Another steep hurdle to Cross’ but Rovers look ready
Conor Loftus, seen breaking past Garrymore's Liam Og Horkan in the very first round of the championship, has been in inspired form for Crossmolina who are on the brink of reaching their first Mayo SFC final in nineteen years Picture: Conor McKeown
Crossmolina Deel Rovers are two wins away from doing in ten months what it took Westport five years to achieve, which is following up an All-Ireland Club intermediate football championship title with the Mayo SFC crown. They are also two wins away from accomplishing something not done in 35 years, which is to win the Mayo intermediate and senior championships back to back.
Hollymount achieved that in 1989 and 1990 which in itself was the first time it had been managed in 17 years, when Knockmore won intermediate and senior titles in 1972 and 1973 respectively. It seems incredible now but Ballaghaderreen had also completed the intermediate-senior back-to-back double twelve months before Knockmore, in 1971 and 1972. Neither had won the Mayo SFC before. It would have been like seeing Ballyhaunis and Kilmeena add the Moclair Cup to their cabinets the year after their county intermediate title wins in 2022 and 2023 respectively, when the former are instead this weekend one game away from relegation and the latter already back down in the intermediate ranks.
But if any of that back-to-back talk is allowed to cloud the minds of Crossmolina’s players this week, it could be fatal. Nothing else will do but to have full focus on the task in hand, which is to try and beat a Westport team laden with talent and experience – on both sides of the white line.
To have seen his side reduced to fourteen players before coming from nine points behind to win by three away to Breaffy, must surely rank high among the sweetest of Westport boss Pat Holmes’ long list of managerial triumphs. Whether that quarter-final can be the spark that ignites something even greater from a Westport team who many believed would achieve so much more in the wake of their breakout senior championship title in 2022 remains to be seen. But Holmes has gone the course and distance successfully before, as both manager and player with Castlebar Mitchels, and next Saturday will give us the best indication yet as to whether he and his Coveys are timing their run to absolute perfection – a bit like how they failed to win any of their opening five matches in this season’s Mayo SFL Division 1B yet still managed a top five finish to guarantee their place in the new look Division 1 for next season.
They were, however, on the first weekend of July, in the penultimate round of this year’s league, beaten by their upcoming opponents, which was a result that threatened to demote Westport to Division 2. In other words, it was a game that Westport could really have done with winning but didn’t, as Crossmolina ran out 2-17 to 3-10 victors at St Tiernan’s Park.
On that occasion is was Westport who were the ones suffering at the hands of a team making a big comeback, as Rovers fought from six points behind to win by four, all inside the final ten minutes. They did so with none of the three Coggins’ brothers available, and without Conor Loftus, who is arguably playing his best football yet, but Westport, it should be said, were also minus Lee Keegan, Eoghan McLaughlin, Brian O’Malley, Kevin Keane, Luke Tunney and scoring aces Killian Kilkelly and Colm Moran, the first five of whom started the championship quarter-final defeat of Breaffy, with Moran coming off the bench to punch home the match-winning goal in the 58th minute.
Another difference is that Saturday’s match will be on the neutral turf of Fr O’Hara Park in Charlestown, a ground with which neither side should be any more familiar with than the other. Both teams won their neutral venue group games, Crossmolina by fifteen points against Ballyhaunis in Kiltimagh and Westport by four points against Balla in Castlebar, albeit Balla were still in contention for a quarter-final spot while Ballyhaunis had nothing to play for.
Crossmolina and Westport both also drew their away venue group games, the former against Garrymore and ‘Port against Knockmore, so these two teams are looking exceptionally well-matched heading into this semi-final.
But one thing that Crossmolina have done twice this championship is to post statement wins: taking the scalp of county champions and traditional rivals Ballina Stephenites in the group stage and that of 2021 county finalists Belmullet live – and so ruthlessly – on national television in the quarter-final, is the sign of a team not content to conform with the theory that their time will come but just not this year. Kobe McDonald, Oisin Deane, Dylan Flynn, John Moyles, Sean Óg McGuinness and Aaron, Diarmuid and Niall Coggins are young men who seem to be in a savage hurry. And with Jordan Flynn and the aforementioned Conor Loftus only hitting their prime, who’d bet against the Deelsiders from marching one step further next weekend?
