An Irish icon and his Belmullet chastening

Can you name the All-Star Mayo footballer who played in five All-Ireland SFC finals having also captained his school to win an All-Ireland senior soccer semi-final against a team that included a player who would go on to make over 420 appearances for an English Premier League club?

With the week that’s in it, it’s probably easier to figure out the latter of the players to whom I’m referring.

Little did Seamus Coleman know when he lined out for St Catherine’s Vocational School from Killybegs in the FAI Schools National Senior ‘B’ semi-final in late April 2005 that he’d be an Everton player inside three years. The opposition in Brother Walfrid Park in Ballymote that day actually included a player who would end up managed by the likes of Roy Keane and Paolo Di Canio and play cup football at Wembley Stadium and Stamford Bridge to name just a few of England’s most famous grounds, but while Ronan Murray might once have been described by Keane as “probably the most natural goalscorer we’ve got” during the Cork man’s reign as Ipswich Town manager, Murray never played a game for Mayo let alone appear in five All-Ireland SFC finals. But Chris Barrett did.

The Belmullet man was a midfield powerhouse on the Our Lady’s Secondary School side that not only beat Coleman’s St Catherine’s 2-0 but went on to lift the FAI Schools Cup after overcoming Dublin’s Grange Community School by three goals to one in the final.

Barrett scored in both games – and in the Connacht final before that – and while Seamus Coleman, other than in the team list, didn’t even get a mention in the All-Ireland semi-final report that appeared in the Western People, the same could certainly not be said about Mayo’s future All-Star.

“[St Catherine’s]… were hit with a body blow in the tenth minute when the Our Lady’s captain, Chris Barrett, stepped forward. Wesley Moran chased a lost cause into the corner and Ivan Barrett flicked the subsequent loose ball to the skipper who took a touch before rifling it into the top corner from twenty yards. It was a goal that would grace any stage.” 

And in the final, Grange had pulled a goal back and were piling on the pressure when Captain Fantastic stepped up again to make it 3-1 deep in the second-half.

“It was a real captain’s goal; delivered when his team was in real danger, just as he had when his side were a goal down in the final minutes of the Connacht final,” read the Western People report.

That was 21 years ago this month.

The career paths of Chris Barrett and Seamus Coleman took different trajectories, with the Mayo man focusing on Gaelic football and already featuring in All-Ireland minor (2005) and under-21 (2006) finals by the time Coleman had made his League of Ireland debut for Sligo Rovers in October 2006. Interestingly, that came away to Derry City at the Brandywell, just yards up the road from Celtic Park where Chris Barrett would make his National Football League debut for Mayo against Derry in February 2008.

It is, however, for more than the end of Seamus Coleman’s superb 17-year stint with Everton FC last weekend that Chris Barrett sprang to mind. It’s because not since the game in which Barrett made his senior championship debut for the Green and Red has a loss felt so generational as when Mayo last month suffered their heaviest home defeat in the senior championship in 70 years.

What’s different, however, is that unlike when Chris Barrett played the full 70 minutes of Mayo’s infamous 2010 All-Ireland SFC qualifier defeat to Longford, losing to Roscommon last month wasn’t season-ending. There’s an early opportunity approaching for Mayo to make some amends.

Chris Barrett played Mayo’s next championship match too, but that second-ever appearance went only marginally better, as James Horan’s first experience of the Connacht SFC as a manager saw his side taken to the brink by London in 2011. Interestingly, while four of the players Horan picked for that game were never again to start a competitive match for Mayo, the defeat to Longford the year before had not been career-ending for any of the fifteen selected by John O’Mahony.

In fact, by the time of Mayo’s breakthrough victory over Dublin in the 2012 All-Ireland SFC semi-final, as many as nine of the starters and three of the substitutes had also featured against Longford two years before. There’s probably a lesson in there for anyone calling for wholesale change in advance of Mayo’s visit to Monaghan next Sunday. And maybe even lessons in that Our Lady’s win all of 21 years ago and in the careers of Chris Barrett and Seamus Coleman.

The Belmullet students had overcome some major adversity on their way to becoming All-Ireland champions, requiring penalties just to get the better of Coláiste Cholmcille from Inverin in the early stages of the Connacht Cup, which they later lifted only after coming from a goal behind very late on in the final against St Joseph’s of Charlestown – thanks in no small part to the inspirational Chris Barrett.

In his later life as a Mayo footballer, Barrett also overcame the adversity of the Longford embarrassment and London humbling – and of not starting any of Mayo’s next six championship games thereafter – when his third championship start came in that aforementioned knockout win against defending All-Ireland champions Dublin in 2012. It was an apprenticeship of extremities.

Similarly, it was only eleven days after his 21st birthday when Seamus Coleman was handed his Everton debut in a Europa League game away to Benfica where he was beaten to the ball for the first goal by Javier Saviola, a World Cup goalscorer for Argentina. Everton ended up getting thumped 5-0 yet three days after his rude awakening, Coleman came on as a first-half substitute to make his Premier League debut against Spurs at Goodison Park and was named Man of the Match having had a telling hand in both his side’s goals in a two-all draw (Ironically, the final Premier League game of his Everton career on Sunday also came against Spurs).

The message in all those stories is that things can turn quickly in sport – and it’s no doubt a message Andy Moran will have tried to impart upon his players in what will have been a long month for the Ballaghaderreen man since Mayo’s routing by the Rossies. Indeed next Sunday’s opponents are further proof that the darkest hour is sometimes just before dawn because who could have foreseen Monaghan taking genuine All-Ireland contenders Armagh to within an inch of their Ulster Championship lives last Sunday week. In fact, who could have foreseen Monaghan even getting next to near their provincial final after they lost each of their seven Division 1 matches this year by an average of almost 10 points, with only Waterford scoring less and Offaly conceding more across all four divisions of the National Football League.

Monaghan’s predicament had been summed up perfectly by their manager Gabriel Bannigan who said: “Thank God we were in Division 1. If we were in Division 2, with all the issues we've had this year, we could be heading for relegation to Division 3.” 

The Farney men are preparing to have home advantage for a third time in four championship games this season having not only brought Armagh to extra-time but coasting past Cavan in the opening round of their provincial campaign. The dramatic extra-time victory over Derry at the Athletic Grounds in between further highlights the spirit within the squad despite their early season difficulties.

But for a Mayo side looking to lift itself off the floor, playing in Clones might actually be a blessing in disguise; of the last ten championship matches Mayo have played in MacHale Park, they have won only four, among which their win against Monaghan in the 2022 All-Ireland SFC qualifiers is the only instance of them beating Division 1 opposition. In contrast, their league record at St Tiernach’s Park has been excellent, winning five out of their last six National Football League games there since 2016.

I was at Lansdowne Road the night in 2017 when Seamus Coleman, captaining the Republic of Ireland in a World Cup qualifier against Wales, had his leg horrifically broken in two places by the reckless tackle of Neil Taylor. Coleman underwent surgery the next morning and spent the next month at home in Killybegs among family and friends before returning to his club to step up his recuperation, defiantly saying: “It hasn’t been a smooth journey to play for Everton and to captain my country. I’m a fighter and there’s a part of me that’s looking forward to this challenge. It’s something to start all over again and fight for.” 

The journey of a Mayo manager is rarely a smooth one either, as Andy Moran has discovered so early into his tenure. You know the fight is in him – as a player he returned from an ankle break in 2011 and cruciate injury in 2012 to become Footballer of the Year in 2017 – but is it in his players? If it is and if they’re up for the challenge, their new start can be Sunday. There’s plenty still to fight for.