Life in the Mayo bubble
Odds are there will only be one player left in either All-Ireland semi-final thinking his club’s under 14s could beat their senior side. When Lee Keegan says it the nervous laugh that follows indicates he’s only half joking. Westport’s seniors find themselves in a relegation semi-final this year in Mayo while their U14s have become the poster boys of the county’s underage development programme. The third largest town in the county is a Gaelic footballing minnow. The Covies, as Westport people are known, have never won a senior county title, soccer and rugby are the traditional sports powers. There’s a shift though. The club’s future lies with teams that have become the envy of all Connacht Bord na nÓg football. But if you’re obsessed by living in the present like Keegan, there’s no point waiting for them to flourish. For Mayo football, the future is now.
Here’s a player who couldn’t make the county minor championship squad in 2007, was dropped off John O’Mahony’s panel after the league in 2010 and largely regarded as a luxury athlete within the club game.
Mayo’s senior players saw Lee Keegan as a fringe man whose inter-county life would be brief. Then everything changed in 2011. James Horan’s first year in charge.
During an inter-squad A v B game, a late Aidan O’Shea hit sent him flying. Next ball? Keegan smashes O’Shea. The two had to be separated. He earned O’Shea and the squad’s respect. Although just a back up to Trevor Mortimer in the half-back line that year, he was a player no one would ignore anymore. Everyone now knew Lee.
“A new manager brings a freshness to a team and I just said I’d really go after it. We got to a semi-final that year and I kicked a point against Kerry,” said Keegan.
A few weeks after that loss Mayo were building again. Mortimer was working in Kenya, precipitating his inter-county retirement. The opening was there for Keegan and at a fitness test under Cian O’Neill, the current Kerry coach, he blitzed everyone else’s times.
“Thankfully James has got the best out of me and gave me a role that suits me and it’s got the best out of my game. The [fitness] test was an indicator and I just put the foot down to see how it would go. I never looked back after it. You live in the moment and I always said if I ever got the opportunity, I’d just go after it and see where it brought me. I was fortunate to have the players around me at the time and a manager who believed in me to play my kind of game rather than giving me 100 instructions to do this or that. I was very fortunate in that way.”
If any player epitomises Horan’s work in Mayo football, it’s Keegan. Maybe the manager sees a bit of himself in his player. Both were born outside the county. Horan in New Zealand, Keegan from Cavan. Both made the move home in time for national school and neither would have considered football their first true love. While Horan flirted with rugby at club level, Keegan played underage for Connacht. Their jobs are also similar. Horan is a Quality Assurance manager with Coca Cola while Keegan is a Quality Technician with Synergy Healthcare.
But if it wasn’t for another Mayo manager, Keegan mightn’t have played at all. As teenager, and with rugby his focus, Keegan was always off the pace to make the county teams. His focus lay elsewhere. The urban myths have it that he was about to be offered a professional contract with Connacht.
“I was a full back. I wasn’t too much of a contact man in the rugby though. Tried to stay away from it to be honest. Wherever the contact was it was my job to run away from it [laugh]. I suppose I was a bit like Forrest Gump! A contract? Definitely not. I played with Connacht U19s and I was with Corinthians in Galway for club rugby. There was no contract for me unfortunately.
“The reason I gave it up in the end though was because Pat Holmes gave me an ultimatum. I’m glad now he gave it to me because it was worth it. I suppose I had options both ways but I decided to give Gaelic a go. He [Holmes] would have been our U21 coach in the club and was Mayo U21 coach at the time too so he brought me into the Mayo set-up. It was my first proper interaction with Mayo. He was always pushing me hard when I was younger, so he’s one of the main guys I’d thank for getting me onto Mayo teams.
“I never looked at the commitment I was giving to Gaelic football because I was just looking at it from a club point of view. It was only when I went in fully that I realised that you have to give up all your time and your lifestyle to commit to the cause. That’s what I did when Horan came in.”
And he’s been reaping the rewards since. In his 17 senior championship appearances with Mayo, he’s tallied 1-17. He’s been hailed as the modern ideal of a wing back and an attacking threat opposing teams need to negate to shut Mayo down. That’s not the way he looks at it though.
“The main thing I look at is my defending. I’m actually a defender first and that’s my main role. I’m lucky enough to score in a few games. It’s great to play alongside players like I do. Colm Boyle is probably the most ferocious tackler in the game, I wouldn’t like to run into him. Donie Vaughan is one of the fittest footballers I’ve ever seen. He’s so professional in the way he prepares so it’s great to have lads like that beside you. They’ve big game experience too and you can trust them.”
It’s something Mayo players haven’t really talked about openly since 2006. That year, in the build-up to the All-Ireland final against Kerry, coach John Morrison referred to the bond within the team. In his autobiography Keys to the Kingdom Jack O’Connor wrote: “In all the excitement after the Dublin game, Mayo are doing plenty of talking about being one big family, about their style of play, about how you’ll never see a Mayo back just kicking the ball away, they like to work it out. It’s like giving us a list of things we should work on!”
The heavy defeat that followed, a second final in three years, made those words ring true within Mayo circles. Naive and innocent for so many years it was time to grow up. Particularly in the way they dealt with the media.
That’s probably why when you push Keegan on the banter within the squad, he answers politely without divulging anything. Asked who the jokers within the camp are and he name checks Rob Hennelly, Andy Moran and Barry Moran. Pushed on any recent pranks or incidents aimed at relieving the tension and you get the serious answer.
“It’s quietened down of late though because everyone is focused on a big game. There isn’t as much laughing in the build-up to a game.”
It doesn’t mean they don’t have fun though. He went through life without a nickname but four years in the Mayo camp has earned him two. Leeroy Lips and the Chimp.
“The lips one is obvious because I’ve a pair of lips the size of I don’t know what, and they’ve got a fair few bangs through the years. I’ll have to blame Kieran Shannon, our psychologist, for the chimp one. He called it to me one day and it just stuck.”
That’s the kind of thing that helps keep a team together. They have fun but try to keep it to themselves. It might change. Just not for a while. Mayo’s tale of All-Ireland final heartbreak is the subject of books but the hope within the camp is that the next chapter will turn the nightmare into a fairytale ending.
They have been paying the price for failure for too long; while there’s probably nowhere more intoxicating in the lead up to a final than Mayo, there’s nowhere as poisonous after a defeat. Players’ cars have been damaged and businesses affected in the fall-out. In 2012, given the upwards trajectory of the team, the current crop escaped the vitriol. But last September there was no getaway. Rumours emerged. Richie Feeney had travelled to Dublin on his own for the final after a bust up with Horan. The squad was about to disintegrate. Keegan himself heard he was meant to emigrating to Australia. Claustrophobic stuff.
“It’s hurtful to hear the stories,” he told the Sunday Times last October. “What you hear isn’t the truth but it’s what’s going round. We’re a very tight bunch, very good friends. I see some of the lads and the hurt on their faces. It’s hard enough to take an All-Ireland defeat without hearing all the stories too.”
That’s probably why they found solace within the group environment again and it’s one of the reasons they stay sane over the course of a season. Lee’s girlfriend, Aoife, sees less of him than Kevin Keane, his club and county team-mate and neighbour.
“We’d be very close, we train together every night. He only lives down the road from me and we’re like a little married couple. It’s great to have someone close by to train with because it keeps you motivated and you can have a chat with him. He’s been unlucky these past few years, but he’s pushing very hard now. We call him the blond bombshell.”
“The way I look at it is that we are playing big games in Croke Park every year. The enjoyment you get out of playing in Croke Park and to even get those Connacht medals and play in all those big games is huge. You don’t mind giving everything up for that. You’ll have enough time to look back on your career and think what could I have done and what should I have done. It’s easy to come back year-on-year for that and especially because of the lads you’re playing with. You kind of live in a bubble, but when you get to Croke Park on a weekend like this you just want to go out and play.”
Given the man and the history, you know that’s not meaningless pap. This group play for each other and Keegan’s form shows that. In 2012 he was taken after 12 minutes in the All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin after his finger bone came out through the skin. Taken to the Mater Hospital he had to listen to the game on the radio as they popped it back into place.
“I was screaming down the corridors,” he laughed, “there was someone there with a radio and she updated me every 10 minutes. She got a few Fs and blinds but took it well.
“I just wanted to get back to the celebrations and look forward to another big game. It was a weird thing really, I just had to get to Croke Park and it wasn’t a bad injury so I decided to try and do it. I got a garda escort to bring me so far but the crowds were so big he couldn’t turn left or right so I just turned the jersey inside out, hopped out and ran through the crowd like a nutter.”
Without being identified.
“No one even noticed. My face isn’t one people look out for. It was great. I just wanted to be there with the lads and get talking to them and enjoy the buzz. Beating Dublin in front of a full crowd was something else and you don’t do it too often so I just wanted to be there.”
Now though that’s seen as memory to treasure not something to dwell on. A philosophy that served him well this season after the dog days of a poor league semi-final against Derry and minimum impact against Roscommon.
The day job requires intense focus as he works with gamma radiation each day in Synergy Healthcare where they sterilise medical products. At that time of year he had a heavy workload and became run down (“Gaelic doesn’t put food on the table — you need a job and a career”). He picked up a virus. Something had to give and Horan gave him time away from the team.
“Everything hit me at the one time. I had to take a lot of punishment then as well. I wouldn’t use it as an excuse, it was just something that happened to me. I was lucky enough not to be sick over the last four years so it was bound to happen at some stage. Thankfully it happened earlier in the season and not now.
“My bosses Brian Moran and John Duffy have both been very good to me over the last few years giving me time off. Other companies can be different but they’ve been great to me.”
Kerry will demand Lee Keegan’s full and undivided attention. Growing up he had two idols. Kieran McGeeney who, with his Gloucester-born father, he shared a fascination in the Armagh team of that time. The second was Tomás Ó Sé, the reasons he wanted to play half-back. He doesn’t try to replicate them but appreciates what they did within the game and knows that if he is ever to honour them he must win an All-Ireland one day. After seven senior final losses since 1989, he knows the L column is hard to ignore. Not that he’s counting. For him, it’s about living for the moment.
“Some of the match-ups could be huge but the potential is there to have some great memories. From a defensive point of view it’s going to be a great challenge because if you’re not on your game, Kerry can really punish you. We’re looking forward to a huge challenge. Against Cork we gave them 10 or 15 minutes but against Kerry we have to play for 70 plus. Hopefully it will be just a good free-flowing game of football the purists can enjoy.
“We’ve a tight group and we just know the ability we have to go out and play. We’ve played in four semi-finals in a row and won four provincial finals in a row but we don’t look back. We don’t see it differently, it’s just another game to get to another challenge. Kerry is next. These are the games you look at knowing the shit could hit the wall.”
And there’s the crux of it for Keegan. The fear. Not losing of Kerry or losing another All-Ireland. One day he knows this will all end. He’s only 24 but careers go in a blink.
“When we lost All-Irelands I always thought there was another game around the corner. We’re all of a similar mindset and there’s another game coming up. It’s continuous and if you’re in a cycle there’s always a chance to redeem yourself. Every year we do the same thing and now we’re just looking at Kerry this weekend. That’s all we can do. No point getting caught up in the past when there’s something big in the present.”
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