Step up in weight gets bigger and harder for Leitrim

Recent events haven’t been kind to Leitrim. Balancing current protocols, modern loading modules and player welfare, Leitrim were unable to field against Fermanagh in last month’s Allianz Football League Division 3 fixture. I’ve expressed my opinion about this already as indeed have many. One thing that leaps to the fore is the government’s attitude to the West of Ireland that for whatever reason, a proud county was unable to field a team of able bodied men in 2025. The failure to fulfil that fixture asks many questions that run deeper than football and sport.

Going back thorough the records however, we see Leitrim more than punched their weight and sailed against a tide that decimated the West of Ireland’s youth lifeblood in the late 1950s, early 1960s, when over 25,000 young people left counties Mayo and Galway alone from 1956 to ’63, seeking work across the pond. Whilst 1950-51 are red letter days in Mayo’s GAA history, you might be surprised that after the 1955 Connacht title win, it would be a further nine seasons before Mayo reached another Connacht final in 1964.

Leitrim, to their credit, between 1957 and 1967 contested six Connacht finals, including a four-in-a-row from ’57 to ’60. So many questions concerning both counties, Mayo’s total and utter inability to drag themselves to a provincial final after early 1950s national dominance and Leitrim’s ability to swim against the tides of emigration, Mayo, Galway, Sligo and Roscommon pedigree. A ten-year span of Mayo inertia and Leitrim blossom?

We met them in the 1959 Connacht semi-final, drawing in Castlebar and losing the replay in St Coman’s Park, Roscommon. Willie Casey and John McAndrew were the remnants of the 1951 All-Ireland winning panel in the first game. Peter Solon returned after a four year absence and made a final appearance as a sub in the replay. Solan, being Solan, posted 1-1 in that cameo. A shockingly underrated player, he had debuted for Mayo as a 19-year-old in 1948, scoring 35-49 in 46 league and championship games. A career that spanned ten seasons with a four-year hiatus, Solan was special.

One of sport’s little foibles, a certain Joe Corcoran scored one point in the drawn match. The start of another Mayo great’s career intersecting with the final call of another great, Solan. Well, not really. A season later Joe played a single game, scored a single point and was essentially exiled from Mayo football for five seasons whilst he was at his best. Undaunted, Joe went on to become Mayo’s record scorer, a record that stood until 2012. On that 1959 team vanquished by Leitrim were two other Ardnaree stalwarts, the recently departed Jim Fleming and Ivan McCaffrey.

We beat them, comprehensively, in the 1967 Connacht final after Galway’s three All-Irelands in-a-row. I remember that team well and have no doubt but the potential was there to have a tilt at Galway’s run. Two preventable semi-final goals against Meath set us back and we then swapped Connacht titles with Galway over the next two seasons, preventing momentum on both teams, them unable to reach the heights of ’64 to ’66 and us unable to replicate our 1967 Salthill demolition of them. We stymied each other, allowing Kerry a few soft All-Irelands.

In 1976, a year that was to be redemption for the 1975 Connacht final loss to Sligo, a decade in which Mayo despite winning U21 and two minor All-Irelands along with a National League title, saw us fail to land a single Connacht senior championship. Leitrim’s first round Connacht match with us was a draw, they completed the job in the Carrick-on-Shannon replay. Psychologically, this was a bad result for Mayo. One, we failed to clear the throat from the shock a season earlier, and secondly, excellent minors and U21s were withering on the county senior vine.

A generation of good footballers were caught in Mayo’s whirling vortex of the mid-1970s, the flow from fine minor teams of 1971 and ’74, and U21 teams of 1973-75, ran into a roadblock. But Leitrim, like Sligo over two matches each, proved that it was no fluke. That run was to continue until 1981 when Mayo finally surfaced for air, our first senior title since 1969 when we had run Kerry to a single point in that year’s semi-final, eschewing a handy free to level matters at the death. The gap of a point in 1969 had grown to a sixteen points whooping by the Kingdom in 1981, as Kerry and Dublin had elevated their game to a plane beyond us.

Declan Darcy captained a very good Leitrim team to a Connacht title under the stewardship of the late John O’Mahony. Their win over us wasn’t a fluke and indeed having seen them a year later against Galway in the championship, a game they left behind them, Leitrim didn’t fear us. Checking my facts, I came across a result I had forgotten after our July 1994 Connacht final loss to Leitrim – in November of that year in the league, they repeated the dose in Charlestown, this time beating us by six points.

The arrival of John Maughan and subsequent Mayo managers plus Galway’s two All-Irelands essentially realigned Connacht into a pool with two big sharks, occasionally challenged by Roscommon and a single Sligo Connacht title. The changing face and move to a more professional inter-county set up has shown the gap between the counties with resources and population. The chances of Leitrim get slimmer under the new format. Their chance to play for Sam Maguire dependant on a rare Connacht final place. I wish them well.

A cake made only of cream, butter and sugar soon sickens. A championship weakened by a number of elite counties will soon sicken the consumer. Leitrim’s recent troubles should ring the alarm bells. A bloated elite competition will have the paying public seeking other sports. It’s ironic that MacHale Park was filled to capacity with a rugby crowd. Leinster rugby, not the Dubs, filled out Croke Park recently and Pairc Uí Caoimh on the Banks of the Lee watches as the rugby and the rock stars to fill their GAA grounds. The canary clears his throat.