Heffernan predicts a bright future despite Ballina’s exit

The old Mike Tyson phrase about everyone having a plan until they get punched in the face felt appropriate for Ballina Stephenites on Saturday afternoon at Pearse Stadium. Niall Heffernan’s side showed incredible defensive resilience, they managed the game quite well and put themselves in a position where with a quarter of the game to go, they were within striking distance.

Every so often however, setbacks would be their undoing. Whether it was Ger Cafferkey’s injury, a needless turnover that would lead to a Corofin score, or a failure to take a chance, they kept getting knocked back. As Heffernan reflected on the game afterwards, he considered that to be a reflection of the quality of their opposition, as opposed to any failure on the part of his own players.

“I felt that early in the second-half we were getting at them, but in fairness to Corofin, they showed their class,” said the former Mayo U21 manager.

“They came down and they got their scores easier than we did in either half. Their link play, their fitness, their power, they showed it all. It took us a while to match the physicality that they brought. We knew what they were like but you have to experience it up here to really grasp it.

“Losing the players that we lost didn’t help us, but Corofin are just a class side, they’ll be incredibly difficult to beat no matter who they play.” 

The 0-9 to 0-3 lead at half-time for the Galway champions looked formidable on the scoreboard, even though there was a gale force wind set to favour Niall Heffernan’s charges after half-time. While he defended the decision to play into the wind, it wasn’t immediately clear if he felt that it worked out as they had planned, or not.

“It’s very easy to be smart afterwards. We made the decision and we backed it,” he declared.

“It looked as if we were coming back into it against the breeze, but Corofin just always had the class. They worked lovely hand-passes, they got in and got scores. We were always up against it, down two or three players and then to lose Ger Caff’ so early in the game as well was just a huge, huge loss on top of that. After all that, we still competed well against a very good team like Corofin, but we just came up short.

“They were more efficient, they certainly got their scores easier than we did. We kicked some great ones from long distance but it’s very hard to win a match with scores like that, you need the easy ones too.” 

The quality of Ballina’s attacking play also served as a comprehensive rebuttal of the critics of the recent Mayo county final, where the cagey nature of the action led to a national conversation about where gaelic football stands as a sport.

Heffernan was succinct in his reply to what he thought of his native club featuring at the heart of that discussion.

“My mother used to tell me that empty cans make the most noise, and that was what was happening there. That was all rubbish talk, the people who were saying that just didn’t know what they were talking about.” 

As far as he’s concerned, nothing about the nature of the county final, or the fact of their defeat on Saturday, takes away from what was a tremendous year for Ballina Stephenites, and a season that hinted at the very real prospect of more glory days to come in the future.

“Corofin have a lot of guys with a lot of experience who do it on the big day. You look at players like Gary Sice, and he kicked some great points, but his tackling was superb, it’s great to watch.

“We’re the county champions and we still gave a good account of ourselves today. I’ve very proud of this club and the players, and what we’ve achieved.

“That group has grown hugely, and they have fantastic leaders with some of those older guys, and hopefully those guys will stay on to bring those young guys on even further. The attitude of the players has been brilliant, as has been the effort that they’ve put in. We’ve seven or eight guys based in Dublin, coming down to Ballina for training during the week, or else we get a venue because we don’t have full lights for ourselves. There’s been a lot of obstacles that those players have gotten over, and just said ‘We’re going to do it’. They deserve the world of credit and I’m certainly grateful for what they’ve given this year, and the future is very bright.”