Morahan cherishes a 'special day' for methodical Mitchels 

The ripped jersey showed the scars of the battle that had just ended in Fr O’Hara Park in Charlestown and Sean Morahan knew his side had just come through another tough test of this young Castlebar Mitchels team’s fortitude.

After nine years away from the showpiece the Mitchels are back in the final and after a few years in the championship wilderness with a fresh young team - but one that still has plenty of winning experience to rely on as Morahan was keen to point out.

“It is (a young new team), I suppose, yeah, but you’ve got Donie Newcombe there and Dougie and Stevie Keane, and then you have Paddy Durcan and James Durcan in that as well, and you're Rory in goal.

“A lot of us have been here for 3 or 4 years. It has been a hard 3 or 4 years where we haven't really done anything, to be honest. So to finally get into a final for the first time since 2017, it is massive. It's really it's a really special day for us now, to be honest."

Mitchels put the hammer down from the off against Breaffy and it was something the were conscious of trying to do having tasted defeat to their opponents previously in the same venue int he championship according to Mitchels defensive lynchpin.

“We know Breaffy a brilliant team, they're really strong. They beat us out here. I think it was 3 or 4 years ago on this very pitch. So we knew with their physicality, their pace, and their quality, if we didn't come flying out of the blocks, we were going to leave ourselves an uphill battle.

“So I suppose the first 10, 15 minutes, especially when we got the black card, you know, to push through at that stage and come in after the first half leading. That was massive for us and we're absolutely delighted here.”

Every game has been a learning curve for the side from early highs with wins of Balla and Ballina to a defeat in their final group game against Garrymore there has been something taken from all of them he believes.

“It's a long, it's a long year, like, so, like, this is our fifth (championship) game. We've gotten better every game, really. We've learned from our losses. We've learned from our wins. You know, there's always something we can work on.

“We brought that here today. And as I said, we knew Breaffy were a quality team and everything we worked on has been on how we can beat them for over the last two weeks. So, again, we've worked a lot on how we can improve. So that was massive.”

After their first half showing, keeping it up in the second half was always going to be difficult Morahan admitted but as long as they could dig it out - it was all that mattered.

“We knew Breaffy, we were going to have a big second half there after how will we played in the first half? We knew it was coming and we knew if we could withstand it and not concede the goal, we'd have a chance. And we just we just dug it out.

“We just dug deep. We dug it out. Our bench was unbelievable when they came on, they made impact. We have a massive squad here and it stands to us. So the credit has to go to the bench a lot there and they're really got a few more scores.”