The GAA archives aren’t great.
It’s hard enough to get a team sheet from the noughties never mind a clip from the 90s.
It’s hard to keep track of records and compare everything fairly because: a) formats constantly change and b) the records are shite.
So if you Google something as simple as ‘fastest goal in Croke Park’, you’ll get Christian Eriksen’s effort against Manchester United before you even come close to anything you’re looking for.
It’s hard to say definitively then what’s what – what’s the most amount of points scored in a season or what is the fastest goal ever scored at headquarters?
One thing we do know is that Tyrone men don’t often suffer from stage fright and, within 26 seconds, Moy were three points to the good in the AIB All-Ireland IFC final when Tom Loughran rattled the net.
Sean Cavanagh lets one in, Harry Loughran fetches it brilliantly, Tom Loughran comes striding through from midfield to bury one into the back of the net after 26 seconds of play.
And it was all captured superbly by TG4’s cracking live stream of the junior and intermediate deciders.
Moy rip the net after 26 seconds pic.twitter.com/hXsb4vo7Y7
— Conán Doherty (@ConanDoherty) February 3, 2018
Football really is that simple sometimes.
But it can be even simpler and that Loughran goal definitely is not the fastest goal ever scored in the GAA. Not by a long shot. Only a few years ago, Michael Miller of St. Eunan’s Letterkenny raised a green flag with single digits still on the clock.
Jerome Quinn captured the effort in the MacRory Cup and, whilst records and archives might let us down, Miller can probably make a decent claim for having scored the fastest ever.
