Risk-reward mantra pays off for Regan and Ballina

It was quite the five-second rollercoaster.

A quick counter-attack from Ballina Stephenites sees a long ball bounce perfectly into Evan Regan’s chest, and although the corner-forward still had the best part of 40 metres between him and Colm Reape’s goal, the crowd knows that a goal is on.

Two seconds later, Knockmore defender Nathan Armstrong is closing in and Regan lines up to shoot, still not having crossed the 20 metre line. Surely too ambitious, shooting from that distance against an intercounty keeper?

Not a bit of it. The shot is perfectly placed inside Reape’s near post, a score worthy of any championship final is on the board, and Ballina have an advantage that they never look like relinquishing for the remainder of the game.

“They broke up the pitch and to be honest I didn’t track my man!” was Regan’s recollection of his vital score.

“We got a turnover, Luke Doherty kicked a good ball in, they were closing in on me and I figured that if I was going to go for it, I’d go for it now! I’ve always said that if you hit it early with a bit of pace on it, you’ve a chance of catching the keeper off guard.” 

One swing of the right boot, where the potential outcomes are either a wave of tut-tutting across the crowd for such an audacious/low percentage attempt, or else writing your name in the folklore of one of the most fabled GAA clubs in Ireland. It’s a dichotomy that wouldn’t sit well with everyone.

“You need to put yourself in those positions and back yourself to be able to pull off things like that,” Regan asserts.

“As a forward, my big message to the lads all year, but particularly in the last couple of games, has always been around playing to win, not playing not to lose. There is a difference there. I felt the opportunity was there and you have to take those risks, they’ll pay off in the big games.” 

Was that a lesson that he took from 2023, when Ballina Stephenites ended their two-decade drought, but where the county final didn’t exactly win nationwide praise?

“After losing the final the previous year (2022) to Westport, it felt like a long way to get back to the county final again. There definitely was a bit of nerves on the night, and we created a lot of chances but our efficiency just wasn’t there, that was the big thing.

“This year it was about going back, sticking to what we needed to do. We knew we had better football in us and that we had a performance like this in us. We didn’t listen to too much outside noise about it, it was just about getting over the line.” 

Given the experience of 2023, not to mention the watertight nature of the Stephenites’ defence on Saturday night, a message of it all being ‘just about getting over the line’ could easily have inspired some defensive play after half-time. A 1-6 to 0-3 interval lead was commanding and another couple of scores might have been enough to do the job, though Regan was happy that the message from Niall Heffernan was very different.

“The message at half-time was that we don’t sit back, we don’t sit in and try to hold on, we continue to play our game, pick off our points where we could. We knew that Knockmore would come out and try and get a goal early and send in a few long balls, we had to be ready for that. A bit more structure was in the things we talked about at half-time, but yeah, it was very much a case of going out and playing to win the game, not playing to hold on.” 

So on the back of a very different type of county final win, where Ballina have very clearly put themselves ahead of the chasing pack in Mayo, does that mean that this group is ready to have a proper tilt at Connacht and perhaps become the first Mayo team in nine years to win the Shane McGettigan Cup?

“You’d hope so,” he replies.

“We were obviously disappointed with our performance against Corofin last year, it was very naïve in a windy Salthill, we didn’t manage the conditions well. We did play well patches in that game and we can take confidence from that.

“There’ll be nothing easy going away to London in a couple of weeks’ time and if we come through that, there’s nothing easy at any stage. It’s just about focusing on ourselves as we have all year, continuing to try and improve every day, and bring our best version of ourselves to every game we play.” 

In Regan’s case, that means brave, audacious, embracing risk. It seems to suit him just nicely.