There was nothing minor about Lake County’s 1995 success

Gerry Buckley

I have passed by the Spa Hotel at least twice a week for the past ten years and I still get the warmest of feelings every time I hit the iconic Lucan venue.

The reason is simple. It was the meet-up venue on the night of September 17, 1995 for delirious Westmeath fans a few hours after Luke Dempsey’s minor charges had claimed the All-Ireland title after a dramatic 1-10 to 0-11 win against Derry, the culmination of a never-to-be-forgotten eight-match campaign. And delirium is still the immediate emotion of this scribe/first-and-foremost Westmeath nut when recalling the four months-plus that ended with Damien Gavin lifting the Tom Markham Cup.

Fans in traditional counties would struggle to name their successes in the U18 and U21/U20 grades, but there was nothing minor about what happened 30 years ago for the success-starved Lake County Gaels. Indeed, for many years now, since mobile phones became commonplace, even in ‘non-roundy’ anniversaries I have exchanged early morning texts with the team’s rock solid full back Kevin Hickey. To ensure that I ‘won’ this year’s ‘text-first contest’, I messaged the Shandonagh stalwart at midnight last Tuesday night/Wednesday morning!

The path to glory started relatively innocuously on May 7 in Portlaoise, as the principal focus for the throngs of maroon and white-clad supporters present was the Leinster U21 final against Offaly. However, an off-colour display by a very talented team resulted in a dismal loss to our neighbours, with gloomy post-mortems focused on the main game rather than, in hindsight, a great 2-5 to 0-9 win against a strong Wexford team (Good Counsel, New Ross had been Hogan Cup runners-up just a week earlier).

Yours truly’s antenna first detected the great class in the side six days later in Athlone. An eight-point scoring spree in ten wonderful first half minutes prompted me to write glowing words as PRO of the Westmeath Supporters’ Group (in hindsight, I was overly harsh at the time regarding our seniors – passion can inadvertently cause such errors of judgement). I could definitely see a lengthy minor championship run unfolding leaving Páirc Chiaráin that evening.

Leaving Cert commitments meant a seven-week wait to the Leinster semi-final back in O’Moore Park on July 2 as curtain-raiser to the Meath v Wicklow SFC penultimate round (the Garden County men having dismissed Mattie Kerrigan’s very out-of-sorts troops in the quarter-final – see ‘overly harsh’ above). A win by the narrowest of margins (1-11 to 2-7) against a very good Longford side prompted losing manager Denis Connerton to label Westmeath as “a team with no apparent weakness”. And I already felt he was correct.

The three-match saga against an excellent Laois outfit is still fresh in the minds of those of us lucky to have attended all three. In truth, as there were no penalty shootouts or ‘back doors’ then, Gabriel Lawlor’s young men were desperately unlucky to be eliminated from the championship. Indeed, Westmeath folk were only too delighted that Laois won the All-Ireland a year later (and in 1997 to boot).

A late and somewhat fortunate penalty conversion in Croke Park on July 30 gave the boys in blue and white a second chance (0-12 to 1-9). The replay in Tullamore just five days later was an absolute classic (3-12 to 2-15), prompting a calm Offaly friend of mine to opine to a far-from-calm me in a local hostelry afterwards that he had just witnessed “the best game of football he had ever seen in O’Connor Park”. I was literally unable to drink or eat for a couple of hours afterwards.

The second replay on August 12 was deservedly won by Westmeath on a scoreline of 1-10 to 0-9. Fittingly, a Rochfortbridge native, Leinster Council chairman Albert Fallon, presented the cup to Damien Gavin from the same club. The scenes were delirious and all of 32 years since the late Frankie Connaughton from (Mullingar) Shamrocks had allowed six-year-old me to briefly hold the cup at the same venue. I was well able to drink that evening (food was irrelevant)!

I had attended the Munster football senior/minor double finals in Killarney on July 23 and was keeping notes about Cork in the curtain-raiser until it dawned on me towards the end of the game that Tipperary were going to win! So, it was back to Croke Park on August 20 for an All-Ireland semi-final clash between two untraditional football counties which Westmeath won convincingly by 1-14 to 0-10. Remarkably, the multi-talented Declan Browne, just a few years before he was correctly grouped with our own Dessie Dolan and Wexford’s Mattie Forde as the “three best forwards unlikely to win Sam”, was virtually anonymous that day, and re-runs on video confirm this.

Gerry Whelan, the sports editor of this paper at the time, asked me to pen a few thoughts for a special supplement for the final against Derry. I was a full-time accountant at the time and was chuffed to be asked, as my sports writing career was still five years away. My nostalgic thoughts proved to be popular, as the 1963 minors which reached the final but were well beaten by Kerry in it – very unexpectedly – were my boyhood heroes. Those surviving – just eight from the starting 15 – all turned or will turn 80 this year. And they are still my heroes.

I also recall sending a ‘good luck’ card to skipper Damien Gavin, whom I had managed on a Mullingar Athletic AFC youths team a year earlier – Keith Glennon was another team member – with the simple message, ‘If you think you can, you can.’ Damien thought he could. And he and his colleagues did.

September 17, 1995 is a date which will always hold a special place in the annals of Westmeath GAA. Tommy Cleary’s tour de force, Joe Casey’s sensational brace of points, and Shane Deering’s late rugby tackle immediately spring to mind, as does a disallowed Derry ‘goal’ which could easily have been chalked up on the scoreboard. But sometimes your name is on a cup. Gerry Whelan’s second gig for me was to do match ratings for the winning team. It was just about the easiest piece of ‘work’ a man could ever be asked to do!

As I compose these few thoughts, I am looking at a wooden plaque of the 1995 All-Ireland minor champions on my apartment wall. It is important to remember deceased selectors Johnny Moran, JJ O’Connor and Paddy McCormack, and my pal Eddie ‘Killer’ Byrne, the team’s much-loved masseur. One of the latter’s great party pieces was Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’.

The world was just wonderful for Westmeath football fans back in 1995.