Emotions and European glory for two Mayo pool players

Mayo sporting history was made on Thursday last in Malta when Danny Feehan from Westport and Pádraic Coyle from Geesala helped the Irish team win the European U-23 Pool Championship.

It's a success that didn't come like a bolt from the blue: Coyle and Feehan won the All-Ireland U-23 title for Mayo last year, together with Dermot Kelly from Killawalla and Adam McAndrew from Erris.

“To be honest, from my point of view, this European title has been a long time coming for me,” Feehan told The Mayo News: “It was my seventh European Championships and I lost two deciders in the final before this. I put a post on social media after the win, and the amount of comments that are going like, 'geez this is well overdue for you Danny', 'this is well overdue', tell a story. In the run-up to this I felt like we were going to win it because our team is just very good.”

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Feehan's teammates were Sean Walsh from Cork, Daniel McHugh from Donegal and fellow Mayo man Pádraic Coyle from Geesala.

Feehan himself didn't change too much in his approach to prepare and finally get over the hump. He said his teammates made all the difference this year: “We got Sean Walsh in addition to the team and Pádraic actually was in addition as well. It's his first time on the U-23 level. There was also another factor driving me on. We lost the World Championship final last June so in the back of our minds we knew we owed England one.”

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And, as fate would have it, the European Championship title on Thursday was another Ireland/England encounter. It turned out to be a hotly contested affair to which a faulty scoreboard added some extra spice: “We went 3-0 up but two of our frames got taken away because there was a malfunction with the scoreboard,” Feehan explained: “What happened was the wrong players played each other in a session. So we had to actually start back to 1-0 up. There was a bit of a dispute, we'll say. But then we ended up starting again from 1-0 up and I think we won two out of the first three so we were 2-1 up then, instead of 3-0.” 

Things in the final weren't easy to handle due to the fact that there was a big crowd of interested spectators, so the atmosphere was pretty dense. However, the Irish players kept their cool and eventually won 8-5.

It was a huge moment for Ireland and Mayo as Geesala’s Pádraic Coyle explained: “I'm delighted and over the moon. It was a big enough step up, I'm still only 17 so I normally play in juniors, so it was a big step up to the 23's. But the whole tournament, I felt comfortable. Playing with Danny, I played with him at the U23s this year with Mayo. We get on very well.”

But Padraic had events back home in the back of his mind. When they left the previous Friday morning, he passed the High Chaparral pub in Geesala which caught fire overnight and Pádraic saw the place up in flames.

“We would be good mates with the pub owners and we’re all connected to the pub so, so it felt surreal to see it on fire and me leaving for the championships.”

“That was very emotional for him,” admitted Padraic’s father, Jack Coyle, who travelled to Malta with his son: “He is turning 18 in May and just the week before the fire, he had booked the pub for his birthday party, and he used to play pool there as well. Seeing it burning down was tough.”

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Events at home just before his departure for Malta were also very emotional for Feehan. “My grand-aunt Anne O'Malley died and the funeral was on Friday, the day of my flight to Malta. My parents said I should go and do my best at the championships. I missed her funeral, which was hard, because she was very important to me. But I know she would have wanted me to go, as she always supported me and watched me play on live streams.” 

Danny's grand-aunt would have been proud, see him beating favourites England in the final. A country that is traditionally strong in pool as they have a conveyor belt of talent continually coming through.

“In the U-23 roll of honour of the European Finals, there have only been a handful of teams other than England to win it. In every division. In the singles competition last year, six out of eight quarter-finalists were English, but as a good sign for the Irish development, Sean Walsh from Cork beat an English player in the final. And this year Walsh was part of the Ireland team winning it.”

It's testament to the recent positive development of pool sport in the country, and also in Mayo. Kieran Gallagher from the Mayo Pool Association commented: "Pool wouldn't really have been a big sport in the county, but it is now. When the Mayo Championships are on, you get 70 or 80 people entering. Pool is just growing and growing all the time."

Next up for Danny Feehan and Pádraic Coyle is The World Championship. They will have to qualify for the team though. Success breeds success and competition in Mayo alone is getting stiffer. Obviously it would be huge for Danny and Pádraic to feature in the Worlds as this year they'll take place in Ireland, down in Ennis in August.  

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