10 of Mayo’s very best under-21s

Feature
Edwin McGreal

Willie McGee
Burrishoole
THERE’S no better place to start than with a man whose goalscoring exploits are still the stuff of legend more than half a century later.
The Newport man went into the All-Ireland U-21 final replay of 1967 against Kerry in Duggan Park, Ballinasloe known simply as Willie McGee. He left it known forever more as ‘Four Goal’ Willie McGee.
Mayo won their first All-Ireland at the grade (established in 1964) by beating Kerry in the replay by 4-9 to 0-7 with McGee scoring four times, all goals.
He went on to play senior for Mayo for many years and resides in Dublin, a retired member of An Garda SiochΡna where he rose to the rank of Detective Superintendent.
But he’ll be forever known as ‘Four Goal’ Willie McGee!

JJ Cribben
Ballyhaunis
THE Ballyhaunis clubman had lined out at full-forward alongside McGee in the drawn game and was a prolific scorer for Mayo, grabbing 1-13 in their 1967 Under-21 championship campaign.
It was his third year playing Under-21 for Mayo but he would miss their replay win because he was back in the Seminary in Maynooth.
The clerical ban stopped footballers studying for the priesthood from playing matches once their studies resumed in September.
Cribben and McGee were not the only free-scoring forwards of the time. Claremorris’s Mick Connaughton struck a staggering 5-21 in six games in the 1964, ‘65 and ’66 Connacht Under -21 championships before injury ended a hugely promising career.
There would never be a ‘Four Goal’ Willie McGee were it not for two men.
John Gibbons from Louisburgh struck 3-3 in Mayo’s 1967 Connacht Final six-point triumph over Roscommon, while a late Seamus O’Dowd equaliser got them a second bite of the cherry against Kerry in the drawn All-Ireland Final.

JP Kean
Claremorris
LIKE Mayo’s last All-Ireland Under-21 winning team in 2016, the 1974 champions had also been successful at minor level three years previously.
And like the triumphant Under -21 teams that preceded them in 1967 and followed them in 1983, Mayo only lifted the 1974 All-Ireland after a replay.
It was a team full of talented players, but in the replay victory over Antrim, Claremorris prodigy John P Kean was instrumenal in Mayo getting over the line.
He kicked eight points, six from play, as Mayo edged past the Saffron men, 2-10 to 2-8, to claim their second All-Ireland Under-21 title.
In total he kicked 0-26 for Mayo that season but there was plenty of quality around him, not least the late Ted Webb. The Ballyhaunis star struck for 4-5 that summer, including a goal in the final described as Christy Loftus in The Mayo News as ‘a classic’ strike.

John O’Mahony
Ballaghaderreen
THE Kilmovee native was a solid defender but he makes this grade for a feat that few have managed.
He was part of the Mayo Minor and U-21 All-Ireland winning teams of 1971 and 1974 and, less than a decade later, he was manager as Mayo won the 1983 All-Ireland Under-21 title.
O’Mahony was known as a solid and reliable defender who played senior with Mayo before falling out of favour. Indeed, he may not have gone  into management so soon with the Under-21s if he was still playing senior inter-county in 1983.
That All-Ireland victory over Derry in Irvinestown was the start of a remarkable management career.

Ger Geraghty
Ballintubber
THE Ballintubber man starred in midfield throughout Mayo’s run to the 1983 All-Ireland Under-21 title, but was lost to Mayo football the following year when he emigrated to Chicago.
The departure of the prodigious talent remains one of the great ‘what ifs’ of Mayo football.
“Ger Geraghty was the best Mayo player I ever played with ... he could do anything,” said his team-mate Kevin McStay in Keith Duggan’s House of Pain. “Liam McHale was the best on that team I played on. Ger was a good bit better than Liam.”
John O’Mahony almost had Geraghty home in 1989 only for love to intervene.
“He was the missing link. I believe that if Ger had been living in Ireland in the 1980s, Mayo would have won an All-Ireland,” said O’Mahony in House of Pain.

PΡdraig Brogan
Knockmore
IF Ger Geraghty was one that got away from that 1983 All-Ireland winning team, then Padraig Brogan from Knockmore was the other.
He might not have emigrated, but Brogan never fully realised his talent at senior level. He was an incredible star at underage level though.
This is evidenced by the incredible fact that in 1983 Brogan played Minor, Under-21 and Senior championship football for Mayo.
He went on to play Under-21 for four years, winning one All-Ireland and four Connacht titles on the field of play. That makes him, by our reckoning, the most successful Mayo Under-21 player ever, a record which now cannot ever be taken from him with the grade moved to Under-20.

Kenneth Mortimer
Shrule/Glencorrib
THE 1994 and 1995 Mayo Under-21 teams had loads of talented footballers, but the consistent excellence of Kenneth Mortimer from Shrule in defence makes him stand out from the crowd.
Mayo lost back-to-back All-Ireland finals those years in the midst of a miserable run of defeats for Mortimer.
He was also corner-back for the Mayo minors who lost their All-Ireland final to Cork in 1991 and was in that position too for senior defeats in 1996 and 1997.
Mortimer’s excellence was acknowledged by back-to-back All Stars in ‘96 and ’97 and he was a class apart.

Alan Dillon
Ballintubber
IT takes a special talent to play Under-21 for four years in the modern era, but Alan Dillon’s talent was impossible for Mayo manager Kevin McStay to ignore in 2000 when the Ballintubber star was still a Minor.
“I brought him in because he was playing a mature brand of football beyond his years and could only get better by playing with better players,” McStay told this newspaper in 2003.
Dillon was part of the 2001 team which lost the All-Ireland final to Tyrone and won two Connacht titles.
In his last year at the grade, in 2003, he produced a memorable display in the Connacht final as Mayo beat Galway in Tuam Stadium.
Damien Munnelly from Knockmore, another man to play four years at Under-21 level, kicked a late winner and Dillon, as captain, led the way superbly.

Aidan Kilcoyne
Knockmore
MANY of his team-mates from the 2006 All-Ireland winning Under-21 team would go on to have much longer senior careers than him (indeed six of them were in Mayo’s 2018 squad), but Kilcoyne was the main man on a day when Mayo ended an appalling run of All-Ireland final defeats at senior, Under-21 and Minor level.
Mayo had lost four finals at each grade since the 1985 minor All-Ireland victory so the 2006 success was a significant breakthrough.
The Knockmore man kicked an inspired 1-6 on the day as the Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly managed Mayo team held off a late Cork surge to win by two points.  
Kilcoyne was also one of the main scoring forwards for Mayo two years previously en route to the 2004 final, which they lost to Armagh.

Diarmuid O’Connor
Ballintubber
ON such a well-balanced team, there was still never any doubt about who the star of the 2016 All-Ireland winning Mayo side was.
Diarmuid O’Connor was one of their best players when most of the same team won the All-Ireland minor title in 2013. Three years later he was out on his own as ‘The Man’.
Few present in Tullamore for the dramatic All-Ireland semi-final win over Dublin will ever forget how he carried Mayo into an All-Ireland final.
Think of his performance in Newbridge earlier this summer, and then add some.
Players like Stephen Coen and Matthew Ruane were excellent in the final, but O’Connor shone brightest across the full campaign.