February 5, Healy Park, Omagh

Were you at the Battle of Omagh? This is the question that children yet to be born will be asking old grandpappy around the fire in Gortin and Donnycarney in years to come. Grandpappy will take the pipe from his mouth and gaze into the fire. His eyes will glaze over and perhaps a tear will drop into his old gray beard. Mother will shepherd the children off to bed. “I told you never to mention that. He’ll not sleep tonight.”

We were at Omagh. Myself, the brother and John headed up and nice and early and were sitting over a few pints in the Naomh Eanna clubhouse in Healy Park an hour before the throw in. Mind you it was no thanks to the reformed RUC/PSNI that we were there at all.

We had been given directions by a woman but got lost in the town centre. Waiting at a corner to turn, one of the peelers came over to the window. “If you turn back sir, you’ll find plenty of parking in the town”. While pondering this, a chap in a luminous yellow jacket got out of his car behind us and proffered conflicting advice. “Are youse going to the game lads?” We were. “Same as myself. Follow me.” We let him pass us and, stout chap that he was, brought us right up to the pitch.

It was nice to be sitting out of the cold and the traffic, nodding at some familiar faces. Real Dubs are probably the least adventurous of Irish people and have migrated and travelled little in relative historical terms. Thus every trip to somewhere exotic for a match is truly something to be wondered at. Then there’s the ham sandwiches. Big tin-foiled bundles of them being ate by chaps with pot bellies and washed down with pints of porter. If this was Navan or Newbridge and you had a better run at it, there would be a bit of a sing song, but there’s no time for that today.

Then there’s the match. Tyrone start better and for a while things look ominous. The Dublin psyche would probably be pretty badly bruised by a bad defeat here. Something similar happened in 2003 when the Dublin and Armagh league fixture that followed Armagh’s victory over Dublin the All Ireland semi-final was staged at Croke Park. Armagh destroyed Dublin and in doing so pencilled a psychological promissory note that was duly cashed that August.

Dublin, however, were clearly determined not to allow that to happen again and got stuck in. The first critical moment came when Alan Brogan and Ryan McMenamin clashed. Dublin players arrived in large numbers as back-up and the first major stand off of the day took place. Tyrone maintained their dominance and, following a Stephen O’Neill penalty, led by five points at one stage before going in at half time

1 – 5 to 0 – 5 ahead.

Dublin were far better in the second half and levelled the score with a Mossy Quinn penalty. From then on they played the better football and gradually pulled ahead. The intensity of the exchanges went up a ratchet and there were a number of further incidents before a general free for all developed beside the main stand. The catalyst for this was a foul by Brogan on Gourley who promptly dropped to the turf like a sack of potatoes. Whelan took exception and attempted to pull him to his feet. Cue mayhem.

We were behind the goal, probably as far away as possible from the scene but even from there it looked bad and for one awful minute as I watched people in the stand run down towards the sideline I feared that the crowd would also become involved. In fairness to the stewards they held the line and the action came to an end without any real damage being done. Again it has to be said that neither then, nor later on television highlights, did I identify any player attempting to do real damage to another.

When the game restarted it was Dublin who had their tails up and pressed home their advantage. Remarkably Tyrone only scored one point in the half and it was Dublin who finished with a point from left corner back David Henry. The Dublin supporters are naturally delighted and linger to savour the occasion. The two teams are kept on the pitch and enter huddles. Later we hear that Dublin players and officials are abused as they go to the dressing room. We had planned to stop off in Peter Canavan’s home town Ballygawley on the way home but somehow it did not seem like the day to be having post mortems with the relatives of the deceased.

There was plenty of time afterwards to reflect on what had taken place. There is an old children’s story about The Boy Who Cried Wolf. I am tempted to employ it as a suitable methaphor for what took place in Omagh. There were a number of boys who cried wolf. Diving after imaginary punches, rolling about like bad ham actors in an Anew McMaster’s fit-up, dropping like the Ballymun towers under phantom aerial assaults. Indeed if Paddy Powers oddsmaker was there he might have been tempted to revise the odds on best supporting actor.

However, as the little boy who cried wolf discovered, some day the wolf will come to see you. Perhaps that is unfair to Tyrone but the perception has grown, and it is based on some evidence, that they have regularly resorted to the tactic, much beloved of professional soccer players, of exaggerating or even inventing injuries in order to penalise the opposition either through bookings or sendings-off or time-wasting.

We were delighted leaving the ground and it is only sitting in the car waiting for the traffic to move that we realise that what was an epic Dublin victory might have its Pyyricc element. Already RTE Sport was talking about “disgraceful scenes” and the like. Within hours, the President of the Association intervenes to call for the Central Disciplinary Committee to take stern action. Monday morning’s newspapers all had large colour photographs. Pat Kenny, who knows as much about football as the Dalai Lama, was horrified. “Disgusted father of 14 from Athlone” rang Des Cahill to express his utter dismay. It might even be a threat to the peace process.

What a load of nonsense. What took place was not nice to see but there has been a lot worse. The tackling on the field was robust and there were one or two off the ball confrontations, but nothing that we have not see before, or will not see again. It is also well to bear in mind that no-one was taken off injured as a result of a deliberate assault nor did any player suffer broken bones during any of the several melees that took place.

That said, it was a match that would affect what happened in the future. Tyrone and Dublin now had “history” and it was not improbable that they would have to meet later on in the year when the stakes were higher. It is unlikely that scenes like Omagh would be repeated on a dry fast pitch in the glare of national scrutiny but it would have a psychic hangover.

Dublin, you might have imagined, had banked some psychic capital but would it be enough to sustain them in the dog days of late summer and early autumn? Only time would tell but they were happy with Omagh, no matter what the short-term fall-out from the match might be. With an unfamiliar look about them, and several new players in key positions, they had beaten the All Ireland champions. Players like Kevin Bonner, Niall O’Shea and Denis Bastic showed that they have the potential to thrive at this level, while David Henry surely had claimed a permanent place in the Dublin back line. For the Dublin set-up as a whole, several ghosts had been laid but it would take some time before the full importance of Omagh would be revealed.

Tyrone had no need to be unduly upset although I would have liked to have been in the middle of the huddle they went in to at the end of the match! What were they saying to one another? “Jaysus boys, we got what was coming to us”. Hardly. “Let’s put this behind us and move on.” Sounds more like it. Mickey Harte’s way has been to turn setbacks, defeat and even tragedy, into something positive. He would try to do the same after this temporary reversal.