Heffernan the happier as he hails ‘brilliant’ Irwin

Ballina manager Niall Heffernan has hailed his midfielder Frank Irwin for his ice-cool two-pointer free with the last kick of Sunday’s county final to bring it to a replay.

Irwin’s late, late kick keeps alive the hopes of Ballina’s three-in-a-row bid and Heffernan was effusive in his praise.

“He’s a brilliant lad. He’s an absolute gentleman as a person. He puts in huge work with Ballina. He practices those frees over and over again and you can do all that, but when you’ve to stand up and do it in a county final and everything hangs on you, it takes great guts, it shows great character and he showed every bit of it there. I’d be the first to say Frank didn’t have his most influential day today for us but like I said about other players, who stood up in real key moments for us, he stood up,” Heffernan told the gathered media outside the Ballina dressing-room.

There was no doubt who the happier group was afterwards – that is almost inevitable given the dramatic, late nature of Ballina’s equaliser and Heffernan was in fine form.

As Pat Holmes leaves the other dressing-room, Heffernan jocularly shouts across, ‘Hiya Pat, see you in six days!’ Perhaps Holmes didn’t hear him but there was no answer.

He’s asked about how Evan Regan’s goal might have been contentious.

“Oh no, it was definitely a goal,” he says, with a grin as wide as the Moy. “Yeah, you are waiting to see what the referee is going to give there. Those goals are being given in all the games so far this year. It’s fair game to compete with the goalkeeper in the air and Evan made contact with the ball before he made contact with the goalkeeper. In fairness, the referee was right up there, he made his decision quite instantly so I was quite happy!” 

The first-half joint injury to the game’s two alpha males, Lee Keegan and Padraig O’Hora, 15 minutes in, robbed the crowd of two stellar performers but, argued Heffernan, also robbed Ballina of momentum.

They were 0-7 to 0-0 up before Keegan kicked Westport’s first point. O’Hora’s despairing block on his boot saw both injured and taken off. Wind-assisted Ballina would only score once more in the first-half, an Evan Regan two-pointer, and only twice in the first 20 minutes of the second-half as Westport surged back into contention.

“We were playing well, we were dominating but we know that Westport are a team that come at you in waves... but the injury to both players actually took away our momentum. We definitely lost our way. Westport regrouped and they came at us and then we started missing chances, we were snatching at shots that we shouldn’t have been, stuff we were doing really well earlier on, we didn’t do well but, again, it is a learning curve for the players. People talk about how experienced we are but we’ve an awful lot of young players out there,” he argued.

As Heffernan was talking, Padraig O’Hora left the dressing-room on crutches with a hip injury. His chances of playing in six days did not look great.

“I would say it is very touch and go. If you were talking about a mere mortal, he’s out. If you’re talking about Padraig O’Hora, don’t be shocked. It would be a serious injury for Padraig to go off. He’s like that,” said Heffernan as he taps the concrete block wall beside him.