When it kicked off, it KICKED OFF!
The Battle of Omagh has been re-lived all week, ahead of Tyrone’s Super 8 clash with Dublin, and it has added an anticipatory edge to Saturday’s encounter.
12 years ago, in a National Football League game between both counties, multiple fights broke out in a match that saw both sides finish with 13 men and Dublin emerge as winners. Alan Brogan and Denis Bastick were the Dublin players dismissed while Tyrone’s Colin Holmes and Stephen O’Neill also received their marching orders.
In the end, nine players (five from Dublin and four from Tyrone) were charged with bringing the game into disrepute. Ultimately, however, no Tyrone player ever received a ban.
At The GAA Hour: Live, in Cookstown, Tyrone legend Owen Mulligan explained how Mickey Harte and a tub-thumping solicitor worked their magic to ensure his players did not miss a minute.
Paul ‘Pillar’ Caffrey, who was managing Dublin at the time, recalls that tensions were stoked by a scuffle that broke out before half-time that involved several Tyrone players dishing out some punishment without getting cautioned.
Dublin’s star forward Alan Brogan was then sent off, on 45 minutes, when he received his second yellow card. He got into a verbal confrontation with a Tyrone physio that threatened to get physical before players from both sides milled in and distracted each other. Brogan was bundled into the stands by Caffrey.
Mulligan, who was among one of four players also charged in the GAA’s Rule 138 (on-field offences), offered his take on the matter. The former All Star recalled that he ttok it upon himself to look after young teammate Raymond Mulgrew who, he felt, was getting targeted for heavy treatment by the Dubs.
As for what Tyrone boss Mickey Harte said to his players after the game, Mulligan joked:
“Mickey got us in to do another decade of the rosary!”
When it came down to the disciplinary procedures, Harte played a blinder. Mulligan commented:
“As we were going in to Croke Park, the Dublin boys were coming out laughing. We were like, ‘What the f*** is going on here?! Maybe they got off’.
“They were just short of high-fiving. They got off, though, and we got off too, on a technicality.
“[Our solicitor] representing us was very good…. I remember him going in and saying, ‘This man has visited sick children and has gone to charity events, visited primary schools and has been coaching’.
“I was like, ‘Holy f***, am I doing the half of this?! Jesus Christ!’
“I think he did the same for everybody. Said his piece on each of us and I think it washed.”
All nine of the players charged got away with any suspensions and they were free to play on for clubs and counties.
The two sides met in NFL action the next year in Croke Park’s first game under floodlights and it was a 82,000 sell-out. As the old maxim states, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
