Filo’s fighters dig deep despite absentees

FEW teams have given as much entertainment for so many years as this group of Claremorris and Castlebar Mitchels footballers. With all the talent on display in last weekend's U-21 A final, no team was ever going to dominate for this entire game. In the end, not even a nine-point lead after ten minutes could grant comfort for a Mitchels team that were made to work for their 4-05 to 0-14 win.

“At half-time we could have been a bit more comfortable,” Castlebar Mitchels manager Kevin Filan admitted afterwards.

“Claremorris really came after us in the second half. I think we dug deep in the last few minutes. To be honest, we were disappointed with our performance in the second half. I just felt we weren’t up to scratch with certain things in certain areas. We did that in the last ten minutes and got a couple of scores that made the difference.

“These lads have had battles with Claremorris teams for the last ten or twelve years. We knew, you know, coming into county finals they are not going to hand you the cup so we had to fight for it,” added the Castlebar Mitchels Intermediate team boss.

“The thing that was sticking out in my mind was, ‘Let’s just try and keep a point or two ahead of them.’ They never went level, I think that made a big difference psychologically for us because if they got level they might have pushed on. We’re just happy to get over the line at the end of it.”

Much was made of Donnacha McHugh and Sean Morahan’s unavailability with the Mayo seniors still many weeks away from serious football. But ‘Filo’ was focused on the bigger picture, branding the aforementioned subplot ‘a bit of a side-show.’

“Sean is missing, Donnacha is missing, that means there’s an opportunity for other players and that’s what you have to do. You can't think much more about it. You just got to play with the lads that are available to you.”