1991 European Cup v Kispest Honved
The night of the 17th September 1991 was a great one for Irish clubs. As Cork went close to beating Bayern Munich, Dundalk came back from Hungary with a tremendous 1-1 draw. Alan O’Neill was the hero again for Dundalk. Early on he made two superb saves to deny Kovacs and Plokai. Soon after Vincze hit the post from a free kick. . Then on 27 minutes Ricky McEvoy pounced on a poor clearance to score from 18 yards. Dundalk held firm with Coll and Murphy in tremendous form. With 9 minutes remaining a moment misfortune gave Honved the equaliser. Plokai’s shot came off the cross bar, Ronnie Murphy misjudged the rebound and Negaru scored easily. Turlough O’Connor was delighted: “It was a tremendous performance. I have been involved in 40 different matches as player and a manager in Europe and this was the best. I am absolutely thrilled for the lads as they put in a tremendous performance against a superb team. The pressure is on us now. The second leg will be a different situation because they have to win, but its a great way to find ourselves against a team of this calibre”.
Teams: Honved: Gulyas, Csabi, Csepregi, Berczy, Plokai, Marozsan, Pisont, Kovacs, Csehi, Negrau, Vinche Dundalk: O’Neill, Mackey, Shelly, Murphy, Coll, McNulty, McEvoy, Lawless, Brady, Eviston, Hanrahan. Sub: Purdy for Brady.
After the excellent result in Budapest, Dundalk found themselves in the unusual position of being the favourites to progress to the second round. In the end the tie was a huge anti-climax for the crowd of 6,000. As is common with Dundalk in Europe there was a big element of misfortune in Dundalk’s defeat. The game was even when in the 24th minute Pisont’s shot looked to be well covered by Alan O’Neill until it took two deflections and ended up in the far corner of the net. Two minutes later Dundalk nearly equalised when Ronnie Murphy’s header was cleared off the line by Romanian international Negrau. From that miss Honved moved forward. A quick throw in on the left allowed Plokai to feed Negrau. James Coll’s challenge failed to stop him and Negrau crossed the ball across the face of the goal for Pisont to score with a downward header past O’Neill.
Oriel Park was silenced after this goal and despite a lot of effort Dundalk just could not get back into the game. Tom McNulty, who missed the game through injury, was sorely missed. Terry Eviston caused a lot of problems and Mick Shelly saw his free kick deceiving the Honved defence but nobody was able to apply the finishing touch. The Dundalk fans were crying out for Turlough O’Connor to bring on Mick Kavanagh to run at the Honved defence but the Hungarians held out for the win.
Very disappointing for the Dundalk fans present – but it would be a long long time before European football would return to Oriel Park. In 1995, pitch problems lead to the Malmo UEFA Cup game being moved to United Park. While in 2002, Dundalk played Varteks in a near empty Tolka Park. Tonight we make our return!
The teams that night were: Dundalk: O’Neill, Mackey, Coll, Murphy, Shelly, Hanrahan, Lawless, McEvoy, Brady, Irwin, Eviston. Subs: Kavanagh for Irwin. Honved: Gulyas, Csabi, Plokai, Csepregi, Urbanyi, Csehi, Maroszan, Berczy, Pisont, Vincze, Negrau.
Eyewitness Honved
Turlough O’Connor
Against Honved, we played exceptionally well out there. We very nearly got a win. We did the club very proud that day. We didn’t get the rub of the green in the second leg. We got caught with an early goal. It was more difficult in European matches because we were part-time against full-time players.
