Meath All-Ireland winner Paul Shankey: ‘Football is gone way too sanitised’

Paul Shankey played on a Meath minor team that did that most Meath of things, back in the day.

It was the 1992 All-Ireland final and Armagh looked to have the game in the bag.

Shankey – who is in his first year as Waterford boss and has been in the county longer than he lived in his native Kilmainhamwood – recalls what happened next.

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“We were getting well hammered by Armagh, but just hung in there and got an injury time goal again,” he says.

“It was a thing that was just in the DNA at the time. Maybe a bit of luck.

“It definitely used to frustrate a lot of opposition. You got a sense playing against other teams that if it gets tight or difficult, there are certain fellas you can rely on.”

The scoreline of 2-5 to 0-10 says it all, and probably still haunts some of those Armagh players.

Shankey was one of three Meath minors who went straight into the under-21 squad the following year, that landed an All-Ireland title.

Trevor Giles was still a minor and came on as a sub in the decider victory over Kerry, who had Seamus Moynihan and Mike Hassett. Darragh O’Se came in off the bench.

Graham Geraghty was “in his pomp.” The scoreline, 1-8 to 0-10, as Meath found a way again.

A new wave was coming to back-up what Shankey’s club mate Brian Stafford – “He put Kilmainhamwood on the map” – had achieved with Meath in the 1980s.

A new wave to take over from the side that won the Dublin four game saga in 1991.

The “secret sauce” applied by Sean Boylan, according to Shankey, was making players “mentally believe they can compete” at the highest level.

The redoubtable Boylan is currently part of Colm O’Rourke’s Meath backroom team. Shankey, from personal experience, can see Boylan acting as “a warm blanket” for a youthful Meath squad.

“It’s brilliant isn’t it?” he says. “It’s great to have it. It’s great to have that history and tradition around the place. Obviously, Colm as well and the rest of the backroom team were great footballers.

“Sean is eternally young anyway, the way he communicates. He has a brilliant way about him. He would be a massive addition to them young lads, to take confidence.”

Shankey was a sub when Meath landed the 1999 All-Ireland title, a fourth Sam Maguire in 13 remarkable seasons for the Royals.

He’d claimed a county title with his club in ‘96, on a side that boasted a stellar full forward line of Stafford, who was captain, future Meath forward Ray ‘Smoothie’ Magee and Raymond Cunningham, who won an Ulster title with Cavan the following season.

The last hurrah for that Meath team came in 2001, when they lost the All-Ireland final to Galway by nine points, after spanking Kerry in the semi-final.

But, there was a sting in the tail the following year after they got “a good beating” from Dublin at Croke Park, on the day the new pitch at GAA HQ opened.

Typically, as with the 2010 Leinster final and Joe Sheridan’s late winning goal that should have been disallowed, it was neighbours Louth on the receiving end at Navan in 2002.

“Those games in provincial towns are great – you fill the place up,” said Shankey. “Louth played really well and didn’t allow us to play well.

“It looked like we were out, well down in injury time, but we snatched two late goals. I think a point would have brought it to extra-time, but Geraghty decided he’d had enough.

“The joke back then and I think it’s pretty true is that he was in a rush to get back to a wedding that night and they couldn’t fly at night. He was best man. He was dropped off before the game in a helicopter.

“Extra-time wasn’t on his radar. He went for it. Navan was bouncing. It was a great night. Louth felt aggrieved, again.

“It’s hard to get the secret behind that. It just came from no matter what happened, we just kept going. It’s a very hard ingredient to get into a club or county team.

“It doesn’t mean you are going to win but it just makes you competitive. Those days we were just used to playing flat and bad and keeping ourselves in it and doing enough to win.

“Or coming back from five or six points down was a pretty common theme back then.

“Around then, there was this thing, ‘You’ll never beat the Royals,’ but there definitely was a sense that once you got a run at teams, you felt we are back in it now.

“Every Meath player back then felt that – just keep going. But obviously then it’s no accident that you would come back into a game when you had exceptionally talented players like (John) McDermott, Geraghty and Giles on the field.

“It seemed to be just a thing that no matter what happened the body language didn’t change. You just kept going. Sean was very central to it.”

After studying at the University of Limerick, Shankey spent time in Dublin and after trying to persuade his Waterford wife to move to North Meath, he succumbed and moved to ‘the Copper Coast.’

First Rathgormack. And then Portlaw, where they built a house.

“I was helping out with various teams,” says Shankey. “Initially it was, ‘Give him the football team, he’s from Meath.’ That kind of crack.

“They must have trusted me after a while. They gave me a couple of hurling teams. I knew I’d arrived when I got the under-17 hurlers for a couple of years.

“I love watching hurling matches. I was at the game (Clare/Waterford). It’s great.”

Shankey reckons football “could learn an awful lot from the hurling side.”

He continued: “Football has gone way too sanitised, way too difficult to referee. Hurling, you get a free, you get up and you take it.

“Football, you get any sort of physical challenge, it’s a big drama, going to linesmen, umpires. Hurling have a really good rule. It’s only a black card when you are going in on goal.

“Where football, it’s tough for referees. That’s the one thing driving me mad. You can see other sides well coached on the cynical side of it, pulling a jersey and letting go – it’s a free.

“Where we’d a fella black carded against Kildare. He happened to hold his (opponent’s) hips and just fell on top of him. The referee interpreted it as a black card, 80 yards from goal.

“It’s not their (referees) fault. It (black card) should be brought in for stopping a goal situation. It would be a lot easier for everyone at club and county level.

“They shouldn’t be so quick to hand out yellow cards. Spectators want to see hard hits. This thing of a hand in, hand across the neck and a fella throwing his neck back.

“It has and is damaging the game because a lot of people are not going to watch it. Ulster teams will always pack it out. A lot of the other games, people are talking with their feet, Nobody went to Meath/Dublin. It’s maybe the competitiveness.

“Louth are doing great things, to be fair to them. I just think Meath and Kildare, the gap shouldn’t be as big as it is. Underage I know it’s a lot tighter.”

Shankey sees Clare football as the template for Waterford, who he praises for having dual clubs all over the county. But he says Clare are “massively disrespected.”

“I was laughing at the commentary that Kerry were playing bad and how brilliant Clare are,” he says.

“But Clare have put in some massive work over the last seven or eight years under Colm Collins and you can see the fruits of that.

“They have an awful lot of young talent coming through, a lot playing top level Sigerson. They have exceptional footballers and big strong men coming into midfield – well conditioned.

“It’s no accident they are competing well and obviously Mark (Fitzgerald) has done a great job with them this year. They have some fabulous players.

“They are a marker for counties like ourselves and how they got there. I think there is room for both hurling and football.

“It would be nice to play at Fraher Field or Walsh Park with 10 or 12,000 people watching. That would be your ultimate success wouldn’t it.”

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