Feature
Wllie McHugh
TONY McTigue has the bags packed and the tickets for the flight home booked. Chances are he tended those incidentals immediately after he listened to the internet commentary bringing the good tidings that The Neale were booking their place in the County final against their south Mayo neighbours Hollymount/Carramore.
Nothing stirs the pride more in the soul of the exile than hearing news from home of the local footballers reaching a county final. Tony McTigue won’t be the only one making the trip home. Already there’s talk (and it’s not idle) of Tony Walsh and Oliver Browne, among others, heading the way.
These are exciting times around Cong, Cross, The Neale, as well as over around Hollymount and Carramore direction. A county final between two South Mayo clubs adds its own bit of intrigue to this fixture.
In Cross, Cong and The Neale, club officers and volunteers were busy on Thursday evening last putting up the flags and bunting. There’s even a bit of competition between the villages as to which will present itself best. The Neale looks resplendent in a cloaking of green between the Pyramid and the Long Stone and every approach and exit road into and out of Cross is festooned in the club colours.
Cong too. Even those visiting the village are a bit bemused, and slightly confused, with the array of green unfurling and blowing in the gentle harvest breeze from every vantage point. On Saturday morning last, as a tour guide explained the history of the Cross of Cong to a group of tourists at the village’s most famous landmark, one among the party was distracted enough to enquire if the flag display was due to Ireland’s participation in the Rugby World Cup.
Hardly the length of a Keith Hennelly kick-out, Galway dovetails into Mayo just back the road from Cong. On Sunday next they’ll come from beyond the Ferry Bridge in Kilbride and the American Crossroad in Cloughbrack to lend their voice to The Neale’s cause.
Just as their Mayo neighbours did when Clonbur were crowned All-Ireland Junior football champions in 2011. When they returned home victorious on a February evening, the first sparks of victory bonfires greeted them in Glencorrib, Cross and Cong.
A year later The Neale made their own bit of history when they were crowned Junior champions of Mayo for the first time in the club’s 110 year history. A rising tide lifts all boats and, rather than rest on their laurels, the club built on that success.
Through the Trojan work of a group of dedicated officers, they nurtured the good underage structure already in place and the younger brigade have their own local heroes to inspire them now.
But keeping the wheels of progress turning wasn’t without its challenges.
The club that had already suffered its share of tragedy prior to their 2012 success have endured some harrowing times since. Two of their stalwarts who stood on the victory podium in the dusk of a famous October evening have passed on to their eternal reward.
A road accident claimed the life of Darragh Walsh and, last April, the region was stunned into numbness with news of the passing of their talisman and influential player, Peter Cosgrove. That the club could reach a county final on the back of such tragedies is a testament to the amazing power of the human psyche.
On Sunday they meet a Hollymount/Carramore combination that are back for another cut at it having lost to Ballyhaunis in last year’s decider. If the lack of flags and colour in the village on the edge of The Saucer is any sort of reliable gauge then the build-up is a more low-key affair, but the club straddling the banks of the river Robe has seen better times.
Time was when Hollymount scaled the heights of Mayo football. In 1990, ’91 and ’94 the Moclair Cup, the top honour of club football in the county’ wintered there. They slipped down the pecking order since those halcyon days but now they are making their way through the rankings again.
It’s a south derby played out on Mayo’s main football dais. The word has spread.
It has beckoned the exiles home.
