Extract # 4 from 'Unlimited Heartbreak' Henry' Martin's excellent book on Limerick hurling through the years. The last remaining copies of 'Unlimited Heartbreak' can be purchased online for €15.95 at http://www.collinspress.ie. Personally signed copies can be purchased directly from the author by sending a paypal for €20 incl P&P to hjmartin@eircom.net

Two of the major talking points in the second half of the All Ireland senior hurling final of 1996 (Wexford v Limerick) were the non-appearance of Mike Galligan and the disallowed goal by Brian Tobin. Referee Pat Horan offers his view on the goal:

There was a foul at the time, a push on one of the Wexford backs. It was away from the ball but not too far away. It wasn’t shown on TV. I had blown and Damien Fitzhenry stood up and didn’t even try to block it. The Wexford backs even stood up if you look at it on TV now.
 
Brian Tobin thought he had scored:
People were saying he had the whistle blown early but I didn’t hearit. They were saying it was for a square ball, but he must have seen something.
 
 Liam Griffin recalls the moment:
The whistle was blown beforehand. I didn’t hear it myself, but I can remember Rory Kinsella saying, ‘Free out!’ and the next thing the ball was in the net. As far as I understood at the time, someone pushed someone in the back.
  
Tom Ryan feels the goal should have been allowed:
It shouldn’t have been disallowed. There was no interference with any player; there was no incident. No forward, as I saw it, interfered with any back; the goalkeeper wasn’t interfered with . . . The disallowed goal was a scandal, it was a disgraceful and outrageous decision. It was never caught on camera because it never happened. He made the decision from the middle of the field. It was a legitimate goal and the two refereeing decisions in my time that I have to highlight were the penalty decision in Thurles in 1995 and that decision.

The disallowed goal was the cause of Limerick losing that All-Ireland final. We would have won it by six or seven points. We had a lot of wides in the last eight or nine minutes. We had some very bad wides as well, everyone had them. Carey had one or two very bad wides. But that goal being disallowed finished us. It would have spurred us on if it had been scored. I have no problem contesting a game. Quality of hurling and image and discipline are very important to me and I have no problem with referees.

In this case we were dealing with a referee who shouldn’t have been refereeing it because he was a Leinster referee, anyway. If Cork were playing he wouldn’t be refereeing it, I guarantee you, because Frank Murphy would make sure he wouldn’t be there. But again we had no representation in any boardroom anywhere. We were dealing with only wimps in the county board. That’s what they were and that’s the way they acted, and that’s what you have in the county board in Limerick and that’s the way they are still. There isn’t a man in them. And they ask then why is Limerick hurling down. We are down because of the management, we are down because of the standards, we are down because of the whole makeup. It’s further down we are going because rugby is going to clean away the whole thing in Limerick now and soccer is gaining ground by the day as well.
 
 Declan Nash concurs wholeheartedly:
Against Wexford that day – and you can print this f***ing thing if you want – they had the toss and he didn’t even remember who won it. When the man got sent off, he [the ref.] came down and gave out to us all for ruining the day and he seemed to be panicking. I can guarantee you that we were never going to win that day. Having sent off the man he wasn’t going to be seen to be the man that beat Wexford. No matter what we did, we would have had to have been ten times better to beat Wexford that day. Can he see the foul for Brian Tobin’s goal on video? It didn’t f***ing happen, if that’s what it was, and I sincerely doubt it, because I have been a long time waiting for an answer. I’d love to know if RTÉ have other pictures of what went on. . . Why wasn’t that said at the time? Why wasn’t the Limerick player who committed the foul spoken to?

It was the same with the Tomás Mulcahy goal in 1992 – Limerick seem to be prepared to take these decisions without arguing about them. It shouldn’t have been up to the likes of Tom Ryan to question that; it should have been up to the county board, that’s what they are there for. There should have been someone up there fighting and arguing about that straight away. It’s a few more like Tom we need. There were incidents where every county have their grievances, but in Limerick we would outdo a lot of counties for being sinned against. It’s a pity the referee didn’t highlight that foul on the day,because it would have eliminated a lot of doubt.
 
 Mike Houlihan regrets that Limerick did not learn from previous Croke Park
appearances:
At the end of the game I said to the referee, ‘Do I score direct [from the free] or do I put it over the bar?’ He said, ‘It doesn’t matter, time is up.’ I said, ‘Do I hit it into the stand so?’ If that ball went directly to the net or was deflected in would it have been allowed?

You have to say we didn’t learn from 1994. The 1996 final was our fourth time playing at Croke Park, and we didn’t really beat substantial opposition there. In the Offaly game we got hit at the very finish, but we had time to think about the Wexford game. You could sense on the field that it wasn’t going to happen. It’s a game that was torture to watch, and it was nearly torture to play in at times, and it didn’t facilitate a great All-Ireland.

Wexford won an All-Ireland but we didn’t do ourselves justice and we can’t keep blaming everyone else when we lose these games. What was not good enough on our part, I don’t know, it might have been get rid of Mike Houlihan, it might have been get rid of Tom Ryan, it might have been get rid of someone else. Playing Antrim the second time didn’t help. We didn’t learn. Maybe there should have been a method of bringing the team back up to a different level for the final after the dip against Antrim. Perhaps we needed a different way of doing things. There’s always something different needed to win an All-Ireland, and you hear the stories afterwards what extra things had been done to win the All-Ireland. It’s like Griffin taking the team off the bus at the Wexford border. There’s always something extra. What was that extra thing that Limerick should have been doing?
 
 Liam Griffin says Wexford were relieved Galligan did not play:
From memory we knew prior to the game that Galligan wasn’t going to appear. There was a lot of talk about it before the match. We were surprised because we always reckoned that Galligan was a very good loose wing-forward who picked up a lot of scores. We would have had to man-mark him to death. He was not into beating lads up, but D. J. Carey won All-Irelands and he never beat guys up either. I liked Mike Galligan, I always saw him as a tidy, nice hurler. The trouble for us was that we would have put Seánie Flood on Mike Galligan, but we had no Seánie Flood; we lost him before the game.He was a brilliant hooker, very fast, a great stickman and didn’t foul. We felt he would be ideal for Galligan. 
 
Tom Ryan explains the background to the situation:
I had no problem with Galligan but he had not been going well in training coming into the final, and again the team was picked on form. Galligan knew himself he wasn’t going well in training. If he didn’t know, he should have known. Barry Foley had run out of steam in the second half, he started to founder. At that particular stage we had the play but we were not getting the scores. I was prepared to put Galligan in, but Jimmy Hart