’Bringing TJ home’

“We’re bringing TJ home”

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Daniel Carey


IT’S Monday evening and Danny Barrett is pleased as punch and still riding the crest of a county title wave. The James Stephens clubman had his son Gary for company in the management team, and two other sons, Keith and David, on the first 15.
“We are thrilled because it was hard earned, and I suppose in a way, we were the underdogs, so we had nothing to lose. But it was a hard fought game and thank God, in the end it came out grand,” he told The Mayo News.
“It was no fluke. We had to beat the two top teams in the county – Tooreen in the semi-final and Ballyhaunis in the final. It was special for us as well, because TJ Tyrell was involved for years with us before he died and we hadn’t won the Tyrell Cup (dedicated to his memory). We were just saying coming home on the bus: ‘We’re bringing TJ home on Saturday evening’.”
It was a particularly special moment for Kenny Golden, who was on the winning side in both the Mayo hurling and football finals this year. By our reckoning, he was the first player to manage that feat since the Ballina double of 1933, when Paddy Moclair, Gerard Courell, George Ormsby and Jackie Carney successfully juggled the small and big balls. But of course, others hurlers were on the fringes of the football team. Dual players James Devenney and Ger Cafferkey are currently out injured, as are Alan Stenson and Christian Sheridan.
“On the Friday night before the game, the Ballina footballers gave us a card signed by all the players to wish us luck,” Barrett revealed. “And the amount of footballers who were at the game on Saturday was unreal. There was great, great support. It was nice to hear guys say ‘I was never at a hurling match, but I’m going this year’.”
Barrett and his fellow selectors clearly put a lot of time into getting the team in the correct mental state for the game. He talked to David Brady and Martin McGrath. The Ballina Stephenites players who won an All-Ireland club title in 2005 were a ready-made source of inspiration. The Belmullet man also deployed a pre-match technique made famous by Liam Griffin in 1996.
“Leaving Ballina on Saturday, we hopped off the bus to walk across the bridge, the boundary,” he said. “And why would you do that? Because if you look at our history, people were prepared to put their shoulder to the wheel for the town and the country and the county many, many years ago. My motto was: ‘If guys were prepared to die for their country and die for the town, you guys have to be prepared to die for your jersey’. It’s a number of small things just to keep guys focused.”
Every player who left the meeting on Friday night was given a message: ‘If it’s got to be done, then I’ve got to do it’. Barrett says that this simple idea motivated one player who went down with an injury to ‘get up, shake it out and get on with the game’. A post-match meeting also became a feature of their championship run, although this didn’t happen on Saturday for obvious reasons!
“We’re out again in two weeks time,” Barrett concludes with an eye on the provincial championship. “We’re back training Wednesday night as normal, as if nothing happened. We’ll keep training, we’ll keep going through our routine until we’re out of the competition.”
Whatever happens next, it’s already been a hell of a year on Moyside.