Mayo's Lee Keegan accepts Dublin’s ‘campaign’ may have worked

Mayo’s Lee Keegan has admitted it’s “possible” that a media campaign apparently conducted by ex-Dublin players influenced last year’s All-Ireland final replay referee Maurice Deegan.

Keegan was black-carded in the first half of Mayo’s one-point defeat and manager Stephen Rochford said he was “under no illusions that there was an agenda out there” ahead of the game to influence Deegan.

Former Dublin players Alan Brogan, Ger Brennan, and Paul Clarke had used the same term “pulling and dragging” in newspaper articles to describe how wing-back Keegan had been getting to grips with Dublin forward Diarmuid Connolly.