A tough and long year ahead for Crossmolina
Former Ballina Town and Moy Villa manager Mick Duffy has taken over the reins at Crossmolina. Picture: Michael Donnelly
There is a sense of apathy around Crossmolina coming into this season. Booted out of their home ground at Abbeytown as it is not up to Super League standard, losing their best player and generally having a poor reflections on last season.
It was not so bad. They stayed up nine points clear of the drop for one thing and won a third of their games to boot, only one less than Conn Rangers who had a good season by all accounts. However, three of those wins came against worse opposition in Straide & Foxford (x2) and Glenhest Rovers, who both went down. They shipped 69 goals and were regularly on the end of a hiding.
Despite the absence of Diarmuid Coggins, who is playing with Mayo this year, there is still a lot of talent in the squad with the likes of Kevin Campbell and Stewart Griffin needing to step up for new manager Mick Duffy.
Crossmolina manager Mick Duffy is looking forward to a ‘journey’ with the club this year despite some early frustrations in his start to life at the club, .
The former Ballina Town and Moy Villa manager has taken the reins at the north Mayo club this season. He said his first task is to make the club competitive.
“The guys were keen for a different approach. They were keen and I had a good rest and was ready to back into coaching myself.” “Everything about it seems good, the opportunity of helping a lot of the young players out there. I enjoy bringing what I believe about football to help young guys. The timing was good and it worked out well,” said Mick.
This season the Mayo League has said that Crossmolina needed to find an alternate home venue as Abbeytown was not up to standard. Duffy said that he is not sure what impact, if any, this will have on Crossmolina’s chances this season.
“I was out to look at the pitch in Kilmurray and it looks decent. The guys out there have been very helpful and fair play to them because we were thrown into this maybe two months before the start of the season.”
Despite it being early into the job, Duffy did express frustration with some aspects he has had to deal with so far.
“A lot of the players are doing jobs around the club. You’d love it if there was somebody in the community that would step up and kind of look after it.”
“For example, Sean our goalkeeper is the secretary of the club. That’s difficult. If I’m trying to help him be a goalkeeper and the next thing somebody is calling him about pitches or signings or whatever a secretary’s job is. It is difficult in that regard.”
He said he isn’t sure how things will go this season and said he faces challenges keeping players available with a strong GAA community in Crossmolina.
“The big challenge in Crossmolina is the Gaelic. I was aware of that coming into the job, that it would be drawing a lot of the best players at a time when we might need them the most but again, there is nothing I can do about that.”
“Only make sure that I work on the guys that I have. That’s all I can do.”
He said that he hopes his team can be competitive.
“The boys were saying they weren’t really ready for that step up last season when they came into the Super League and just about survived.”
“I want to develop what’s there and make them a little bit more ready for the Super League.”
“We had Castlebar Celtic scheduled for our first game and that’s tough but you don’t want players heads to drop because you have to realise where you are at.”
“You go up against teams that are just a lot more wily, cuter and a bit further along on the journey. I think I’m sounding like Ange Postecoglou now, talking about journeys.”
“This will be a journey one way or the other. It’ll be a journey.”
