'98 and all that: Kildare oppressed by Galway hex

After the Round 1 draw produced a Galway-Kildare tie, it didn't take long for the 'A Year Til Sunday' clips to proliferate online.

One especially popular clip features a jovial captain of industry type, in a white pointy hat and nibbling on some treats, offering a blithely confident assessment of Kildare's chances ahead of the 1998 All-Ireland final.

"I think it's in the bag, just a mather a' toggin' out... there's Sean Brady going in! What do you think, Sean?" was his memorable contribution to the documentary.

There's no underestimating the hold that 'A Year Til Sunday' has on the Galwegian imagination.

There are a few Galway football supporting ultras of my acquaintance who spent the lead-up to the Kildare-Galway Super 8s game in 2018, standing in the doorway of a Newbridge pub, exclaiming "There's Sean Brady going in! What do you think, Sean?" at every passer-by in a Lilywhite top.

I'm told that some glanced around, looking bemused. Most ploughed on ahead, assuming that Sean Brady must be behind them.

We never did find out Sean Brady's thoughts on the '98 final, whether they were any more circumspect or prescient than his compadre's.

Perhaps he offered a few words of caution, warning about the danger posed by the Galway forwards but that these weren't in keeping with the image that the documentary wished to convey of Kildare supporters and were left out of the final edit.

It's well forgotten now but Kildare were big favourites for the 1998 All-Ireland final.

They had beaten the three preceding All-Ireland champions - one-by-one - en route to the final. There was a truly enormous hype train behind them. They were powered by a sense of destiny. This was to be the culmination of the great Micko project, setting the seal on his greatness as a manager.

There were wild scenes of delirium when Kildare unseated the champions Kerry in the All-Ireland semi-final, the old sensei Micko getting one over on his star protégé Páidí.

After the game, the then Minister for Finance, one of the most famous Kildare fans in the country, was interviewed by Marty Morrissey and announced that the victory was "better than sex."

Charlie McCreevy also turned towards the camera and said that "I think Colm owes me a few quid", knowing that O'Rourke was perched above in the old Nally Stand studio.

Kildare's orgasmic progression to the decider was contrasted with Galway, whose initially booming stock had fallen slightly after their messy two-game Connacht final saga with Roscommon. That they subsequently made such impressively light work of Derry in the semi-final was given less credence than it probably should have been.

Kildare's modern record against Galway is truly deplorable.

The Kildare Nationalist's Richard Commins noted this week that Kildare have beaten every county in the country in league or championship in the last 20 years - with the exception of Galway, who they haven't beaten in an incredible 41 years.

As Commins pointed out, it's not as if the two counties have been strangers to one another, playing a total of 14 times since 1985 - 11 times in the league, three in championship.

Kildare's last victory over Galway remains the February '85 league game. Mick Doyle's Ireland squad were in the midst of their latest Triple Crown tilt. Mikhail Gorbachev was positioning himself to take over as general secretary of the Russian Communist Party.

And Kildare's star players were Larry Tompkins and Shea Fahy, who jointly powered them to victory that day in Newbridge.

What happened next is a well-worn and much lamented tale. Tompkins was living in New York and fell out with the county board over a dispute about travel expenses. He wouldn't play for the county beyond 1985. It was two years later that he agreed, on a whim, to play with Castlehaven, the native club of two of his team-mates in New York.

The same year, Fahy, an army officer, was transferred to Collins' Barracks in Cork city. We know the rest.

Kildare fellas kicked eight points out of the 0-20 scored in the 1990 All-Ireland final. That same year, Kildare were beaten 1-07 to 0-06 by Wicklow in the Leinster championship. We might fairly conclude from this that Messrs Tompkins and Fahy were a loss.

Perhaps it was annoyance at these lost opportunities and wasted talent that prompted the Kildare county board to make a big gambit and reach out to Mick O'Dwyer, a year after he finally stepped down as Kerry manager.

O'Dwyer's first prominent reference to Kildare was a typically barbed one at his neighbours. In advance of the fateful 1987 Munster final - when Cork finally saw off the Kerry golden years side - O'Dwyer observed that Cork were "a team of all the talents - especially the two fellas from Kildare." (We're indebted to Mick Foley and Ciaran O'Hara's terrific 'Over the Bar' GAA history podcast for this tidbit.)

His appointment in 1990 was the catalyst for a thrilling decade for the Kildare footballers, which commenced with a league final appearance in 1991 and culminated in the Leinster titles of 1998 and 2000.

It was slightly coincidental, but also perhaps typical, that those epic summers ended in losses to Galway. The 2000 semi-final is obviously less well remembered than the '98 final.

Kildare arguably looked more likely to win that game after Brian Murphy palmed home a second-half goal. But Pádraic Joyce, Derek Savage and Michael Donnellan kicked a spate of late points and Galway won, again. The Sunday Game switchboards lit up - whatever that means - that evening with Kildare supporters complaining about Paddy Russell. They haven't won Leinster since but did return to an All-Ireland semi-final exactly a decade later.

They last tangled with Galway in the 2018 championship - recalled in Kildare as the Newbridge or Nowhere season. It was an entertaining ding-dong. Kildare played reasonably well but were hobbled by Daniel Flynn's second-half red card. Late points from Sean Armstrong, Seán Kelly and Damien Comer helped Galway over the line.

The population of Kildare has more than doubled between the 1991 census - taken during Micko's first championship campaign as manager - and 2022. Every county has seen population growth in that time but none as dramatically as Kildare.

It is now the fourth most populous county in the Republic and the seventh in Ireland overall - and the three northern counties above it have large unionist populations.

This has had some impact in Gaelic Games terms. Migration from Hurling Nation has, over a period, seen Kildare break into the top tier, witnessed by last year's Joe McDonagh success and the county easily retaining their Division 1B status this season.

Naas, previously second fiddle to Newbridge for decades, has developed into a GAA powerhouse. And the county's Under-20 footballers have won two All-Ireland titles in the last decade, in 2018 and 2022, reaching another final in 2023.

That this has failed to make an appreciable difference to their fortunes at senior level is a source of much head-scratching for outsiders. They are Division 3 bound again after the spring. Westmeath edged them out in extra-time in Tullamore, in what may now be classed as a missed opportunity.

Galway have lost Matthew Thompson to a J1 in Berkeley and Seán Fitzgerald to 'Casa Amor'. But Kildare are without Daniel Flynn and Kevin Flynn.

As Commins concedes, they're travelling in hope, "with any expectation stuffed in the back pocket."

Sean Brady and his mate are probably not bullish about this one.

Watch Galway v Kildare in the All-Ireland Football Championship first round on Saturday from 7.20pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Follow our live blog on RTÉ.ie/sport and RTÉ News app and listen to Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1

Watch a provincial hurling double-header, Dublin v Kilkenny (2pm) and Cork v Clare (4pm), on Sunday from 1.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Follow our live blog on RTÉ.ie/sport and RTÉ News app and listen to Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1

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