Kiltimagh poised to tackle old ghosts

Kiltimagh folk still wince when they talk about it. Croke Park in February 2010 - the day the junior final slipped through their hands.

People that were there still remember the quiet more than the noise. They remember the way the world seemed to narrow until all that existed was a football resting on a patch of grass and a Kiltimagh man standing over it. The East Mayo club had a free to tie the game deep in extra time. All the miles, all the muck and all the nights under bad lighting were distilled into that one moment.

It wasn’t a bad strike, but the ball dropped short and was quickly fizzed down the other end of the pitch where Castlegregory managed to sink another point, putting the contest out to two points. And that was how it ended: Castlegregory heading towards a coveted All-Ireland title and Kiltimagh walking off into the cold with a feeling that is impossible to shake off.

Fifteen years on, that feeling is still there. People talk around the day rather than about it. But perhaps, if the gods of winter football are feeling half as mischievous as usual, they might just let Kiltimagh back in the door of Croke Park to see if they can write themselves a better ending this time around. But the club is only beginning to consider that prospect now.

For Kiltimagh didn’t exactly burst into this year’s county championship; they more or less wandered into it like a man looking for his keys in the dark. They essentially tripped over themselves into the knock-out rounds. The early rounds were pockmarked with attacks that fizzled out, breaks that died on the vine, days when the jersey seemed to weigh a little heavier than usual. They looked, at times, like a team searching for a version of itself from the past.

They were very lucky to progress from their group. They flirted with an early elimination more than once, but when the storm started to build, they refused to fold. When the margins got tight and the pitches got sticky, the club dug in with a quiet and stubborn resolve. They held ground other teams would have surrendered. They found points they had no business finding.

And maybe that’s their secret. They didn’t glide through the championship; they found a way to endure it. They figured it out piece by piece, game by game, until suddenly the team you thought was stumbling has steadied itself, straightened its back and started to move with purpose.

It isn’t glamorous, but in winter football improvement beats polish every time.

Carrick-on-Shannon was the first real sign that Kiltimagh had shed their autumn skin. By the time Aughavas finally got on the scoreboard, an Adrian Shortt two-pointer that should have stirred life into the contest, Kiltimagh were already six to the good, playing with the calm certainty of a team who knew exactly where the afternoon was headed. And just in case the Leitrim side started harbouring ambitions of a resurgence, they nudged the gap back to six almost immediately.

By half-time, the differences were written across the faces of both sets of players. The Leitrim lads were blowing hard, hands on hips, sweat cooling in the breeze. Kiltimagh, by contrast, trotted into the dressing room looking as though they were only finishing their warm-up - loose shoulders, light steps, the quiet body language of a group entirely untroubled by what lay behind or ahead.

The second half brought no twist, no surge, no sudden reversal. Kiltimagh held the margin with disciplined ease, Thomas Keegan tipping over the scores to keep his team in control and Eoghan Lavin adding a sprinkle of theatre with a clinker from the main-stand side of the pitch.

Even when Aughavas finally threatened a goal in the dying minutes, there was no panic, no rattle, no scramble. Kiltimagh simply closed the space, controlled the moment and saw the job out with the kind of poise that says more than any roar or fist pump ever could.

But the Connacht final was the easy part. What awaits the club now is the long, narrow tunnel of winter football that takes them all the way to January. And December is a month that can treat a team the way a dog treats a cushion. Momentum thins out and the weeks leading up to Christmas feel like they’re trying to shake you off the horse. It’s the most unforgiving stretch of the calendar, a place where good teams stiffen up, great teams second-guess themselves and the silence can undo a season's worth of progress.

Momentum doesn’t hibernate well. It needs tending - small sessions, smart habits, the right voices around the place. And that’s where Kiltimagh quietly looks better armed than most. They’re not clinging to something they used to be. They’re improving in real time, growing into themselves week by week, carrying a kind of calm intent that doesn’t wilt in the cold.

Keeping that edge over Christmas is its own small battle. Nights get longer. Pitches get heavier. Training begins to feel like a chore. But Kiltimagh are a team surfing a rising wave, not guarding a fading one. There’s an energy about them. They're steady and unsentimental and unmistakably upward. That suggests the dark weeks won’t drain what they’ve built.

It helps, too, that Kiltimagh are moving with the wind at their backs off the field as much as on it. The updated grounds have given the town a lift and a sort of quiet confidence. Momentum doesn’t just live in the legs of players; it seeps into the walls, into the floodlights, into the small talk at the shop counter. So when January arrives with its cold breeze, Kiltimagh won’t be meeting it as a team trying to hang on. It will meet it as a club on the rise, one that has found its footing, drawn in a deep breath and decided, almost without saying it, that this year might be different.

And if the road does happen to circle back to Croke Park, the club will find the ghosts from 2010 still waiting for them.

But not all ghosts are meant to be feared.