‘FULL metal jacket,’ is how Ray Cosgrove pulls that sizzling, crackling summer of '02 together.
Two decades later, sitting in Bugler’s in Rathfarnham, the man known as 'Cossy' paints a vivid picture of a time of our lives.
After a decade of works the €240 million Croke Park development was nearing a conclusion, with a gleaming Hogan Stand not long reopened.
‘Coppers’ was becoming a thing.
Tommy Lyons was talking about ‘the swagger returning to Dublin football.’
And the Celtic Tiger was roaring.
Meanwhile, the reverberations of an incident on another little island, Saipan were still being felt as the World Cup in Japan and Korea kicked off.
And for one heady summer, Cosgrove was the King of the Hill.
He was 25 and ready to rock and roll.
“It’s only now, 20 years on you reflect,” he says. “I achieved in one summer what a lot of people don’t in an entire career. It was the summer from heaven.
“Senan (Connell) was slagging me the other night.
“It was him, Collie (Moran) and Shane Ryan doing all the hard yards and there was me sticking the odd goal in and waving to the Hill.”
Whatever about the truth of that one, the capital was buzzing with Dublin football was on a roll again.
Cosgrove kicked 6-23 that summer - that's a lot of waving to the Hill - to finish two points behind the top scorer in the Championship, Armagh’s Oisin McConville.
“Myself and Oisin played golf a while back,” he says. “I keep telling him he played more games so I had it on scoring averages. We had a good laugh about it.”
6-23 wasn’t too shabby for a man who didn’t play competitive club Gaelic football until he was 15.
Captaining a St. Benilda’s side to Dublin under-14 schools glory and then climbing the steps of the Hogan Stand to collect the cup ignited something in the teenage Cosgrove, who'd been predominantly a soccer player up to that point.
Then there were those summers down in Milltown with his cousin, Gay McManus who was part of the Galway side which lost to 12-man Dublin in the 1983 All-Ireland final.
The Nestor Cup (Connacht Championship) might be sitting on the kitchen table.
Something was stirring inside Cosgrove.
“I would have been back in the Ashling Hotel that evening after the (‘83) final,” he says.
“I’d been supporting the boys in maroon as opposed to the boys in blue, strange as that might sound,” he said. “It’s funny.”
Cosgrove dreamt about success, but it took a while to come.
He was in with Mickey Whelan in ‘96, but a series of injuries cost him.
He played in a Leinster final in ‘99, but it didn’t go his way or Dublin’s way.
Three years later though, with his Kilmacud Crokes club mate, Tommy Lyons at the helm everything fell into place.
Dublin started out in the Leinster Championship against Carlow at Dr. Cullen Park that year.
Ireland had drawn with Cameron that morning in their opening group game of the 2002 World Cup.
“A busload of my buddies had been up early,” laughs Cosgrove.
“They’d a few beers and by the time five o’clock came around, the place (Dr. Cullen Park) was rocking. There was a good vibe around.
“It was full metal jacket at that stage, full swing. It seems like yesterday. It was unreal.”
Tommy Lyons had known Cosgrove since he was a teenager: “Tommy’s brother was my manager at under-16 in the club,” he says.
“I only started playing at 15 and won a Championship under Pat Duggan and Martin Johnson.
“Tommy would have known the potential I had. I broke my ankle as a minor.
“When Tommy got the Dublin job I remember him ringing me: ‘Cossie, I’m going to show faith in you regardless of how good or indifferent you are going - I am going to persist with you.’
“That gave me the confidence to go and express myself. I wasn’t looking over my shoulder to see who was warming up - even if I wasn’t going great.”
Lyons rang Cosgrove after all of Dublin’s league games that year and gave it to him between the eyes: “He’d be very straight. Listen, you played well or you were poor.
“It just gave me the confidence to push on and I’d like to think I paid him back in spades. It just blossomed and the relationship grew and grew from when he took over.
“He knew me better than Mickey Whelan or Tommy Carr. He knew what he was dealing with.”
Dublin went on to turn over the previous year’s All-Ireland finalists, Meath in the Leinster semi-final, with Cosgrove hitting 2-3.
It was Dublin’s first Championship win over the Royals since 1995.
Cormac Murphy was playing that day for Meath.
“I’d meet ‘Spud’ around,” says Cosgrove.
“One of his kids was playing with Ranelagh Gaels against one of my kids with Ballyboden.”
Cosgrove was marking the great Darren Fay that afternoon: “The cleanest full back you’d come up against but teak tough,” he says.
“Fast over 10 yards for a big man - no verbals. Can I say he was a gentleman as far as full backs go?
“There was no nonsense out of him. He was probably the best full back I ever played against.
“I was lucky enough to score 2-3 that day. That gave me an unmerciful lift for the year after that - a pep in the step.
“I was, ‘Right, if I can lock horns with one of the best full backs in the game, I haven’t a whole lot to fear.’
“I was in the right place at the right time (for the goals). Opportunist, but if you’re not there you have no chance of converting the chances.
“That year I lived like a hermit during the National League, made huge sacrifices.”
But after Championship games they went out celebrating: “Coppers was a given on a Sunday night,” he recalls.
“Cathal Jackson was very good to us. Coppers was only beginning to become a popular spot.”
Then it was golf in Hollystown on the Monday and the dogs at Harold’s Cross.
But they were back training on Tuesday night.
Lyons would bring the squad up to Leopardstown to do “a few laps, just to get us grounded again.”
Kildare were duly dismissed in the Leinster decider.
“I remember the celebrations in front of Hill 16,” he says. “There are pictures I have at home of Jim Gavin, Dessie (Farrell), Jayo (Sherlock) and all these guys I would have looked up to as a young kid.
“It was the first Leinster Championship I had won. You have those memories.”
They beat Donegal after a replay in the All-Ireland quarter-final.
A raft of Donegal players didn’t get the team bus home after the draw, instead staying in Dublin for the crack.
They paid a heavy price, as they were hammered in the replay.
Then it was Armagh in the All-Ireland semi-final.
A last gasp Cosgrove free to tie up the game came agonisingly off the post and was smuggled away as Armagh clung on, en route to the county's first and only All-Ireland senior title.
“I had to listen to a lot about it over the years,” he says.
“Listen, I got a lot of stick and the odd sleepless night. I couldn’t have done a whole lot more that day.
He grimaces slightly: “I was a bit too conservative with the free, used too much curl. I was trying to tease it inside the post. I had won the free. It wasn’t somebody else winning it.
“If it happened after two minutes would I have been as conservative? I would probably have drove through it - used a bit more power.
“It ain’t going to change now, so I don’t get too hung up about it.”
Cosgrove says losing a seven point lead to Mayo in the 2006 All-Ireland semi-final hurt more than 02.
It was a day where Dublin failed to manage the game and were caught on the line with Ciaran McDonald’s iconic winner.
He continues: “Fellas would say, ‘You are only trying to digress from the 02 game.’
‘Ah Jaysus, why do you be talking about 2006?’
“You couldn’t use inexperience as an excuse.
“In 02 I kicked six points against Armagh, probably the best game I ever played in a blue jersey.
“I’d a great tussle with Francie Bellew and the McNultys.
"Francie was reckless in a good way in so far as committed to the ball. There was no dirty antics out of Francie whatsoever. He was full blooded for the ball.
“Fellas will think more about the missed opportunity in 02.”
In the end it came full circle with Cosgrove coming off the bench at the tailend of his career to clip a point for Kilamcud Crokes as they inflicted Crossmaglen’s first ever All-Ireland final defeat (2009).
“Was it a little bit of payback? Yeah, for all the hard work, effort, toil, the disappointments, the regrets,” he says.
“It was a large consolation and it is coincidental that it was Francie again. That was sweet.”
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