Ballina cannot let this triumph be a ceiling

There’s a strong case for locking the gates of MacHale Park and keeping Ballina and Westport in there forever. Let them play until the floodlights burn out and the grass grows around their boots. Let them draw, replay and draw again like a sort of sporting Groundhog Day. Let them play until Mayo football figures out it enjoys the suffering a little too much.

It might even solve a few problems. There’d be no need for a provincial championship. No need for calendars or fixture planning. No need for winter training plans. We’d simply tune in every weekend to see which of them would win this version of the same match.

Because whatever strange alchemy exists between these two teams feels too rare to ration to a single afternoon a year. Both games were absurd, illogical and entirely enthralling – they converted football into farce, faith and fever dream all at once. No novelist could script endings like these – they’d fear being accused of excessive melodrama and, of course, they’d be right.

In truth, it was only fitting that Ballina’s coronation came gift-wrapped in calamity. A week earlier, they had been the ones gasping as their lead evaporated in the second half. This time, the script was reversed. For fifty minutes of the replay, Westport played like a team that had learned to master the chaos of a county final. Then, as if haunted by the ghosts of the previous weekend, they froze. The ten-point lead became seven, then four, then dust.

Evan Regan turned the match on its head, not so much dragging Ballina back into it as daring the universe to stop him. When Ballina won a free a few metres out, everyone else seemed to pause. Regan didn’t wait. He struck it like a man trying to shock life back into a body, a furious bullet that ripped through a tangle of arms and found the net while half the players were still facing the wrong way. It wasn’t opportunism. It was a diagnosis. He knew his team needed defibrillation, not decorum.

From there, the mood changed shape entirely. Dylan Thornton’s fisted goal arrived minutes later like an aftershock. Then, Regan registered two late scores to grab the game by the collar and deliver the most successful club in Mayo football its first three-in-a-row since the 1920s.

For all the thrill and theatre of it, recent history suggests that the county final is usually a full stop for Mayo’s champions. The cup is lifted, the photographs are taken, the noise fades and the champions of Mayo become footnotes in the provincial championship by Christmas.

It’s been ten years since a Mayo club went beyond its own borders to win Connacht. In that time, Galway, Roscommon and Sligo clubs have all claimed the provincial title. That’s what Ballina Stephenites must remedy now. The three-in-a-row is an achievement worth celebrating but if it stops there, it will only underline that unwelcome pattern. If the campaign ends in the same familiar fashion, this three-in-a-row will start to feel like a Pyrrhic victory, a triumph that leaves the county exactly where it began, applauding its own defiance and endurance while the rest of Connacht moves on.

Too often, Mayo champions have emptied themselves in pursuit of a county title and discovered there was nothing left for the road beyond it. The county final becomes the summit rather than the starting point. The football is played on adrenaline and emotion – wonderful fuel for a county final in Castlebar, but useless by the time the country champions reach Tuam or Hyde Park.

The problem isn’t quality – it’s recovery. By the time November arrives, the adrenaline has drained, the knocks have set in and the euphoria has cooled into fatigue. The championship that gives Mayo football its colour also steals its oxygen. Other counties manage to re-set and go again. Mayo teams tend to look emotionally jet-lagged by the time they cross the county line.

Ballina must avoid following that pattern. They’ve been hardened by the grind of three straight titles. They’ve seen every form of pressure and somehow kept standing. That resilience has to stand to them in the Connacht championship. They need to learn to bottle the wild energy of the Mayo club championship and pour it, calmly, into Connacht.

Ballina doesn't have to look back too far to see how thin the line is between progress and paralysis. Just twelve months ago in Markievicz Park, they had Coolera-Strandhill where they wanted them. They led in extra-time, had the game in their hands and somehow still let it slip away. They drifted into penalties as if trapped in quicksand. The Sligo champions kept their heads while Ballina second-guessed themselves.

The question this time is whether they’ve taken enough lessons from that experience to go one step further. The raw materials are arguably better now – Regan is in the form of his life and there’s enough collective scar tissue to stiffen the spine. But last year’s provincial semi-final revealed that Connacht football punishes hesitation. If Ballina want to be more than Mayo’s latest three-in-a-row champions, they have to play the provincial campaign like a continuation, not an afterthought. The next game has to start where the county final ended – with urgency, purpose and a refusal to let the temperature drop.

Ballina aren’t chasing validation anymore; they’re chasing progression. And the next few weeks will tell if this is a team ready to build a legacy rather than repeat a cycle.

Regan’s winning point should be remembered not just as the end of a comeback, but as the start of a campaign. Because lifting the Moclair Cup can’t be the finish line anymore for a side like Ballina.

They have the experience and the momentum to go further, and the responsibility to prove that Mayo football can, once again, travel well.