Ballycastle’s recent Junior ‘B’ triumph was a big milestone
Feature
Edwin McGreal
TWO years ago, The Mayo News did a feature on emigration through the prism of three GAA clubs in the county.
Ballycastle’s plight looked particularly worrying.
Club chairman Martin Heffernan listed 12 players they had lost in the previous two years.
For any club this would be worrying, but for a community like Ballycastle – who were hemorrhaging numbers as it was – it signalled a very uncertain future.
After all, in the space of 30 years, the local national school-going population in the parish had dwindled from 350 to just 70.
As a consequence of low numbers and emigration, the club were barely existing. But instead of rolling over, they came out fighting.
“We’re not giving into this,” Martin Heffernan told The Mayo News in 2013. “We cannot let the community drift away. If we can keep the show on the road for the next couple of years, we can see things improving.”
Victory over Breaffy in the Mayo Junior ‘B’ Championship final was a tangible reward for the big efforts they’ve been making since.
“We knew we were facing into a big problem so we came up with a plan to ensure we could survive,” Martin Heffernan told The Mayo News last week. “The first part was to improve the team, and the second part was to improve the facilities – our clubhouse and the pitch.”
With that in mind, the club went about getting an outside manager – ‘someone with experience, to get the best out of what we have’. Donie Tuohy from Bonniconlon was the man they got. He persuaded some lads out of retirement and more lads to give a greater commitment than they had been doing.
Like any journey, it started with small steps, and last year they won the North Mayo Exclusive Junior ‘B’ title.
They still could not do much about lads who had emigrated … or could they?
“This year we ratcheted it up further and approached lads who were out of the country, and asked them if we paid for their flights, would they commit to us for the year. It was a big commitment for them, but they’ve come home for all our championship games,” said Martin Heffernan.
So four lads have been travelling over from London – Shane McHale and the three Tighe brothers. Goalkeeper Jason O’Neill has travelled over and back since moving to Edinburgh two months ago. It’s an incredible effort, but underlines how serious Ballycastle are about making a go of things.
They’ve plenty of talent in their ranks. Their captain Micheál Forde has starred for the Mayo minor, under-21 and junior teams. His first cousin Shane Forde, the hat-trick hero in the final, was part of the Ballymun Kickhams side which lost the 2013 All-Ireland Senior Club Championship final to St Brigid’s of Roscommon but returned to his native club this year.
It would be easy for the Fordes to transfer to a senior club, but the pride of the parish and playing with friends they grew up with is lure enough. Shane Forde is one of about ten players commuting from Dublin.
The club have helped out with travel expenses where they can and the whole set-up has improved.
You could see the passion in the players and supporters when the final whistle sounded in the county final, and in captain Micheál Forde’s wonderful speech.
It was, incredibly, their first county title since 1939. That was even before the days of their greatest ever footballer, Tom Langan, the full-forward on the Mayo sides of 1950 and ’51, and full-forward on the Team of the Millennium. They did win three North Mayo Junior ‘A’ Championships in 1981, 1993 and 2002, but 76 years is a mighty long wait for a county title.
Though numbers remain tight, the club managed to pull together a second team this year to compete in the Junior ‘C’ Championship, and Martin Heffernan recalls a ‘great day’ in Ballina when both teams played quarter-finals in their respective championships one after another.
Describing the celebrations after the final as ‘fantastic’, Heffernan is already looking towards next year’s Junior ‘A’ Championship, where he’s confident they can ‘give a good run’.
Before that, they are hoping to develop off the field, with plans to improve their pitch surface and extend their dressing-rooms at Tom Langan Park.
They have good underage players coming through from the Naomh Pádraig amalgamation – Ballycastle play underage football with Killala, Kilfian and Lacken. And suddenly, without any change in numbers, the future is looking a lot better. It’s amazing how far a fine attitude and commitment can get you.
