'That didn't happen' Sligo legend debunks Pat Spillane claim 50 years on

Irish Daily Mirror

2 days ago

There's an aspect to Sligo's All-Ireland semi-final with Kerry, 50 years ago this weekend, that Barnes Murphy has always railed against.
In his first autobiography, and elsewhere since, Pat Spillane told of how during the pre-match parade, Sligo players waved to family and friends in the 44,455 crowd at Croke Park, suggesting they were just happy to be there after winning the Connacht title for the first time in 47 years.
A look at the final scoreline - Kerry won by 3-13 to 0-5 - would support that theory. But Murphy, who was the Sligo captain and doubled up as team trainer that year, insists that it isn't that linear.
'That didn't happen at all,' he says of Sligo players cheerily greeting their people ahead of the throw-in. 'That didn't happen at all. You know Pat Spillane and I know him well too. He's a lovely fella, but he's just a bit... anyway, we'll leave it at that.'
Incidentally, Spillane's son, also Pat, has been lining out for Sligo for a number of years now having declared for his mother's county, and so he and Murphy regularly bump into each other at games.
'I've talked to Pat several times but I haven't talked to him about '75 or anything like that.'
Murphy insists that Sligo were serious about beating Kerry as they went to Croke Park. Remember, this was a new-look Kerry side with a rookie manager - one Mick O'Dwyer. For all they achieved together afterwards, they didn't carry such a hefty reputation on August 10, 1975. Pat Spillane
'That was the first All-Ireland they won and I remember, David Hickey and Jimmy Keaveney and them lads were at our function that night. I think it was in Malahide, and they were 500% sure that they were going to beat Kerry that year.'
The problem for Sligo, as Murphy saw it, was that whatever ambitions they carried to Croke Park that day were fatally undermined by their preparation. Ordinarily, there would have been a five-week break between the Connacht final and the All-Ireland semi-final back then. But Sligo required a replay to account for Mayo, which cut the lead-in to three weeks.
And, given that they hadn't won the provincial title since 1928, the celebrations weren't exactly short-lived.
'One or two people here, they're dead now, started organising functions, going here, going to this club, going to that club. This was in the middle of a time to get ready for Croke Park. I never drank and a few more fellas never drank, but we just spent the first week or more around the county and the cup was full most of the time, you know?'
Some players, he says, were that bit more portly going to Croke Park, with the team only putting in a handful of training sessions worthy of the name ahead of facing Kerry.
That Murphy, at just 27, was both captain and trainer seems hard to credit by today's standards. But the cult of the manager was only in its infancy back then and hadn't really caught on yet. In the vacuum, some very unwieldy arrangements were still in place.
Murphy led the training, along with James Tiernan, who he recruited from Sligo Rovers, and shaped how the team played. He was the de facto manager, yet he didn't have a direct say on team selection. That fell to a chairman and a few selectors.
But Murphy had built contacts around the country, particularly on the All Star tour in the spring of '75 having been chosen on the team at centre-back the year before. He drafted in the expertise of Brian McEniff from Donegal and Galway's John 'Tull' Dunne.
'Some people weren't too happy about it. Brian was helping me out and when we went to Croke Park, I brought Tull Dunne with me. They spoke to us before we went out on the field and when we were in at half-time, they were told not to come into the dressing room, because they advised Sligo to make some changes and Sligo told them to get lost.'
At that stage, they were still in the game, but could have been much closer. Mickey Kearins, the team's star forward but very much in the twilight of his career, had missed a penalty and a routine free from in front of the posts.
'Sligo went up there to play and we were doing really well. We were doing alright. I mean, you look at the score at half-time, we were after missing a penalty and Mickey missed 21-yard free by kicking it into John O'Keeffe's arms.
'I have a photograph there of coming out from centre-back and I was catching the ball in the middle of the field. And the score at that time up there was 0-11 to 0-5. And that was 10 or 15 minutes into the second half and then a change was made. Instead of putting Tom Colleary into full-back, they put Tom Colleary in marking John Egan. And then after that, for the last quarter of an hour John Egan just took off and Kerry scored a few goals.
"Kerry hadn't us beaten halfway through the second half. Now, you look at the All-Ireland, after 10, 15 minutes in the All-Ireland final, Kerry had Dublin beaten.
'Now, I couldn't find out for about four or five years who made that change.'
He wasn't shy in voicing his displeasure in the aftermath, perhaps to his own downfall.
'Maybe I said too much after '75 in Croke Park. The League started in October and I remember we were about to go out and the chairman said, 'Oh, by the way, we've a new captain today. Tom Colleary is captain today and for the rest of the year'. And that was it.' Barnes Murphy outside the Sligo Centre of Excellence (Image: Gerry Faughnan)
With that, he was no longer the trainer either, though he played on for a number of years. Sligo, meanwhile, have only added one more Connacht title - in 2007 - in the intervening five decades.
'Apart from Mickey Kearins, there was no one on our team over 30. Tom Colleary was about a year or two older than I was and I was the next one at about 27. And all the other lads, they all played up into the '80s. They were all fit and young fellas but we kind of lost it after that because the county board and powers that be changed things and changed around a lot.'
He insists that he's let all of that stuff go now, however.
'Do you know what? It kind of wouldn't matter now. I couldn't give a damn about Connacht finals and winning them. It was great at the time. Do you know what I think about now? Of all the great players I've met, and played against, I saw one on the television the other day, one of the nicest fellas you could meet any place, was David Hickey of Dublin.
'I played against the likes of Colm McAlarney and Kevin Kilmurray and Matt Connor. That was one of the great footballers, Matt Connor.
'You go to Galway and you meet Tommy Joe Gilmore and different fellas here and there, and that's kind of what it's all about now, isn't it?'