Mulligan: Philly’s spirit with victorious Leitrim

LEITRIM free-taker Emlyn Mulligan last night revealed he and his team mates visit the grave of former team mate Philly McGuinness on a regular basis.

McGuinness died following a freak accident during a club football match last year and Mulligan believesmemories of the 26-year-old helped motivate the side to a sensationalConnacht SFC win over Sligo onSunday.

“We had James Glancy’s father and Philly McGuinness looking down on us on Sunday.

“It is a great win for Leitrim and it is just the boost the county wanted.

“It is a regular occurrence for some of us to go and visit Philly’s grave.

“It is the closest we can get to him now.

“He was a spirited man and he worked hard at his football and we tried to bring that into our game against Sligo. Hopefully we can build on this now. It is a big result but we can’t wait top take on Roscommon in Páirc Sean in three weeks time.”

Mulligan said they had built up enormous self-belief during the winter and went into Sunday’s game against Sligo in confident form.

And he said that being written off in the media was used as a motivation tactic prior to Sunday’s 1-10 to 0-10 victory at Markievicz Park.

“Prior to the game we were just talking about the effort we had to put in all year.

“We came to Sligo with full belief that we could win. I don’t think a team was ever written off as much as we were. And in fairness there is never more than a kick of the ball between us and Sligo and it was a bit of an injustice the way we have been treated. People were already talking about a Sligo v Roscommon semi-final. We weren’t even been thought about,” said Mulligan, who missed two years of football after twice suffering cruciate knee ligament injuries.”