Stephenites get ready to rumble with royalty

When the outside broadcast units of RTÉ roll into town to bring your game live to the nation, you know its serious.

The announcement yesterday (Monday) that next Saturday’s AIB Connacht Club SFC semi-final between Ballina Stephenites and Corofin will be broadcast live on RTÉ One has added just another layer to what already has the makings of an intriguing contest between two powerhouses of Mayo and Galway club football.

Tuam Stars may, on paper, be the most successful club in the history of the Galway senior football championship, but Corofin have lifted the Frank Fox Cup on no fewer than seventeen occasions since Tuam’s last title triumph in 1994, to move within three of Stars (25-22) on the all-time list.

Ballina Stephenites just last month won their 37th Mayo SFC title to move six clear of Castlebar Mitchels and as a club have tended to do quite well in the Connacht championship, just that their problem until this year had been getting out of the county.

In the ten seasons from 1998 to 2007, the men from the Moy won no fewer than three Connacht senior club titles to equal the achievements of Knockmore and Crossmolina Deel Rovers before them, but when Corofin replaced the Stephenites as provincial winners in 2008, that was the first of a remarkable seven Connacht championships won by the rural Galway outfit in just twelve seasons. It was a run that incredibly included no fewer than four All-Ireland Club titles, including three in-a-row, prompting many to rank Corofin above Crossmaglen Rangers as the greatest club to have played the game.

All the while Ballina Stephenites were enduring a 16-year famine within the confines of their own county.

But last weekend we got to see the Moysiders dust off the cobwebs and move on from their rather underwhelming triumph over Breaffy in last month’s Mayo SFC final. The fact it had been their first time to raise the Moclair Cup on high since 2007 became overshadowed somewhat by the 0-6 to 0-4 scoreline, which generated all sorts of headlines and debate in all corners of the country. But not since the group stages of the county championship had we seen the Stephenites so prolific in front of the posts as when they posted 3-11 against Fulham Irish at a very sparsely populated MacHale Park last Saturday night – even without the services of Evan Regan, the top scoring club footballer in Mayo this year.

But, as their manager Niall Heffernan alluded to after the game, that all needs to be digested with a rather large pinch of salt because, as opponents go, it’s worth mentioning that Fulham Irish had hardly entered this Connacht Club SFC quarter-final as the most convincing of London champions. They were mounting a comeback yet still trailing when their semi-final clash with St Kiernan’s was abandoned very late on due to an injury to one of their own players. And having come through the re-fixture, the Tir Chonaill Gaels side they then beat in the London SFC final had already quite comfortably beaten Fulham Irish during an earlier round. Which all goes to say that expectation wasn’t especially high that this Fulham Irish team would become the first UK side to win a senior club championship match at Connacht or All-Ireland level.

As an aside, the closest any UK club has come to claiming a scalp was all the way back in December 1990 when Tir Chonnail Gaels travelled to Ballinascreen and brought Lavey to extra-time, only losing 1-12 to 1-11. Come the following St Patrick’s Day, the Derry and Ulster champions were also the All-Ireland champions.

Before that there had been some Mayo involvement when Britain’s first-ever representatives in the All-Ireland series, Sean McDermotts of Birmingham, ran Roscommon Gaels to a point in 1976, while in ’81 one point was all that Garrymore had to spare when taking on Parnells of London.

But the prospects of Fulham Irish managing to carve a unique piece of history, while still slim, did appear to have improved considerably with the pre-match news on Saturday that Ballina Stephenites were going to be operating without three of their most influential players. To be deprived the scoring power of Evan Regan, whose long-arranged stag weekend overseas just happened to clash with this game, was bad enough, but to made also plan without county defender Padraig O’Hora and joint captain Dylan Thornton because of injuries, only added to the jeopardy.

And yet Ballina were comfortable shipping all those blows, and the first-half withdrawal through illness of full-back Ger Cafferkey as well.

“We’ve been talking among ourselves about us having a strong squad and today that squad stood up. Everyone who came in did a job,” said Niall Heffernan afterwards.

“We’ve a big squad of players here, some of whom have gotten no game time but are training, training, training. And they went out there today and they did a job.” 

And it really is a genuine strength in depth that Ballina Stephenites can boast. Ciaran Treacy, who started in place of Evan Regan, looked to have a big Mayo future ahead of him when scoring a goal in their 2019 National League final victory over Kerry. Mikey Murray, that same year, started at midfield for Mayo in their All-Ireland SFC qualifier win against Armagh, and on Saturday was the replacement for Dylan Thornton. Sean Regan, who capably filled Padraig O’Hora’s defensive slot, has an extensive CV as an underage inter-county footballer, not to mention his exploits as a Tooreen and Mayo hurler.

Still, the sight of O’Hora wearing a protective boot in MacHale Park on Saturday night will have unnerved Ballina Stephenites supporters. Corofin aren’t the sort to be fazed by much but in wars of attrition, as so often these provincial matches turn into at this time of year, there are few players who appear more suited to such an environment than Swanee.

“I hope to.” 

“I hope to.” 

Those were Heffernan’s responses when pressed individually on whether he would have either or both O’Hora and Thornton available for Saturday’s showdown with Corofin, who got the better of this year’s All-Ireland Club finalists Moycullen in the Galway county final. Only time will tell.

“No disrespect to Fulham Irish, who put up a really battling performance, but Corofin are a whole different level so we have to get ready for that. We’ve only six and a bit days to recover,” the Ballina boss pointed out.

“As a group, we’d be disappointed with the level of our performance against Breaffy in the county final. We know we can play better than that.

“This (Fulham Irish) was different opposition so you can’t gauge but we wanted to play well today, to play good football, that’s what we try to do all the time. Today we had the opportunity to do it and we did it, but we left a lot of scores behind us again and against a team like Corofin, if we don’t take our chances we won’t get them a second time,” Heffernan warned.

Singling out the brilliance of veteran Gary Sice in Corofin’s 1-11 to 1-9 win against Moycullen, and that of Liam Silke and Kieran Molloy, Heffernan was also taken by some of the new players to have emerged and who have brought “real pace” to the team.

“They worked so hard against Moycullen, who are a very good side. They deserved their victory and I think they’re going to grow from it,” he added.

Standing opposite Heffernan on Saturday will be Kevin Johnson, the man who has now managed county senior winning teams in three counties.

Johnson saw his Mayo champions of 2019, Ballintubber, succumb in the province to the Corofin team he is now in charge of, and Tourlestrane also failed to make an imprint outside of Sligo under his watch, so there’ll be plenty of personal motivation to make sure Corofin aren’t the victims of an ambush in Salthill.

“We put an awful lot of work into this year. To go unbeaten is an incredible feat. From the first game in March, every second week,” remarked Johnson after the county final, a game Corofin won not only in the absence of Galway attacker Ian Burke, but Jason Leonard also, who had excelled for the team in the earlier rounds of the competition.

Liam Silke scored 1-2 while also holding Moycullen’s Dessie Conneely scoreless from play in a sensational performance and with Johnson able to unleash the experience and skill of players like Micheal Lundy, Mike Farragher and Martin Farragher off the bench, it’s a sign of just how big a challenge awaits Ballina Stephenites.

But for all that was made about Ballina’s struggles to score from play in the latter rounds of the Mayo SFC, it’s also worth noting that an incredibly measly six points is all that the Green and Red have conceded from play in their last four championship games combined.

This could be a close one.

The winners will advance to a Connacht final against either St Brigid’s or Mohill who contest the other semi-final next Sunday in Hyde Park at 1.30pm.

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AIB Connacht Club SFC semi-final 

Saturday, November 18 

2pm at Pearse Stadium, Salthill 

Corofin v Ballina Stephenites