in history before there was a winner.

What happened in 1991 was about the reinvention of a sport, wresting it from its obsession with its own legacy and engaging with a brighter, more confident future back at the heart of popular culture.