It took some serious courage and a brass neck to pull it off.
Thankfully, the bould Shane Curran had both. His moment of madness may have resulted in the cup for the 1989 Connacht minor final being taken away from Roscommon, but all’s well that ends well, with Cake scoring a penalty in the replay which the Rossies won in extra-time.
What’s life without a bit of controversy?
Back to the first day and Galway were leading by a point when Roscommon were awarded a penalty with time almost up. Curran, the designated penalty taker, had hit the cross-bar with a spot-kick earlier on in the game and so the management called on their corner forward Peadar Glennon to take this one. They had told him to take the point which was the instruction that sent Curran into action.
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“I was a bit peeved because I was the nominated penalty,” he says on Thursday’s GAA Hour with Colm Parkinson. “To me, when you’re the penalty taker, you’re the penalty taker. The instruction came on for Glennon to kick the ball over the bar.
“If you look at the video, it took about half an hour to set the bloody thing up, and all he was doing it was kicking it over the bar from 14 yards. I said to myself ‘jaysus there’s a bit of an opportunity here, so ‘bang.’
“It was one of those things that you shouldn’t have done. I’m forever grateful that it did hit the net because if it didn’t, I’d be in the Amazon rainforest for the last 30 years trying to figure out how to get back into Roscommon with my head held somewhere between my shoulders.”
Little did the Roscommon lads know that the drama was only beginning. Unknowns to the Roscommon players, the referee John Cosgrove had disallowed the goal as Roscommon had two men (Curran and Glennon) inside the 20m line. Curran takes up the story.
“I have to hold my hands up there. It was impulsive but it was wrong. The senior game came on after that and we took our place in the stand and everyone was congratulating us and that. So we went back with the senior team to the ‘Traveller’s friend’ as it was in Castlebar and we were having our dinner and I’ll never forget it. These three fellas came in, the archetypal county board bucks, the suit on them, the big belly and they came in and took the cup and said ‘sorry lads, Galway have won this.’ We were looking at them going out the door.
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“It soon became pretty serious when word was breaking that the game had been awarded to Galway. It was a sombre journey back to Roscommon and it was the lead story on the news. You were kind of playing thick then, I was like ‘I did my job.’”
“Common sense ruled through eventually and Galway offered a replay ten days after in Castlebar. The one person who had kind of been missed in all of this is John Cosgrove the referee. I’ve never met him since, before or after the replay. But it led to his refereeing career being curtailed, but a lovely man, a gentleman and unfortunately that incident curtailed his refereeing career going forward, he was a very good administrator after.
“Funnily enough, we got a penalty seven minutes into the replay in Castlebar which we won. I scored the penalty that day and we won the game with a goal in injury time of extra-time…”
Never a dull moment. Laochra Gael will be worth watching tonight.
