‘It’s our last chance’ - Mayo U-16s ready for last dance as All-Ireland final beckons

THE Mayo U-16 girls team are a fascinating bunch.

They are coached by a team so young that two of them weren’t even born the last time the county appeared in an All-Ireland final at this grade.

The girls themselves have eight All-Ireland U-14 medals between them and include the relatives of former greats like Sinéad Stagg, ‘Ginger’ Tiernan and the Kelly sisters from Moy Davitts.

Drive, ambition and talent literally runs in their blood.

“From the first trial we’ve known that our goal has been to get into an All-Ireland final and to win it out,” team captain Emma Higgins tells The Mayo News. “All 35 of us, we’ve known from the start that this is what we’re going for.”

Funnily enough, their manager, Francis Regan, had no idea they’d end up there.

“As a young manager, I never thought I’d be managing a team to get to an All-Ireland final.”

The former Mayo Minor’s move into coaching came after two cruciate ligament tears and two shoulder operations stalled a promising club career.

He first exposure management came in 2023 as a coach in Michael McCabe’s U-16 setup before he took over himself as manager last November at the age of 25.

With Orla McHale (coach), Marina Cawley (strength and conditioning coach), Colin Doherty (selector), Donal Hughes (goalkeeping coach), Deirdre Donnelly (physio) and Helen O’Hara (female liaison officer), Regan has turned an already talented group of players into what he calls ‘the hardest working team possible’.

“I think one of the first things I said to them on one of the wet nights in the back pitch in Mayo Abbey is that if we’re going to lose, it’s going to be because the other team has worked harder than us,” Regan tells The Mayo News after a training session in Westport.

“I tried to make them the hardest working team possible and very strong in defence, very strong in the tackle and at football, I’m not one for big massed defences or getting bodies behind the ball, I want them playing football.

“You can see by the way they’re playing. Especially the last day against Kerry the football they’re playing with and against the wind, they’re a credit. Because no matter what you ask them to do, they can do it perfect.”

_{Mayo supporters cheer on their team during the U-16 A All-Ireland semi-final (Pic: The Mayo News)} 

Modest almost to a fault, the Mayo Gaels man credits the women on his coaching ticket as much as the girls under his guiding hand.

Though delegation was initially a challenge for an upstart, hands-on coach like Regan, Marina Cawley and Orla McHale are both at the centre of every training session.

McHale, a key player for Moy Davitts, looks after warm-ups and skills while Cawley, a Connacht junior title winner with Claremorris, takes care of strength and conditioning.

“Because we have such a young management it feels like we can tell them anything and we can give them our input and what we think about training and drills,” defender Cliona Cullen tells The Mayo News.

Sitting beside Cliona and Kate Byrne in the kitchen of Westport GAA’s clubhouse is Kayla Hughes, who has the unique luxury of being coached by her Dad, Donal.

“It’s interesting,” Kayla tells The Mayo News after a contemplative pause, “but it’s really advantageous because every day we can go up the pitch and he’s someone that I can learn from very easily and someone who understands how I learn and spends a lot of time with me and knows how to speak to me and understands how I learn and how I work.”

As veterans of a team that lost an All-Ireland U-16 semi-final to Cavan and saw a Mayo U-14 team carry an All-Ireland title over the border in 2023, few know better than these three about what’s at stake in Ballinasloe on Saturday.

“We’re representing the whole of our county,” says Cliona. “When you start in September trials there is 90-odd girls going for it and for you to be picked to wear the jersey is just such an honour and an opportunity.”

Moreover, they know all too well that the higher you climb, the greater the fall.

“It’s our last chance, all three of us, to win an U-16 All-Ireland final,” says Kayla. “All three of us have felt the pain of losing last year and this is the furthest we’ve come as a team to get to the All-Ireland final. It would just mean everything if we won it.”

“I feel like it would mean so much. It would be such a big achievement seeing as we lost two years ago to Kerry in the [All-Ireland U-14] semi-final,” adds Kate. “Last year we lost to Cavan as well, so if we were to come out the right side of it this time it would just mean everything.”