Mayo’s missing men

He remembers his last moments in a Mayo jersey like it was yesterday.

First there’s a sigh, the admission he still hasn’t watched the game back on video to this day and then, still frustrated with the part he played in it, he opens up.

“We were there or thereabouts until the last minute,” says Connacht’s Gavin Duffy on the 1999 All-Ireland MFC final against Down.

“The only thing I remember was marking Benny Coulter. I was out that year to mark the other midfielders and took up Joe Bergin, who scored six points against Sligo in the Connacht semi-final, and all the talk was about him. Cork had a couple of big midfielders too and obviously in the final Benny Coulter was the star man for them and I was sent out to do a man-marking job.

“I haven’t watched the game since but I remember a high ball coming in and I was trying to mark Coulter as close as I could. The ball came in over my head and he was about 10 yards out from the goal and stuck it in net past John O’Hara and that was the winning of the game. That was my last game for Mayo.”

He’s not the first Mayo man to carry a Croke Park weight with him for years. He played one game for the Ballina Stephenites’ senior team after that. A championship game against Knockmore on the same day current midfielder Ronan McGarrity made his senior debut for the club.

“I started half-forward or corner-forward. I was thinking ‘this is the big time playing senior championship against Knockmore’ at a time when there was fierce rivalry between Ballina and Knockmore.”

But that was it. Before the replay he had signed an academy contract with Connacht and his GAA career was over. At least he got to play senior. His club mate Peter Durcan never got the chance. A club MFC game on a Saturday morning against Ballintubber in 2004 was where his silent exit came.

Having played full-back with the minors he also signed a contract with Connacht and has since moved on to Montauban, where he plays in front of 6,000 partisan fans every weekend.

“I played for the Mayo minors in 2004 and we lost to Galway in a Connacht final with nearly the last kick of the game. I think Sean Armstrong scored it. Barry Moran, Enda Varley, Colm Boyle, Seamus O’Shea, Aidan Campbell, Mark Ronaldson and I think Kenneth O’Malley all came from that team.

“Whoever was coaching the U21s gave me a shout to see if I could come into the squad but I was already contracted.”

The next year those U21s won an All-Ireland final while Peter was playing rugby and studying in Galway. A regret? Maybe a little but he’s happy with the life choices he has made.

“I haven’t kicked a Gaelic football in years. I showed a few of the French lads the game when I came over here first but I haven’t touched a ball in six years. I was home during the summer and saw the Stephenites lose to Tourmakeady and it was pissing rain and I thought to myself, ‘I’m not doing too bad, I’ll stay where I am and keep playing with the oval ball’,” he laughs.

“When I was still in Ireland and a bit closer to the action and all my mates were playing football and you’d be looking out on a nice warm summer’s evening you’d kind of wish you could still be playing.

“But as it stands now, the more time I spend in France, this is my fifth year, the longer I want to stay here — but never say never.”

The only one with senior county experience is Pearce Hanley, who left Ireland in 2007 for the Brisbane Lions. He had played in the 2005 All-Ireland MFC loss when he was just 16 and made his senior debut in the qualifiers just two years later against Cavan.

He even sneaked home once to play in a county final and inspire Ballaghaderreen to their maiden success.

With stats like that he should be the most satisfied with his GAA career, the one player who turned his back on the game after leaving on a high but there still burns a desire to return one day and help Mayo claim a Sam Maguire.

“Especially now. I’ve watched nearly every Mayo championship game since I came out here and you still get that championship feeling when the boys are playing. Obviously I’d prefer Gaelic so I’d love to be able to play. When that is I don’t know.”

Duffy, the grand-daddy of the bunch at just 30, would also like to return but at a much lower level. The club’s junior team would suit him down to the ground.

“I don’t know when or what level but there’s always a bit of me that believes and hopes I’ll go back and play some level of football, whether it’s club football or social football. I’d love to have a couple of seasons, moreso to go back and play with my friends again. As much as I enjoy playing with Connacht, my home province, playing with the lads you grew up with would be nice.”

The complications of a career spent hammering lads in the tackle with the intricacies of the Gaelic football tackle would take too long for him to digest in time to play for the county again.

“I always think now that if I was to play Gaelic football I’d get sent off because you can barely touch a lad.

“Having said that there’s a still a lot of physical contact in football it’s just the tackle has become so technical. From what I can see you really have to be on the top of your game to coach it because it is quite technical. Otherwise you’d be giving away frees all day.”

That each of Mayo’s missing men excel at their sport makes you wonder what Mayo have lost. Duffy was a midfielder of great promise, Durcan kept current Mayo full-back Ger Cafferkey off the team while Hanley was the great hope within the county.

His rise to fame in Australia has been phenomenal. For a player who didn’t know one end of an Aussie Rules pitch from the other five years ago, he was voted the club’s third best player this season.

“It was definitely a challenge coming down here. I don’t think I came out with the right frame of mind in the first year or two because I enjoyed being a professional footballer but didn’t realise what it took to succeed.

“But over the last few years I’ve knuckled down and worked very hard. I’m delighted with the way it finished to get a good reward from it.”

Missing home hits just as hard as missing football.

“I’d love to be at home now. I miss family and friends a lot and obviously the build-up to championship and the vibe going around the county is brilliant.

“[But] I’ve settled in here. We haven’t had a drop of rain for about 50 days. I’m still throwing on the sun cream. I’m still as pasty as the day I came out here. I’m not one of them that gets a good tan I’m afraid but I’ve got a lot smarter with my sun cream use.”

The one thing they have all found is that playing professionally brings its own pressures.

For Durcan, playing out-half for a club that were in the French Top 14 three years ago brings its own challenges. Montauban has 60,000 inhabitants and if he thought there was an obsession with football in Mayo, he had no idea what true cult followers were until he arrived in the south of France.

“Where I am now there’s massive pressure. Because the club has played Top 14 and Heineken Cup their priority is to get promoted this year.

“We’re getting a lot of pressure from the president. Our first match was last night and he came in before the match and said this has to be the year, that if we didn’t get promoted this year it will all explode.

“It’s the Latin way of doing things and trying to put pressure on people. I had that at Limoges where I spent two years.

“The club and sponsors put all their effort into getting promoted and it would have been grand if we got promoted but we lost in the play-off game.

“It just exploded then and the budget got cut in two and everything goes to pot. It’s a massive year for us now and if we don’t get promoted the proverbial shit will hit the fan.”

And if it did go belly up, would he return home or stick it out?

“Everything’s going well. My quality of life over here is brilliant. I’ve a French girlfriend, which is nice. When I first came over it was hard because I didn’t speak the language.Once I got with the flow it’s great.”

For now though, they’re all concentrating on tomorrow’s decider. Neither Pearce nor Peter will be able to make it. Hanley will be in Melbourne, but Duffy intends going — if he can source a ticket. “It’s frustrating because anyone I meet goes, ‘sure you’re grand for a ticket, didn’t you play for Mayo’ and I’m there saying, ‘yeah, 12 years ago’.

Durcan explains: “We play on Saturday night against my old team, Limoges. It’s quite a big game for me. Maybe if it was a smaller game I might have invented a sick granny or something like that [laughs].

“I’ll get to see it on RTÉ Player or I’ll go into Trevor Brennan’s pub. He has all the channels. I went in there last year though when they lost to Kerry in the semi-final and had a nice pint of Guinness and a bag of Tayto.”

Gone yes, but they’ve not forgotten.