Team Heffernan: Ballina Stephenites boss speaks ahead of the Mayo senior county final

One senior county title, three county finals and a county semi-final appearance is not bad going at all, even for the noble Ballina Stephenites.

With their own Niall Heffernan at the helm, the Stephenites have become a force not seen since Brian Ruane hoisted Andy Merrigan on St Patrick’s Day 2005.

But even with a stellar backroom team including forwards coach Cora Staunton and two esteemed player-selectors in David Clarke and Ger Cafferkey, nothing comes easy when managing the Stephenites. Particularly for a gaffer who runs a flat-out busy food business.

“There is no balance, to be honest,” Heffernan bluntly tells The Mayo News.

“I’m very lucky that I have a fantastic wife who releases me from some of the duties at work so I can be here. Literally, I’m living out of a car at the moment. Most of my gear is in the car all the time. When I go back from here, just the way things are this week, I literally have about four hours’ work to do when I go back. But that’s the nature when you run your own business or maybe run it the way we run it. So that’s what I agreed to do and I have no complaints about it.”

That says a lot about the demands of managing Moclair Cup contenders, even with plenty of help.

“It’s huge, but nobody is demanding it of me, I’m demanding it of me,” insists Heffernan.

“Nobody’s putting a gun to my head and saying you have to do this. I have so much help, so much taken off me by the guys and other guys that you wouldn’t even know, saying ‘What can I do to help?’ A lot of that is taken off me.

“Because of the business we’re in, it’s six-day week, six-night week business, 24-hour day business as well, because we have our own bakery as well. So that adds extra to it and then there’s the travel up and down to Ballina, so there’s that time element in which adds more, nobody forced me to do this, I volunteered to do it. And it’s been some of the best years of my life.”

Time will tell whether 2024 will be his best year. But for long periods in games, Ballina have been far off their best - even accounting for hobbling absentees like Dylan Thornton, Mikey Murray and Padraig O’Hora.

“We’ve had to go to the well a lot this year. We’ve had to go to the well to dig out games a lot,” Heffernan acknowledges.

“You always worry how many times can you go to that well. These guys have shown me that they’ve incredible heart, incredible courage, and incredible willingness to work hard. I’m hoping that we’ll have that and have enough of that on Sunday to perform well.”

Behind this star-studded team is a star-studded management setup, in which Heffernan is more of a chairman than a chief.

“There is no point in having good coaches and me stepping in their way. It’d be like me taking over from the physio.”

Heffernan himself is a former Mayo Under-21 manager who gallantly wore the Stephenites’ green and red for years, as did ‘Caff’ and ‘Clarky’ in the Mayo stripes.

But who’d have seen the woman that forged a legend in the green and red of Carnacon and Mayo in the green and red of Ballina?

“Well ultimately, most of our season last year was successful. We lost our last game, so we failed,” begins Heffernan when asked about one of the most talked-about appointments of the year.

“I’ve known Cora from when I was involved with the Mayo ladies, and not only is she a fabulous person, she is a fabulous footballer, a fabulous coach, a massive worker, and a fantastic heart. She has brought all of those qualities to us. That’s added to everything we’re doing. It’s added to it. Cora hasn’t tried to take over, Cora works with the other guys and the relationship they have is brilliant.

“The way Cora carries herself, she’s a football person, it doesn’t matter whether she’s male or female. She has massive knowledge, massive experience. Cora is the type of person when she comes into the dressing room she’d be the ones picking up the bottles off the ground, picking up the stuff, helping make sure the dressing rooms are clean. That’s the way she goes about her business and also does all her prep and all her work. She’s great to have around.”

Winning last year’s ‘dour’ county final was a challenge. But the local derby against the boys from Lough Conn brought ‘a whole new different dynamic’.

Working in a butcher’s shop in faraway Claremorris allows Heffernan to escape the ever-growing hype. Or does it?

“It makes it a little bit easier,” he smiles, before adding: “People in Mayo are mad about football, I have so many people talking to me about the game constantly. It’s hard to get the work done. I’m sure some of the time the lads that are working with me ‘Will you ever shut up and do some work?’ But that’s why Mayo football is the way it is. That’s why club football is so strong in Mayo, because the passion that people have for their clubs, and that’s why Mayo intercounty football is so strong because the work that’s going in the clubs all around the county.”

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