SFC semi-final preview: Expect nothing neighbourly as rivals chase final spot
Pearse Ruttledge of Knockmore and Ballina Stephenites' Padraig O’Hora are likely to cross paths again when their clubs collide in next Sunday's Mayo SFC semi-final at St Tiernan's Park, Crossmolina. Pictures: David Farrell Photography
Ballina Stephenites are on a mission this year to accomplish something rarer than you might think.
Only four times in the past 35 years has the beaten team in the Mayo SFC final managed to lift the Moclair Cup twelve months later. The Green and Red are two games from achieving that yet some significant obstacles are in need of shifting.
The most recent example of a team recovering from the disappointment of a county senior final defeat to become champions the following year is Castlebar Mitchels in 2015, but they of course had also won the title as recently as 2013.
Charlestown Sarsfields won the Mayo SFC in 2009 having lost not one but the two previous finals and Crossmolina bounced back from the hurt of losing the 1998 final to win back-to-back crowns, while the Deel Rovers were actually the ones on the receiving end when Castlebar Mitchels set aside a defeat to Ballina in the 1987 Mayo SFC final to go all the way in ’88.
Ballina, who suffered defeat to first-time winners Westport in last year’s decider, have of course been crowned Mayo senior football champions on a record 36 occasions but for the last example of them following up a final defeat with victory the following year, you have to go all the way back to the years 1946 and ’47. That’s more than two decades before even the birth of Knockmore GAA Club.
And yet traditionally, there’s none so stout an opponent for the Stephenites than Knockmore, with whom they will rendezvous in the semi-final next Sunday. Ballina won their 2004 title by beating Knockmore in the final and Knockmore won their 1996 title by beating Ballina in the final, in between which there were some other gigantean encounters between the neighbouring North Mayo heavyweights. But even as recently as 2020, the year that Knockmore won their first Mayo SFC title in 23 years, they were first made suck up the disappointment of losing to Ballina along the way, a group game that seemed to pivot on the sin-binning of Darren McHale in the second-half. But revenge was only a matter of weeks coming, when McHale and co saw off the Stephenites in the county semi-final at MacHale Park.
Like the 2020 group game, St Tiernan’s Park in Crossmolina will again host this latest instalment of one of Mayo club football’s great rivalries. The ground is unlikely to have seen a crowd so large since the days it staged National Football League matches, the last of which was on March 24, 2002 when Mayo beat Derry 0-16 to 2-8.
The Mayo goalkeeper that day? David Clarke. Even though he had been part of the squad that won the Division 1 title the year before, that match against the Oak Leaf men was only Clarke’s second league start for the Mayo senior team. Little was anyone to know the 133-game career he would carve out. 21 years later and the two-time All Star remains as uncompromising as a Dublin street clamper towards any opponent who dares threaten his authority of the Ballina goalmouth.
His opposite number next Sunday is the current Mayo custodian and the influence that both players, Clarke and Colm Reape, could have on this match is not insignificant, especially given the latter’s abilities from the dead-ball – be that kick-outs or scoring opportunities. Reape struck 0-13 in his thirteen appearances between the posts for Mayo this season which, when you think about it, isn’t bad going when you consider that when playing three more games than Reape, Jordan Flynn, Mayo’s only forward to be nominated for an All Star this year, scored just four points more.
No team was so comprehensive in securing their ticket to the semi-final than Ballina Stephenites but it’s arguable they encountered the least equipped of the quarter-finalists given Belmullet were unable to score even once from play, and only four points in total. But when stationed in front of the aforementioned David Clarke are defenders of the calibre of Mayo teammates Sam Callinan and Padraig O’Hora, former All Star Ger Cafferkey and Mayo U20 wing-back Ciaran Boland, then a root cause of Belmullet’s woes wasn’t all that difficult to identify. However, if any set of forwards look capable of asking some difficult questions of the townies, it’s Knockmore’s.
Aiden Orme and Darren McHale obviously catch the eye as Mayo panellists but Peter Naughton was, it’s worth remembering, the Mayo club championship’s top scorer during Knockmore’s back-to-back title wins in 2020 and ’21, while the fact he chose this year to retire from inter-county football lessens none the impact that Kevin McLoughlin continues to have for his club, be that in midfield or a more advanced role; McLoughlin was the only player on the pitch to score twice from play in his side’s last eight victory over Charlestown.
Add to the mix the athleticism of Connell Dempsey and 2022 Mayo minor Oliver Armstrong around the middle third, the return to fitness of half-back Kieran King who, prior to injury, many were talking up as county material, the experience of Shane McHale and David McHale, not to mention the goal threat carried by relative newcomer Caolan Hopkins, and it’s not hard at all to make a case for Knockmore winning a third Mayo SFC in four seasons – something even their great teams of the ‘80s and ‘90s were unable to manage.
But if there’s one side who’d take great delight in shattering that dream it’s Ballina Stephenites, for whom Frank Irwin was in superb form in their 1-11 to 0-4 win against Belmullet. Irwin hit 1-2 from play and a further two points from placed balls to move into fourth place in the championship’s top scorers list, and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that his midfield partnership with Dylan Thornton becomes tried at county level in the future.
Speaking of which, Evan Regan’s form this year is such that it seems highly unusual that his only input to the Mayo senior football squad is to offer nutritional advice; only Ryan O’Donoghue has scored more than the Ballina corner-forward in this year’s championship and there’s every possibility Regan will leapfrog to the top of that chart. He was even the player who, having already scored a spectacular first-half goal, kicked an equally exquisite last-gasp equalising point, when Ballina Stephenites claimed a draw with Knockmore earlier this year in their Division 1 trip to St Joseph’s Park.
But it’s far from a one-man show up front, with Conor McStay, the ever-improving Mark Birrane and towering newcomer Luke Feeney, a midfielder cum full-forward with Mayo’s All-Ireland final reaching minors of 2022, each capable of wreaking havoc on an opposition’s back line.
Ballina have arguably been the more convincing of the teams to date, winning all three of their group games and coasting through their quarter-final, but they have yet to encounter a team this year possessed with Knockmore’s know-how or penchant for toughing it out.
Ballina have already claimed a trophy at Knockmore’s expense this year when winning the North Mayo Sweeney Cup final, and it is true that Knockmore have struggled to rekindle the form they were displaying prior to this season’s Division 1 semi-final when they lost on penalties at home to Castlebar Mitchels, but if any opponent can bestir them, it’s the Stephenites.
There’s all the ingredients here for a championship epic, one that most likely will go right down to the wire.
