Up to the 1950s the Ulster championship was a closed shop. Cavan won it pretty much every year with an odd Monaghan success here and there. Antrim were the only six county team to be mapped.
It was only in the 1950s that six county teams started winning Ulster titles regularly. Tyroneâs first was 1956, Derryâs first 1958, Downâs first 1959. Armagh didnât win between 1902 and 1950. Donegal didnât win until 1972. That tradition of failure cast a long shadow, the growing competitiveness of the Ulster championship particularly from around 1970 on also meant that winning Ulster was nearly seen as an end in itself. All nine teams could harbour realistic hopes of winning it in any given year.
Kerry had the tradition. Dublin had the knowhow. You had OâDwyer and Heffernan, who prepared their teams better than anybody else.
In the days before the other Leinster and Munster counties gave up, Dublin and Kerry were the bar. That meant you had Offaly coming along, and it became an obsession for Eugene McGee for them to beat Dublin, and later Kerry. It was an obsession for Sean Boylan and Billy Morgan to beat Dublin and Kerry respectively.
There was no real consistent standard bearer in the other provinces to drive the standards of challengers, and for obvious reasons things were difficult for Ulster teams anyway in this period. It made it more difficult for players to commit year on year. Emigration was a tempting prospect.
You could see the stirrings of an Ulster rising for a good decade or more if you looked hard enough though.
Down won the All-Ireland minor title in 1977 and the under-21 in 1979 and some of those players were still around for 1991. Then they won the minor again in 1987. Burren won two All-Ireland club titles in 1986 and 1988 (both of which I attended).
Donegal won the under-21 All-Ireland in 1982 and 1987. The 1992 All-Ireland was built on the back of those teams.
Derry won the minor in 1983 and 1989 and reached the final in 1980 and 1981, and reached two under-21 All-Ireland finals in 1983 and 1985. Lavey won the club All-Ireland in '91.
Tyrone were building something serious at underage level from 1988 on, my oulâ fella always said it was a crime against football they narrowly lost the 1988 All-Ireland minor semi-final to Kerry. They made no mistake in the under-21 final against Kerry in 1991 when they won by 20 points.
So all those counties had a clear base of players to build from.
Twice in the 1980s there were all-Ulster National League finals, 1983 and 1985. Ulster teams would regularly pummel the big southern teams in the League. Armagh knocked six goals past Kerry in 1982.
If you look at the list of Sigerson winners, Ulster teams started to dominate. Queens won in 1982 and 1990, UUJ in 1986, 1987 and 1991, St. Maryâs in 1989.
I think it took strong managers to bring teams through. Monaghan and Tyrone had success because to a large extent because they had Sean McCague and Art McRory. Donegal were successful under Brian McEniff.
1983, 1985 and 1986 showed that Ulster teams werenât that far away, and that they had the talent, but their preparation still wasnât on the level of Kerry. Tyrone could barely run in the last 20 minutes of the 1986 final. Donegal seriously put it up to Meath in 1990 but just didnât have the knowhow to force it home.
There was a serious maverick nature to a lot of players in Ulster coming through in the 1980s and early 1990s. Real flair players - Frank McGuigan, Ray McCarron, Martin McHugh, John Corvan, Ger Houlahan, Dermot McNichol, Mickey Linden, James McCartan, Peter Canavan.
You needed strong managers to harness that sort of talent, instil the right preparation, and a team with swagger and momentum and tradition to break the hoodoo. That of course was Down. It probably shouldnât have been that much of a shock that Down came along in '91 because theyâd not been far off Meath in the NFL final in 1990, and it was hard enough to reach NFL finals back then. The BBC had come on board televising the Ulster championship in 1990 and that probably drove things on too. You could tell Down were serious in '91 because they had matching Puma Kings, which they demanded from the Down county board. It just so happened that Donegal and Derry were waiting in the wings with strong managers harnessing the talent they had been developing through the 1980s. When Down won, the dam burst.
