Dowd's day as Meath sealed final spot with win over Rossies

"GREATNESS IS bestowed only after a hard apprenticeship and Meath graduated with first class honours from the Croke Park exam hall," wrote the Irish Independent's Donal Keenan in the opening paragraph of his report on Meath's remarkable0-15 to 1-11 All-Ireland SFC semi-final victory over Roscommon in 1991.

Proclaiming greatness may have been slightly premature as Meath failed to go on and attain the highest honour of All-Ireland glory, but there was no denying their hard apprenticeship.

After surviving the four-in-a-row against Dublin and a serious wobble that needed two attempts to shoot down Wicklow before eventually seeing off Offaly and Laois to claim the Leinster crown, Meath advanced to the Sam Maguire showpiece, but not before another almighty scare.

Keenan declared "against any other opposition they (Roscommon) would have won handedly." However Meath had created an aura of invincibility around themselves and while that mask did threaten to slip against the Connacht champions they did manage to hold on.

Roscommon could, and really probably should, have been 2-5 to 0-0 clear inside just eight minutes. Paul Earley blasted a goal chance wide after just two minutes, moments later he was also denied by a superb Michael McQuillan save and Eugene McManus blasted another opportunity over the bar. In that spell Roscommon also squandered four very scoreable point chances.

However they depended too much on the scoring exploits of Derek Duggan who converted eight frees and capped a wonderful display with a magnificent goal just before half-time that secured a 1-7 to 0-7 lead for Roscommon.

With the Roscommon full-back line tenacious and Meath struggling to create opportunities they needed a revamp for the second-half.

Martin O'Connell went right corner-back, Liam Harnan to right half-back, Kevin Foley to centre-back, Colm Coyle to to left-half and PJ Gillic to centre-forward to make room for Gerry McEntee in at midfield and with Roscommon shifting John Newton from midfield to full-forward the momentum turned in Meath's favour.

Meath still trailed by five points with 17 minutes left. They cut the deficit to two with Bernard Flynn and Stafford on target, while Liam Hayes was denied by a great Gay Sheerin save.

Meath had their tails up. Stafford scored five points in the last three minutes, three from play, while all Roscommon could muster was a pointed free from Duggan from virtually the last kick of the ball as they learned the lesson first hand that you never write off Meath.

Mick Lyons summed it up perfectly after the final whistle. "It's a great team," he said. "I've been saying it all along and now people can make up their own minds about us. I though Tommy Dowd had a fantastic match, his best ever for Meath, but they had us on the rack in the first-half. The longer we keep winning the greater our confidence."

That game became known as the Tommy Dowd semi-final such was the influence of the Dunderry and in the book Game of My Life Dowd recalls the contest with great fondness."I wasn't sure whether I would get my game in the All-Ireland semi-final against Roscommon (because of injury), so obviously I had to try twice as hard in training to try to impress Sean and the selectors.

"Luckily enough I got the chance to impress again against Roscommon in the All-Ireland semi-final and I certainly took it.

"That was our ninth game in about 12 weeks, so you'd imagine we should have been getting tired at that stage, but we all felt good enough and we were flying fit at the time.

"Sean had us training in the swimming pool at Gormanston at the time, so we weren't flying around fields killing ourselves, Sean had us very fresh.

"Roscommon started well and had us under pressure. Paul Earley was giving Mick Lyons a fairly hard time of it and he missed a sitter of a chance. Junior McManus also went flying through at one stage, but he blasted over the crossbar. They had some great chances early on.

"Tony McManus, he was a great player and the type of player I would have looked up to over the years, gave a great pass into Derek Duggan who was completely on his own. When the ball was passed to Duggan, Terry (Ferguson) raced back to try to get a challenge in on him, but Duggan sold him an unmerciful dummy and took a drop shot that was like a missile hitting the net, Mickey McQuillan hadn't a chance of saving it.

"I managed to get a couple of points in the first-half and they came at crucial times of the game, when we badly needed them.

"For a lot of the game Roscommon were three or four points ahead, so my points happened to keep us in the game at crucial times when it could have gotten away from us.

"After they got their goal, and just before half-time, PJ Gillic kicked a huge point from way out the field, that gave us great hope. For all the chances Roscommon had, we were still only three points down at the break without playing well at all.

"There was never any panic in the Meath dressing room. You would always have had Mick Lyons or Harnan or McEntee or O'Rourke and maybe Kevin Foley offering plenty of advice and encouragement, they were the ones who would say a few words. All you needed were a few words from those boys to get your act together.

"I never saw any panic from Sean or any of the players in the Meath dressing room, ever. We always felt we had a chance and a lot of the games we won were won in the last 10 or 15 minutes, so we knew there was a long way to go no matter how far we were behind. We had that resilience to keep going until the end.

"I was marking a lad called Paul Hickey that day against Roscommon, he was a very good footballer, but he just held the centre and never really moved from his position, so I used to go to midfield and to the other side of midfield to get breaking ball and he didn't come with me, so I ended up on a lot of ball that day.

"It was one of those days for me, whether the ball broke left or right or centre I caught it. I remember I had drifted into the full-forward line at one stage and Jinksy kicked in a ball from the sideline and I jumped between two or three Roscommon lads and caught it. On another day that ball would have broke and might have been cleared, but I managed to catch that one and lay it off to Stafford and he got a very important point off it.

"We all know the days when things go very wrong, but that was just a day when everything went right for me and nothing did go wrong. I won the man-of-the-match award that day against Roscommon," recalled Dowd of his day of days.

Meath - M McQuillan; B Reilly, M Lyons, T Ferguson; K Foley, L Harnan, M O'Connell (0-1); L Hayes, PJ Gillic (0-1); D Beggy (0-1), T Dowd (0-2), C Coyle; C O'Rourke, B Stafford (0-9), B Flynn (0-1). Sub - G McEntee for Ferguson.

Roscommon - G Sheerin; D Newton, P Doorey, E Gavin; J Connaughton, P Hickey, M Reilly; S Killoran, J Newton; V Glennon, T McManus, T Grehan; E McManus (0-3), P Earley, D Duggan (1-8). Subs - M Donlon for Glennon, D O'Connor for Reilly.