GAA in the blood: Cavan player's link with first ever All-Ireland final played in Croke Park

MEATHMAN'S DIARY

Meath’s first appearance in an All-Ireland senior football final is generally regarded as being 1939, when Moynalty’s Matt Gilsenan led the Royals to face Kerry.

But the county was represented in a previous All-Ireland, in the early days of the GAA, when the Pierce O’Mahonys from Navan were the flagbearers in the 1895 All-Ireland final. This could be said to be the first Meath team to reach the senior football final, as at the time, club represented county.

There is a direct family link between that 1895 Meath team and the Cavan team that faces Dublin in the All-Ireland SFC semi-final next weekend, as Kingscourt player Padraig Faulkner is a great great grandson of James Russell, a member of that team.

“Meath in 1895 was regarded as the premier and best organised county in Ireland,” according to Michael O’Brien in ‘Royal and Loyal, Meath’s GAA history’.

But it was a controversial year, as Pierce O’Mahonys were awarded the county championship “on the table” when Drogheda’s Owen Roes objected to playing the final in Athlumney. In the first round of the championship, Owen Roes lined out, as well as O’Mahonys, against Kilkenny, and an emergency Central Council meeting had to be held on the pitch, which succeeded in mollifying the Drogheda side into a rescheduled county final on 24th November (after the Leinster first round), which they lost.

Then, the appearance in the All Ireland itself in March 1896 was clouded in controversy. The Meath side was playing a Tipperary outfit, Arravale Rovers. The Rovers won by four points to three, but the next day, the referee, JJ Kenny of Dublin, had second thoughts and wrote to the newspapers saying it should have been a draw, as he awarded advantage to Tipp in error at one stage, resulting in a point.

O’Mahonys held back from plunging the fledgling association into crisis, standing by the original result, but proposing a set of silver medals to be presented to them as runners-up. Central Council then decided to have another - friendly - match between the two sides, for a set of gold crosses, but that too ended in drama as the referee called it a draw at five points each, even though Arravale were thought to have only scored three. It took a third clash in May 1896 to see the Tipperary team defeat an understrength Meath side by 2-13 to 1-4.

The All Ireland final in March was the first one played at Jones Road and is marked by a plaque under the current Cusack Stand.

Meath player and plumber James Russell met a tragic end in 1907. He was repairing, with two works men, a gas stoppage at the rear of a victualler’s shop on Market Square, and when checking the work with a lamp, caused an explosion which killed him.

James Russell’s daughter, Margaret became wife of Senator Pat Fitzsimons, whose sons, Paddy and Jim, later politicians too, were key members of the O’Mahonys championship winning teams of the 1950s. Their late sister, Rosaleen, was grandmother to Padraig Faulkner, and another illustrious GAA player, Nobber’s Brian Farrell, who brought the Keegan Cup back to Ratoath as manager this year. So it is with a great GAA tradition of 125 years running through his veins that Padraig Faulkner runs out on that hallowed Croke Park turf on Saturday evening.