Mayo champions will hope for Stroke’ of fortune

Jim Gavin never kicked the ball between the posts during Dublin’s dominance of the All-Ireland SFC nor did John Kiely ever puck over the sliotar while Limerick kept a tight grip on the Liam MacCarthy Cup, or Brian Cody for Kilkenny before him. And so it is that there’s only so much Damien Egan and his management team can do to help Kilmeena navigate previously unchartered waters of the Connacht intermediate club football championship. But what they and, most importantly, the players are doing is working superbly.

Egan, in his first season in charge of the West Mayo outfit, has been quick to highlight the work of those who have gone before him, specifically John Reilly who oversaw the club’s march to All-Ireland junior glory in 2022, but in the wake of last Saturday’s thumping win over Coolaney-Mullinabreena it’s now written in stone that “never in the history of the Kilmeena club has the team been at this level of football”. The words of Egan himself.

“It’s important to state that fact,” he says, not for self-praise but for the players to understand just what they have achieved thus far.

Six days after going to Tuam Stadium and beating Galway intermediate champions Caltra after extra-time, they gave a display in MacHale Park that at times bordered on an exhibition.

“The idea at training all year has been on the logical, to get the players to just do their job and focus. You could see that there today, we tried to keep the ball and avoid the areas where Coolaney-Mullinabreena wanted to bring us.

“There’s always a method to what we try and do and it worked today,” said Egan after a game that had seen Kilmeena lead by fourteen points despite withdrawing some of their most influential players. It was all with next Sunday’s Connacht final against Strokestown in mind (1.30pm in MacHale Park, Castlebar).

“We’ll do the homework on them and we’ll make a plan, then it’s up to the boys on the field to try and execute it. So far it has worked. Regardless of the opposition, we’ll just do the same again and we’ll give it a right crack,” said the manager.

In the year that Kilmeena won their All-Ireland, Strokestown won their own county senior football championship so the Roscommon men won’t be fazed by their visit to MacHale Park. But they will encounter a Kilmeena side flying high on confidence after 0-23 and 0-22 hauls at MacHale Park against Moy Davitts, in the county final, and Coolaney-Mullinabreena, and the 1-21 which they scored in between against Caltra, albeit after extra-time.

“You’d like to think that next weekend, there’s not one, two or three of our players to tie down, that there’s a lot of lads who can come up and put the ball over the bar. We do have weapons from a lot of places,” admitted Damien Egan.

“We’ll tear into next week,” he assured, adding that while “it’s good to have a home game”, a football pitch forever remains “two goals, the endlines and the sidelines.” In other words, he won’t overstate the value of MacHale Park either.

“Next weekend is new territory. The graph is thankfully continuing to rise in the club, it hasn’t plateaued at all, so we’ll take the next seven days and see what happens.” 

Kilmeena were all-square with Coolaney-Mullinabreena at 0-3 apiece after thirteen minutes before wiping out their opponents with a run of eight consecutive points that rendered the game all but over at half-time. The Black and White were leading 0-12 to 0-4 even after playing against the wind.

“The six-day turnaround wasn’t ideal in terms of getting the bodies right but we had our homework done on the Sligo boys and we were working all week on what we wanted to do on the field. We knew they were a big physical team but the longer we had the ball, we did damage,” explained Egan.

“On their kickout in the first-half, our lads really got the squeeze on them against the wind. I thought Cormac O’Malley, for how impressive he was scoring in all the other games this year, was really impressive being that third man in our midfield. Even though he didn’t always get his hands on the ball, he’s a big man to get in the eyeline of the opposition goalie. I thought he played really well in that role.” 

Interestingly, midfield is an area where close observers say Strokestown have struggled to convince in all season. They were 2-16 to 0-16 winners over Allen Gaels of Leitrim last Saturday and before that, won the Roscommon IFC final against Eire Og having lost last year’s county final against Elphin.

They ended up in the intermediate ranks having been relegated just the year after winning the Roscommon SFC title in 2022 – and the team hasn’t changed a whole pile since then.

Diamuid McGann, who impressed at underage level for Roscommon, struck 1-7 against Allen Gaels and is joined in the attack by Shane McGinley who himself was a star forward on an excellent Roscommon U20 team two years ago. Colin Neary has inter-county senior experience and if allowed, will gladly power forward from his centre-back position while his brother David, Colin Compton and the recently returned Sean Mullooley all have bags of ability too. But if Kilmeena can dominate the central exchanges to any degree like they did against Coolaney-Mullinabreena, it’ll give them an excellent chance to follow in the footsteps of Crossmolina Deel Rovers last season and keep the Connacht intermediate football championship title in the county for another year.