‘You don’t want it to stop’ - Crossmolina’s Connacht title victory in their own words

PATRICK LEDDY

It’s brilliant. I’m not from Crossmolina but it means an awful lot to me. The lads have put in some effort all year. Mikie said in the speech, we never felt we were in bonus territory. Once we won Mayo we wanted to target Connacht and now we’re in an All-Ireland semi-final, it’s unbelievable, it’s a brilliant feeling.

I have to say I’m a Mayo man. Coming to Crossmolina at the start of the year, people within the club, just incredible people, so nice, just work really, really hard. This victory is just as much for behind-the-scenes as it is for the players. So it’s unbelievable, it’s just fantastic.

MIKIE LOFTUS

We were part of the team that got relegated from senior. That sort of burden definitely lifted the last day. It was a bit of a weight off the shoulders, you can play with a bit more freedom, even though we didn’t play that well today. But it’s tough conditions, I do think that weight is off our shoulders and we are looking to play good football and enjoy our football. It’s just so important.

JORDAN FLYNN

It’s a hard one to swallow at the minute. We were very disappointed with how we seen out that second half but first half we done a lot of good stuff. Obviously the penalty at the end was a bit more excitement than we needed but you could have scored 20 points and lost but to have gotten that way and just come out, a win’s a win, absolutely thrilled now. To have won a county title is amazing but to be going into an All-Ireland semi-final, it’s something that you only dream of when you’re a child, to be able to say now that we’re in one, it’s amazing.

A Connacht title is hard to win. To have gotten through and pulled away and just got the win there at the end, it’s magic like. It’s been some season.

KEVIN MULHERN

In the first half it’s a difficult breeze, it’s going across the pitch so it was hard for the forwards to kind of run into the goal in the first half. Defensively, the work rate was brilliant as well, we were getting hands in, tackles in. Second half, what probably opened it up for them was our losing the ball coming out. Lads were slipping and all of a sudden they are on the back foot and in fairness, Fintan Cregg was hitting his frees.

We are happy enough, no real goal chance apart from the penalty at the end, it was unfortunate.

JAMES MAHEADY

Listen it was one to 15, one to 20. Our shooting efficiency in the last few weeks probably hasn’t been up to scratch what it should be, that’s one thing we were really pushing on the last few weeks to work on. Defensively, they’ve been absolutely excellent all year. I don’t think they get the credit they deserve, to be honest.

Starting off in the year, the physicality is so different compared to underage. Physicality, not to go into tackles, ways to make your runs and stuff like that, just making it a bit cuter along the pitch as a young fella, that’s one of the main things I’ve learned this year, a way just to be cuter on the pitch and play smarter.

CONOR LOFTUS

It doesn’t come around that often in football when you walk into a dressing room and it’s in the middle of wintertime and everybody wants to be there and everybody is buzzing and you can feel it at training, outside of training meeting up doing recovery sessions, things like that. To be honest, winning today, it’s unbelievable. We have another six weeks as a group to keep it going, because you don’t want it to stop when you have an atmosphere like that.