Mayo intermediate champions react to winning county title

CONOR LOFTUS

I grew up beside the football pitch and I'd go over and watch the teams train because all I ever wanted to do was wear the Maroon and White. I grew up watching great Crossmolina teams and this is an unbelievable first step to take with these boys. I can't put it into words how much this means. I've won stuff for Mayo before, but this is different. Days like this are special. We haven't had too many big days in the last 15 or 20 years, so we're definitely going to enjoy this one.

There have been some very dark days. I suppose we have barely won a game for a number of years, but a group came together and the U-21 lads came in this year and they've made a huge difference. We haven't been losing since they came in. They've brought in a winning mentality and the culture within the team has gone through the roof in the last two or three years.

When Castlebar knocked us out last year we were very disappointed but all the practices were being still being put in place at that stage. There's two or three years' work gone into that from the boys in the club, management, everyone involved.

All that came together this year and tonight when the final whistle went all that work was worth it. The feeling was something special. If you could bottle it up, it's unbelievable and now we can look forward to enjoying the celebrations back home.

JAMES MAHEADY

We're absolutely over the moon. We dreamt we've had three savage games with Moy Davitts over the past few months and this is the first one we've won, so we're delighted. Today was a lovely day for playing, much better than last week, and it was much easier to swing over the points, so I was lucky enough to get a few.

I find that goal (Bacon Factory End) a lot easier to kick into and I managed to get a few at that end. We were falling behind a wee bit and a few quick points brought us back into it. The lads in defence were mighty and kicked it on because all of us in the forwards were being tightly marked.

I love kicking points. For me that's why football is so enjoyable. The simple thing is to score more than the other team and it's hard not to love that. I sometimes celebrate when I get a point and maybe I shouldn't but the adrenaline is pumping and I'm only a young fella.

A lot of people were saying we're so young and we will be a good team in the future, but the future is now. We had seven U-21s starting today on the biggest day of all and that says it all really. We'll be playing for the next ten or 15 years, but we wanted to win today, because you never know when you'll get the chance again.

We dreamt about winning this and now we've done it, it's just great and I can't wait to get back to Crossmolina now.”

JORDAN FLYNN

I won't be able to put it in words for a long time yet. The way the lads dug deep for the ten minutes I was off the pitch. I thought I had made a serious mistake and it would be something I'd have to live with for a long time, but they dug me out of a hole and this is just brilliant now.

FIONAN DUFFY

You wait all your life for a moment like this and it's just great. I've been playing a lot of years with Crossmolina and to win here tonight is special, so we're really enjoying it now. The whole town is on the pitch and it's incredible – people we grew up with – people who were adults when we were young and everyone we know – it's lovely to see.

We've lost family members along the way too and I'm sure they were looking down on us tonight too.

Moy Davitts are a fantastic team and we had two savage, hard battles over the last two weekends. We felt we had the quality to beat them and thank God it went right for us in the end. I missed a few but you can't feel sorry for yourself and I just had to keep going. If I missed another one or two I might have been sitting up in the stand but when that last one went over the bar it was a great feeling.

There were a lot of hard days in Crossmolina over the last ten years. The couple of years before we were relegated we wre just hanging on and things were bad. There were lads moving away and you weren't sure if days like this would ever come again. Then, a crop of young lads began to come through and this is there doing, so anything is possible now.

MIKIE LOFTUS

I've never won a county title with Crossmolina and it's such and it's such an unbelievable feeling just to see the joy it brings to so many. John Maughan stood up there at the end with a broken hip and that said it all. He was with us last Sunday even though he had surgery on the Friday. We knew he'd be there, because that's the type of man he is.

Moy Davitts are a really good team and they felt they didn't play as well as they could last week, so we knew they'd be physical and get stuck into us from the start. They have unbelievable footballers and we probably didn't help ourselves early on either because our shot selection was poor but once we got going we were confident we'd get the scores we needed.