DJ KANE BOUNDS into the foyer of the Canal Court Hotel in Newry with the same fizzing energy, the same bright-eyed enthusiasm, the clear-skinned vitality that you instantly recognise.
OK, the trademark curls might not be as plentiful but there’s enough of them and he retains that barrel-chested strength and the cheery disposition.
Thirty years have passed since he was The Man. There’s only a couple of The Mans in Gaelic Games each year. He was that for Gaelic football.
It wouldn’t have happened without him. The Man couldn’t have been from Down if The Man wasn’t Kane. For numerous reasons.
He lies back into his chair and goes through the bullet points of a catch-up. He’s managing his own club, Newry Shamrocks, this season.
Managing your own club is fraught with pitfalls and traps. Achieving success usually comes with a sour side dish of fracturing lifelong relationships.
You mention your concerns on that score and he arches a DJ eyebrow up towards those sparse curls.
“If they don’t like it,” he says with a half-chuckle, “they know where the gate is.”
It makes sense.
At that, Ross Carr comes in.
Trace it back to his uncle Barney Carr of Summerhill, Warrenpoint, who played for Down in the 1930s and ‘40s. He then was manager for the All-Ireland wins of 1960 and ’61.
His father, Aidan, was on the Down team that won the Junior All Ireland title in 1946. His uncle Gerry ‘Joker’ Carr was the captain.
So when you take that lineage through Ross’s own success as a player, the years of service in lean times that his son Aidan gave, and latterly with his son, Ross Junior, it’s very close to a century in service to Down football.
He sizes up Kane and laughs. Kane laughs back. This goes on for a few seconds.
“I’m disappointed in you,” Carr says to Kane.
“Oh aye?” Kane replies with the smile spitting his face.
Carr: “We’re on this man’s expense account [he points to The 42] and you’re sitting out here with a pot of tea? Where’s the pints?”
And you recognise in that moment that this is what real, deep friendship looks like. Even love. Why not?
They spent their adolescence, their adulthood, together as Down footballers. As they made their first lurch towards middle-age, they spent three seasons alongside each other on the sideline, managing Down.
This year marks the 30 years since they were Kings of Ireland.
Just as it was for the county’s All-Ireland win in 1991, a lot of moving parts had to align for success to happen in 1994.
In 1993, they faced Derry in Newry. Eamonn Coleman’s side were a coming force. Down needed to put their foot on them and squash them like bugs. Instead, Derry hammered them by 11 points.
After the game, manager Pete McGrath was typically forthright. He said that the Down public were owed an apology for the performance.
Those words made their way into headlines, with ‘Massacre At The Marshes’ a particular favourite. But the squad broke up, the summer was over, and it led to a winter of discontent.
The elegant stylist at centre-forward, Greg Blaney, moonlighted with a bit of hurling. That bundle of skill, muscle and determination, Wee James McCartan, was playing soccer with Glenavon in the Irish League.
Some diplomacy secured their return. In the meantime, their absence had caused a stir. The UTV Sports Presenter, Adrian ‘Logie’ Logan, got word a return was in the offing. He collected a cameraman and headed to that evening’s training session at Hilltown.
In a scene that would make privacy-obsessed managers recoil, Logan got the whole shebang: a shot of Blaney and McCartan emerging togged-out from the dressing room like red-faced truants, and an ‘All’s well that ends well’ interview from McGrath.
It was a help. But not the only reason for Down getting out of their funk and into winning ways.
***
Ross Carr: “I think it was the Irish News on the Monday with the headline, ‘The Massacre In The Marshes.’
“Typical players, we knew we were shite, but we didn’t want to accept the responsibility. Looking back with a bit of maturity and common sense, the headline didn’t look good.
“The fall from 1991 wasn’t a gradual decline. It was a fall off the edge of a cliff.
“But a lot of us were around 30 after 1993. We were wondering if that was it? A few of the ’91 lads had left the panel. I suppose you needed people to replace them.
“The catalyst for us all, came when Pete and John [Murphy, selector and a goal-scoring forward in their 1968 All-Ireland final win over Kerry] named DJ captain.”
Right. That’s juicy. How so? What did DJ do?
DJ Kane: “I stopped training that night and had walked off the pitch. I had a row with Pete!”
RC: “He obviously had made the decision before that!
“But ask any of the players. Ask any.
“I would be quite sure if you asked any of the other 36, they would say the same thing. And that’s not to blow smoke up his ass, but you need something or someone to flick the switch.
“I’m lucky enough to say that DJ is a friend and I have known him a long time. It wasn’t something that he did differently. It’s hard to explain. You need to experience his company to find the real worth of him.
“It was the catalyst. We were getting someone who there was no fluff with. That’s what the players needed.
“God rest Murph, but he probably knew that as a player’s man. He knew that we had dropped a couple of hints that it would be the players driving it, and there was no better driver of the thing than DJ.
“It’s the same with Derry now. I don’t think Mickey Harte would have made a huge difference to their dressing room. The boys are just made of the right stuff. If you have a dressing room full of messers and dickheads, then you aren’t in line.
“Our thought process heading into 1994 was fairly simple. If we didn’t do something, we would be finished.
“In fairness to the management they facilitated it. They never stepped in and said that it was their team and we couldn’t do this or that. And that went as far as some training weekends.
“What we were like from 25 to 30, married, strong personalities, we enjoyed each other’s company and took a beer.
“Pete wasn’t married. He didn’t take a drink. So our lifestyle was completely alien to his. And yet never once did he try to change anything.”
DJ: “John would have known. He knew all the players better on what we were doing and not doing. But John didn’t have an issue about what was happening because the next match, there wasn’t anyone not on the same page.”
Listening to the conversation now, the themes of leadership and camaraderie remain just as relevant today. The difference comes in unexpected ways.
The Down senior team might have played a game on a Sunday. The players would go and party that night. Properly party: Stout and Smithwicks and Benson and Hedges on top of a carvery dinner. None of your half-finished bottles of Corona and a cheeky vape. (Naturally, there were tee-totallers such as Greg Blaney, Mickey Linden and others, but they wouldn’t have missed out on the fun).
And that Monday, a round of league fixtures would frequently be pencilled in. Playing for your club was mandatory.
For a relatively small man, Pete McGrath had a thing for big footballers. His Down team, bar Wee James, were mostly well over six foot tall. Essentially, he compiled all the midfielders in the county. They would then sweat out the beer in hand-to-hand combat on Monday nights, opening the pores before going back into county training on the Wednesday night.
Back to 1994. After The Massacre In The Marshes of 1993, Down got the best draw possible and the worst draw possible: away to Derry in Celtic Park.
Think of the confidence Derry took from that 11-point win in Newry. Before that, they had never won an All-Ireland.
RC: “And then they beat us, they beat Donegal, Cork, Dublin. It wasn’t that they skipped around and got to a final. They beat all they had to beat. Kerry weren’t in great shape.
“There was a fear that the nine- or 11-points defeat could become a 15-points defeat? A 20-points defeat?
“And from January on, it was brilliant.
“In fairness to the management, they had very different personalities. Pete was very focused, driven, thinking in tram lines. An obsession of how he wanted Down to play.
“Then you had John who had a remarkable insight into football about what players should do.
“And then you had Pat O’Hare who came in for 1994.”
When the Down football story is told, Pat O’Hare is further into the background than he should be. A teacher in Red High in Downpatrick, he had led that school to unlikely honours. Even more unlikely, he won a league and championship with unfashionable Loughinisland.
Nicknamed ‘Sprick’, he was a ball of energy and enthusiasm. His untimely and premature end, dying suddenly while out shopping in 1999, felt like a contradiction of sorts.
DJ: “Pat would have got on with the players very well. He would have been jigging about in training with you, doing things as well as coaching. He was like a livewire at every training session.”
The days that Sprick enjoyed most were the weekend residentials.
In the winter of ’93, Down players were put through a battery of fitness tests in Jordanstown University. Before big games, they would hide themselves away on the grounds of a religious order in Waterfoot, north Antrim.
The sea to one side, the Glens on the other. Shouldered into a world of their own. A bite to eat on Friday night, a bit of video analysis on upcoming opposition.
RC: “So we trained Saturday mornings. And then on Saturday afternoons, we used to play a game… Fuck me!”
DJ: “Toughest games of the year.”
RC: “They were horrific. Pat used to manage the ‘second string’ and they had oul shitty jerseys. He used to call them names. He put it into them that they were only second-class citizens on this training camp. He did that, so that they would then be out to do us serious damage.”
DJ: “We had tougher games there than some of the ones we played on the Sundays.”
RC: “Those boys were ravenous.”
DJ: “It wasn’t a case of ‘Take it easy, there’s a match next week’. Fuck that. They were going for it.”
RC: “There were several times that year that lads who would have shared a car lift together on the way up, didn’t go back down the road in the same car. They had fallen out.
“We trained then on a Sunday morning. But we were allowed to go out on a Saturday night. There was a wee pub in the village that we went to for a couple of pints of beer.
“Now, by the time Wednesday nights came, you were grand. I don’t think I am speaking out of turn here but fellas lost their place on those Saturday games for the following week. Those performances counted for an awful lot.”
Enough to go up to Celtic Park and prevail by two points. Then Monaghan by six and finally, Tyrone in the final by another six.
Cork then, in the All-Ireland semi-final. Dublin in the final. Charlie Redmond finished that season as the top scorer, but he suffered from the penalty spot with Mickey McVeigh batting his shot out.
Carr scored three points. In the 18th minute the ball broke kindly to the unmarked Mickey Linden. He carried it to John O’Leary’s goal at the Hill 16 end, unselfishly passing it off to the supporting James McCartan to round O’Leary and plant it in the net to give Down a 1-5 to 0-3 cushion that they sat on all the way to the finish.
After the game, it was Kane lifted Sam. They were lucky that a documentary was made around that time that had some access to Down, in particular Carr who spoke thoughtfully and was filmed running the roads. They got a sensational shot of Carr bringing the cup into the dressing room, getting giddy and ecstatic, breaking into a impressive dance.
Ross Carr's dressing room celebrations after Down defeated Dublin in the 1994 All-Ireland final. Decorum out the window.
— Niall Gartland (@Niall_Gartland) July 5, 2023
Footage from an excellent BBC Documentary of that era ('More than a Game') still available online at https://t.co/nlsGz6JNfo pic.twitter.com/UIcbsGL4Z3
That was 30 years ago, and Down have won nothing of note since.
Carr and Kane had three years as the management from 2007 to 2009. What they found, puzzled them.
RC: “I suppose we got involved because, after being in with the U21s in the late ‘90s for a few years, then the minors, I probably felt that — and we were both playing at that time — that there were good enough players in Down but something missing.
“When we went in, we sensed a lack of self-confidence in the group, which I found hard to understand.
“Our first year wasn’t great. We were given the job late. There wasn’t a good vibe in the county given how we were beat the year before.”
They won the Dr McKenna Cup in a final against Derry in Casement Park, but earlier in that campaign they were in Omagh for a horrible, wet and windy night.
Tyrone had a fair scattering of All-Ireland winners on the pitch that night. Any that didn’t start were on the pitch by the end to win it for them. A late Tyrone goal was enough to win by a point. They saw enough that night to know they weren’t far off. And they had Tyrone in Omagh in the Ulster championship later on that year.
That day, they drew with Tyrone. A week later, they beat them in an extra-time epic in Newry.
But it wasn’t to be. They lost the Ulster semi-final to Armagh, while Tyrone, being Tyrone, went on to win the All-Ireland through the backdoor.
A year later they got up from Division 3 but a loss to Fermanagh in Ulster was crushing. They limped on for another few weeks past London and Laois in the qualifiers, before Wicklow beat them in the Aughrim bearpit as it was at the time.
It would be a mistake to think that was all there was to it. They had to suffer the frequent injuries of one of the great unfulfilled talents of Down football in Liam Doyle, while Ambrose Rogers was also struck down.
Behind the scenes, they had all the arrangements in place for Marty Clarke to return home from his Aussie Rules career with Collingwood, and they had convinced Kalum King to give up on cage fighting and Mixed Martial Arts and instead devote himself to football.
The Down county board decided not to give them another term however. James McCartan went for the job, was confirmed in September 2009, and 12 months later, found himself on a sideline with Down in the All-Ireland final that they lost to Cork by a single point.
Since then, Down have gone through McCartan – twice – the late Eamonn Burns, Jim McCorry, Paddy Tally and now, Conor Laverty. All Irelands, heck, even Ulster titles, are a distant memory.
RC: “Not winning an Ulster title in 30 years is an indictment, but it’s not surprising either. How many underage championships have we won?”
“Monaghan, Cavan, Tyrone, Derry, Armagh have all won underage titles in the last 15 years and Down have not.
“I don’t think you can blame any one person. It’s funny when you read about ‘The Blue Wave’ [Dublin GAA's famous strategic plan]. A group of people sat down. They thought about this and they came up with a strategy.
“I know again that a group of fellas have come up with a blueprint or a strategy that they felt would help Down get back on track. That was, I think about 2016, maybe. And it could have been funded. Money is never the problem. You will always get money. There’s enough people in Down if the project is right and the right people are involved.
“But the plan? I think they might be wedged behind that fire extinguisher in the corner there. I don’t know where it is.
“The lads who are training now with Down are giving every bit as much commitment with Down as we were giving. As much as they can. If they were asked to do anything, they would do it and I know they are training flat out.
“But in the last 12 to 15 months we have had some big games — away to Cavan, away to Fermanagh — and lost both. Winning one of those would have gotten us out of Division 3.
“Then, the Tailteann Cup final.
“But it’s just a different game now. And it’s not about better, or worse, it’s just different.”
A different game, one that Down teams, along with the likes of Barney Carr and the enterprising county secretary Maurice Hayes, paved the way for.
Until Down win something, anything, they will be the aristocrats that find themselves temporarily fiscally embarrassed, dreading the gearbox failing on an ancient Land Rover.
“My sadness and disappointment is…” says Carr, ”we don’t seem to have an alternative to what we are doing.”
