Board opts for youthful exuberance as Keith looks to relive past glories

Twenty years after he captained Mayo to win the All-Ireland U21 football championship, Keith Higgins will attempt to win the equivalent U20 championship as manager. That’s after the Ballyhaunis clubman was last Wednesday night unveiled as Mayo County Board’s preferred candidate to succeed Higgins’ former Mayo teammate Peadar Gardiner in what essentially is the second biggest job in Mayo football.

Higgins faced competition for the job from another of his ex-county teammates David Brady and from one of the county’s most experienced managers, John Maughan, whose proposed backroom team included another Mayo senior manager in Pat Holmes, and Joe Keane, the Crossmolina man having spent the past seven years as coach to the Sligo senior football team.

But it’s for relative youth that Mayo GAA has opted, with Keith Higgins still playing club football and hurling for Ballyhaunis, with two of his backroom still particularly active on that front also. Indeed there’s every possibility of David Drake and Kevin McLoughlin – both former Mayo teammates of Higgins – crossing paths in the knockout stages of the Mayo SFC, with their respective Ballaghaderreen and Knockmore teams preparing for home quarter-finals next weekend.

This is Keith Higgins’ first managerial appointment at any level although he was a member of previous U20 boss Gardiner’s coaching team while Kevin McLoughlin this year garnered experience as forwards coach to the Sligo senior footballers.

All three candidates, Higgins, Brady and Maughan, were interviewed for the vacancy after which the Mayo GAA Management Appointment Committee made the recommendation to delegates at the monthly county board meeting held in Hastings Insurance MacHale Park, which they passed unanimously. Also included in Keith Higgins’ management team is Mark Ryan from Kilmeena, who has also had recent involvement in Mayo U20 backrooms. Higgins was ratified on a two-year term.

The under-21 grade was the launchpad to a glittering career that saw Keith Higgins become one of the most decorated Mayo footballers of all time. But he also knows how fickle a grade it can be too; 12 months prior to captaining the county to All-Ireland glory in 2006, he had featured on a Mayo side that lost by twelve points to Galway in the Connacht U21 final. So he’ll know that taking over a group of players who won Connacht minor titles in 2023 and 2024, some of whom also helped Mayo reach last year’s All-Ireland U20 semi-final, offers no guarantees either.

But he, more than most, will also appreciate the importance of the relationship and avenues of communication between U20 and senior managers, given he was named GAA Young Footballer of the Year in 2006 for not only his captaincy of Mayo’s U21s but having also been an integral member of Mickey Moran’s Mayo senior team that reached that year’s All-Ireland SFC final.

It's another Moran who holds that role now, with many seeing it as no surprise that Mayo County Board has plumped for Keith Higgins as U20 boss given the closeness of the relationship between he and Andy, one that was forged over a full decade and more, as Mayo argued over who was the best team in Ireland.

That Andy’s brother-in-law David Drake is sidekick to Higgins would add to the belief that all parties will sing from the same hymn sheet.

What Keith Higgins might lack in managerial experience, he certainly makes up for in lived experience as a player. Playing his first inter-county match as a minor in 2003, his senior league and championship debuts came just two years later and he remained an almost permanent fixture in Mayo teams from then until his retirement in 2020, during which time he amassed eight Connacht SFC titles, one Allianz Football League title, played in six All-Ireland SFC finals, was named an All-Star on four occasions and won the Sigerson Cup with Sligo IT.

He stands unique as the only Connacht player to football and hurling Railway Cup medals in the same year and as well as his thirteen county senior hurling titles with Ballyhaunis and pair of Nicky Rackard Cup title wins with Mayo, he has also helped his club win the county intermediate football championship not once but twice.

“Keith was one of the finest defenders of his generation and I know he will bring all that expertise, determination and commitment to his new role,” said Mayo GAA chairman Seamus Tuohy who wished the manager and his backroom team well, acknowledging Higgins’ outstanding career as a dual player for Mayo having also won a Christy Ring All-Star in 2008 and been named Nicky Rackard Hurler of the Year in 2021.

Mayo will hope the 40-year-old can sprinkle some of that magic dust upon the county’s U20 team next year. With Mayo having topped the grade in 2006 and in 2016, winning again in 2026 would have a lovely all-the-sixes symmetry about it, for Higgins in particular. The captain turned manager.