Читать книгу The Boys of '93. Derry’s All-Ireland Kings онлайн

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Disappointed that we hadn’t beaten them, we approached the National League of ’92 with all guns blazing. The stall was set out; we were going to win the League, which we did for the first time since 1947, the year I was born, beating a very fancied Tyrone team in the final at Croke Park. We played badly in the National League final and should have been beat but got a very lucky goal. But on those occasions, it doesn’t matter how you win as long as you win.

The wave of enthusiasm I felt had been lacking in Derry for so long had started to roll through the county. Watching Derry teams play before I was involved, I felt that they never believed they could win an All-Ireland. Now people wanted to play for Derry, we were winning games, everybody wanted to train and the family was getting stronger. The hype was high and so were the expectations.

We couldn’t wait to get at the ’92 Championship and two weeks after that final, we played Tyrone again, this time at Celtic Park, and gave a definite answer that day. We beat them by five points but we were superior all through. Only that Gary scored an own goal, we would have won much easier. It wasn’t his fault – the ball bounced out of him and there was nothing he could do about it so he escaped an eating that day.