'What a goal. That is one of the great goals we've seen in Croke Park. Magic, magic Mulligan!'

The 42

5 hours ago

AS SOON AS it was over, Owen Mulligan got off the pitch, into the showers for a quick wash, then into his brother Stephen's car to get back up the road to Cookstown.
His mobile rang with a call from Mickey Harte. He left it unanswered. Things weren't great between them at that point and they hadn't spoken in a month.
The following morning, Harte called again.
'He didn't notice me when I wasn't getting on and then I wasn't going to notice him after,' explains Mulligan now.
'He called me as I was going down the road but I never lifted the phone to him.
'He rang me the following day and asked, 'Where were you at? There were journalists looking to talk to you. Do you know what you did here?'
'And I was like, 'They weren't looking to talk to me a month or six weeks ago, so I am not going to talk to them now.'
'He replied – 'I don't think you understand what you have done here.''
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Without question, it is the greatest goal in a major game of championship football.
There might have been balls that were struck more sweetly, but nothing matches this for balance, daring and chutzpah.
Owen Mulligan's goal for Tyrone against Dublin in the drawn All-Ireland quarter-final of 2005 is Gaelic football's equivalent of Diego Maradona in Estadio Azteca, 1986.
It electrified a Tyrone side that had been five points down at half-time, bringing them level. While Dublin snatched the draw late on, Mulligan felt superhuman. His aura spread right through the team and they finished the season with their second Sam Maguire after beating Kerry in the final.
The curious thing is, he had served notice of this in the league meeting that year in Omagh. He cut in from the right wing heading to goal, gave it the head up and dummied a pass before netting.
But to execute two dummy passes, in front of a full house in Croke Park…
Where did it come from?
It came from a man struggling to earn his place. With balls hopping off him and fumbling possessions. And then Mulligan looked over to the sideline to see Martin Penrose warming up, knowing he was on borrowed time.
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Here's what happened then.
Brian McGuigan, no less, made a full-length block on an Alan Brogan shot. The break favoured Ryan McMenamin who handpassed off to Davy Harte.
He delivered a long fistpass to McGuigan, who kicked upfield. Paul Griffin beat Stephen O'Neill to the ball but Sean Cavanagh got a toe to the rolling ball. O'Neill picked it up, got his head up and kicked a dink ball in front of Mulligan racing towards the 45 metre line.
His marker Paddy Christie was tight. Too tight. As Mulligan spun towards goal, the Ballymun man was left sprawled on the turf.
To watch it now is an appreciation of fine art. Left foot solo. Dummy. Bounce. Left foot solo. Dummy. Bounce.
'Mugsy' evades Stephen O'Shaughnessy. INPHO INPHO
'STILL MULLIGAN!' roars Darragh Maloney on the RTÉ commentary.
'What a goal. That is one of the great goals we've seen in Croke Park. Magic, magic Mulligan!'
'Paddy Christie was getting the better of me to be fair,' admits Mulligan.
'I knew I had to do something. Peter Canavan, I believe, said to the line to just hold off for now, to Harte.
'Then the ball came to me and I said I needed to do something. I had a point in my head, I was going to go for a point but then it all seemed to open up for me.
'Stevie O'Neill clipped it into me. Paddy Christie was tight to me. Stephen O'Shaughnessy bought the first one. Then it was Paul Casey.'
If those journalists had caught up with Mulligan afterwards, it's a certainty they would have asked him a particular question – 'What were you thinking of when you got the goal?'
Grouting the bathroom? The mystery of Transubstantiation?
Listen to any athlete closely when they produce moments of genius, and there is a common theme; they aren't thinking. Their mind might be making a million calculations, but it's a feel thing, too.
'Just something else takes control. You are just into free-flow,' he says.
'I got away with the first dummy but I don't know what made me try the next one. O'Shaughnessy fell for the first and I really, really was going to pass it. I think Enda McGinley was inside. So I was going to pass it to him, but then I thought I would go one more and it opened up totally for me then.
'I know people say it was a nice finish. But I just put the head down and blasted it. Because nothing was really going right for me all game and to place a ball against Cluxton, I don't think it would have beaten him.
'So, I just put the head down and blasted it. It looks great because it went to the roof of the net, but it could have gone fucking anywhere, like! The way I was playing…'
In that instant, all his hangups, all the toxic negativity fell off him like shedding a skin.
'To hit that net, all the baggage drops off you. Some days you just want the ball. Some days you are making these runs, you are getting out in front and it is crazy how it works,' he says.
'You just think, 'give me the ball, I want to do something quick!' And that's how I felt after that goal.
'And then the next match, it was a fortnight away, it was probably one of my best games.'
The morning after, it was back to porridge. Mulligan and a few others had made a pact that those struggling with fitness or coming back from injury would go for Sunday morning runs.
'Celebrity Fat Club' they called it.
Perhaps it was peer pressure, but the numbers on such runs soon multiplied. Later that day, people in Cookstown were approaching him and shaking his hand. The goal? Really? He hadn't seen any of it yet, naturally.
On the Tuesday night back at training, they sat down to do a bit of video analysis. Mickey Harte showed the clip of the goal. All the room started applauding Mulligan.
'And I said to myself, 'Fuck me.'
'You kind of realised what you did then. You felt ten foot tall and went out and was far more expressive. I found an aura again. It was like magic, you had it inside you and it began to come out again.'
There was a fortnight until the replay. The days went slow. Mulligan couldn't wait to see Dublin again.
Even now on Monday, working as a site manager on a hotel in Edinburgh, once he heard the draw he got immensely excited for this present group of Tyrone players.
Dublin. In Croke Park. An All-Ireland quarter-final.
Mulligan shoots for THAT goal. INPHO INPHO
And yet, it's not the same. The 81,882 that came in 2005 was helped by a Tyrone support in the first flushes of success, in a newly-finished Croke Park, in the middle of an economic boom.
He had links to Dublin himself. His father worked down there when he was a child and he attended school for a few months. Right up to the point when his mother Heather was pick-pocketed at Blachardstown Shopping Centre and they barely had time to draw breath before they were on the road to Cookstown.
'You always have to beat a Dublin or a Kerry to win an All-Ireland. You have to take the big scalp. Our second game against Dublin, that was the best atmosphere I ever played in. The best ever,' he recalls.
'Dublin started to come close to us and at one stage there was a point scored by Shane Ryan to leave two points in it and the roof was lifting off the place. It was fucking mental, Croke Park was shaking. People talk about the All-Ireland and Ulster finals against Armagh, but this was a different kind of pressure altogether.
'It was just noise. The Hill, ah, the hairs standing on the back of your neck. Like being at the Grand National and hearing a stampede of hooves.'
That evening, nothing could touch Mulligan. Paddy Christie was injured so he burned through Peader Andrews and then Stephen O'Shaughnessy on his way to 1-7. His second point he shrugged off Andrews, landed a point, and handed a stray dog to the referee Gerry Kinneavy.
Tyrone's Owen Mulligan rescues a dog and gives it to referee Gearoid O Conamha. INPHO INPHO
In the second half he ran into space to take a pass from Sean Cavanagh. He spun away from two tackles and squeezed a shot to the net.
Then he turned to the Hill and produced one of the most memorable goal celebrations in Gaelic football.
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'I am a massive Liverpool fan but I always had a wee bit of respect for Eric Cantona. You know that goal he got, the chip against Sunderland?' he says.
'And he stands and just puts his hands up? I had watched that somewhere a few days before and just thought it was an unbelievable celebration. Even though he was United! But I just loved it and said to myself that if I scored a goal into the Hill, I was going to do that.
'It wasn't quite like Eric. I just stared into the crowd. At people making gestures at me! But I think it got me a little bit of respect. Other players blew kisses or cupped their ears. I just did that.
'A few fans have since said that to me that I earned the respect of the Hill. I applauded them afterwards and they clapped back.
'I have always loved Liverpool and there's only one place in Gaelic football that reminds you of the Kop, and that's Hill 16. So I used to love it, the colour of it. Plus, they were the same colours of Cookstown Father Rocks!'
Even now, the goal follows him around.
'Every so often it rears its' head up on social media. Sometimes, well, you can't but help reading the comments underneath it,' he says.
'When you go down to Dublin you don't be long before you're recognised. To do something like that, you are there in the moment. As the years go on and you have family yourself, you know that to have done something special in headquarters, it's hard to beat.'
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Mulligan celebrates All-Ireland U20 success as a Tyrone coach in 2022. Lorraine O'Sullivan / INPHO Lorraine O'Sullivan / INPHO / INPHO
Only last weekend, Clogher Eire Óg were playing Cookstown Fr Rocks in the all-county Tyrone league.
Eoghan McElroy of Clogher, 10 years of age, spent his half-time talking to Mulligan.
Afterwards, McElroy's father, Aidan, asked what they had been talking about.
'I was telling him how much I use the hand-pass dummy,' Eoghan said.
Legacy.
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