Next week is the 50th anniversary of the county’s famous All-Ireland triumph. Reflections on how it happened
Fifty years later, the once teenage prodigy groans.
Diarmuid O’Donovan is a former newspaper man, a writer and GAA historian as well as formerly a county board administrator and selector on various county teams. For the purposes of Sunday Miscellany, though, he was Donie O’Donovan’s son. “Football was getting better but Kerry were always there. Between 1907 and 1943, Cork failed to beat Kerry in any championship game. Between 1945 and 1971, Cork won just six matches. Things had started to improve after 1945. The city clubs started to take football seriously. St Nick’s [St Nicholas’ was the football wing of the famous Glen Rovers hurling club] had been the only senior club in the city but eventually others followed.
The 1973 captain, Billy Morgan, who would in time take the torch from O’Donovan and Young to lead Cork to unprecedented football success, explains Donie O’Donovan’s role. “He said, ‘you do’, and I’ll never forget was he said next: ‘I’ll put Nemo football up on a pedestal and if I do, I’ll also put Cork football on a pedestal.’”
“We just went straight on to the field. We wanted to get away from all the nonsense around having to go through the crowd.” Beating Kerry was no longer the primary focus of the team and players were now thinking about a first All-Ireland in 28 years. There would be no competing distractions for the Cork public.
In the 21st minute a Dave McCarthy shot came back off the post for JBM to kill the ball and side-foot it to the net, two touches for Cork’s fourth goal.