Thirty years ago, on the morning of the 1994 Leinster final, Colm O’Rourke set down for posterity in his newspaper column the terms and conditions of a match against Dublin. “No game I have played in matches it in terms of excitement, atmosphere and tribalism,” he wrote. “They are now, as many times before, the key to the future… the architects of history.
“Today, men from both sides will leave a mark on this game which will be remembered for a long time… if I was born in Spain I would probably like to emulate Miguel Indurain. If Brazil, it would be Romario or Senna. In Meath growing up, I wanted to play on a winning team against Dublin in a Leinster final.”
It was a rare moment of introspection from O’Rourke at a time when he was pushing away any talk of retirement. He was 37 in 1994, 18 years done with Meath and still with time to go, still different from everyone else. As a player he was skilful and accurate but fiercely determined and aggressive, every element of his game rooted in hard work and gilded with class. Writing a newspaper column while playing was unusual then, unthinkable now. But it was how he played and thought, entirely on his terms.
That Sunday he talked of Keaveney, Hanahoe, Mullins and Moran from his past, Giles, Geraghty, and Jimmy McGuinness as part of his present and “the continuation of that great struggle”. That’s how Meath-Dublin was then. That’s how it felt.
Dublin won by a point that day. O’Rourke took a bad knock on the knee but kicked a point and ended the match arguing with PJ Gillic over taking a free from 50 yards out to draw the game. The Meath management nominated Gillic. His kick didn’t make it.
Advertisement
It was three years since Meath had achieved their greatest victory of all against Dublin in 1991, and O’Rourke’s last. Those final years felt like the circle being completed and O’Rourke brought back to where he began, Meath forever chasing Dublin.
His first championship game against Dublin was in 1976 as a precocious teenager who scored 1-2 and was handed the ball to strike a penalty in his first Leinster final. He shot low, hard and to the left, but the ball flew past the post. Meath lost by two points. Pay no heed to that, Ken Rennicks told him in the dressing room afterwards, but the disappointment never left him.
For a full decade O’Rourke did everything to push back the tide: scoring a penalty in 1980 before Dublin destroyed Meath, 1-5 out of Meath’s 2-8 when they drew in 1983. In 15 years of league matches against Dublin, O’Rourke never lost a single game. In 1984 Meath sent every ball towards O’Rourke at full-forward where Gerry Hargan did whatever it took to hold him. Meath lost by four.
“We just weren’t good enough,” he said in 1984. “Neither as individuals or as a team could we match them. And you can put me top of that list… unless we can find some new players the only way for Meath from here is down.”
To finally beat Dublin in the 1986 Leinster final the change in O’Rourke and Meath was visible. They weren’t letting these chances slip anymore, whatever that meant. The game set the template for the ten years that followed: tense and terrible football, violent tackles and matches decided on a hair’s breadth. “That’s the ghost of ten years exorcised,” he said in the dressing room afterwards.
Advertisement
By 1991 O’Rourke was a columnist for the Sunday Tribune, writing his copy on a Thursday evening then faxing it to the office. He was already resisting talk of retirement but his thoughts on the passing of time were also slipping on to the page, almost by accident.
He remembered the 1984 game as his worst footballing experience and pondered the notion of quitting football if Meath lost. “Football is the only thing I was ever really good at,” he wrote, “so it better continue.”
His columns through that series of games read now like artefacts preserved in a time capsule. After years at corner-forward O’Rourke was moved to centre-forward to battle with Keith Barr, Dublin’s abrasive, flying centre-back. He held him in game one; O’Rourke was battling a foot injury before game two but played heroically, hunting and hustling Dublin all day.
Before game three he recalled someone telling him to mind himself at his age. “That’s the one thing I won’t do,” he replied.
By game four, he was wrecked. They all were. No one could remember the details from any game. Some players weren’t even sure how many times they had played the Dubs.
Advertisement
And when Meath finally won, O’Rourke’s fingerprints were on the ball that ended with Kevin Foley and the goal that broke Dublin. A couple of hours later he appeared at the Sunday Tribune and retired to the office of the editor Vincent Browne to file his column for the following day.
In the match report nearby Sean Moran committed to print perhaps the most perfect summation of a major GAA match ever recorded. “A war can never have been won after the loss of so many battles,” he wrote. O’Rourke’s column was humble in victory while pressing all the buttons guaranteed to drive the Dubs mad.
“We robbed Dublin,” he began. He recounted how Dublin had dominated “but they failed to put us away and in the end our remarkable resilience won out. To have got the goal in the last two minutes to draw level was fantastic, but then to have gone on to get the winning point…”
After 1991 every game against Dublin became a tribute to his apparently endless longevity. He came back late in April 1993 with his knee in bother, dominated that July against Dublin and kicked five points in defeat. His last game against Dublin in the 1995 Leinster final was also his final game for Meath. The morning before, O’Rourke was in bed watching the racing previews when a journalist rang. His thoughts on the day to come? He reached for a quote from the poet Francis Ledwidge.
“Tomorrow will be loud with war,” he said. “How will I be accounted for?”
Advertisement
Dublin won by ten points with Dessie Farrell commanding the play. O’Rourke scored two points and set up a goal. That autumn O’Rourke would be nominated for another All Star. Joe Cassells, a Meath selector that day, had partnered O’Rourke at centrefield in his very first game against Dublin in the spring of 1976 when O’Rourke kicked the winning point from 40 yards in an O’Byrne Cup final deferred from 1974. As they entered the tunnel after the game Cassells hugged O’Rourke. Then he hugged him again. Their battles were over.
When he meets Farrell again on Sunday, it will be the first time since 1995 O’Rourke has encountered Dublin in championship combat. When laying out his goals as manager a couple of years ago his own personal terms of reference when facing Dublin haven’t changed, regardless of the circumstances. Beat them.
“The only measurement of a Meath player’s worth is when they face Dublin,” he wrote in 2019. “Meath players have to live or die by those standards.”
In a column for the Sunday Independent in 2014, O’Rourke ran through the basic requirements for any Meath team taking on Dublin: don’t let them score goals, disrupt their kickout and do whatever necessary to keep the game alive till the last ten minutes to “see how they cope with unknown territory”.
He remembered an old Meath defender once reminding everyone if they wanted to nobble a Dublin forward, get it done in the first ten minutes when the referee wouldn’t be inclined to send them off. If those opportunities for assault don’t exist anymore, the need remains to make the Dubs uncomfortable in every way and every moment.
Advertisement
“They won’t beat Dublin in a pretty match,” O’Rourke said. So much has changed. So much stays the same.
Leinster SFC quarter-final
Dublin v Meath, Croke Park
Sunday, 4.30pm, live RTE2
