Is there no limit TO HEARTACHE?
As the Championship approaches, the fear in Mayo is that Keith Higgins’ hurling break could become a permanent move
ANY Mayo supporter at MacHale Park this afternoon won’t fail to notice a familiar name missing, not just from the starting 15 to face Tyrone but from the match-day 26. Keith Higgins – four-time All-Star footballer and one of the most celebrated defenders of his generation – will not be involved in what is a key game to stave off relegation fears.
And speculation is mounting over what part he will play in the county’s obsession to deliver the Holy Grail of the Sam Maguire Cup.
There will be no point scanning the stands to see if he is an interested face in the crowd. When the ball is thrown in at Castlebar, Higgins will instead be in the thick of the action roughly 100 miles away at Breffni Park where he is a central figure on a Mayo hurling team aiming to secure promotion by winning a Division 2B final against Down.
For the first time in his dual career, Higgins has devoted his time exclusively to the hurlers. It has the football fraternity fretting over whether he will be back to take on his long-standing leadership role with a team that has been knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door, only to suffer repeated AllIreland heartache.
Counting last September’s onepoint loss to Dublin, it’s five final defeats in which he has been involved. Is there a limit to the heartache any player can take?
The worry for football fans again is that he hasn’t trained or been involved with Stephen Rochford’s senior football team for a single minute of action so far this year.
It’s worth remembering, as he indulges his first love, that this is someone who inherited his passion of hurling from his father Peter, a native of Mountbellew in Galway, and who has backboned the success of Ballyhaunis, along with his brother Pierce.
In a podcast with former Laois footballer Colm Parkinson during the week, Higgins spoke about his involvement with the hurlers and his life-long attachment to the game. It also opened a window into why he has opted out of the senior football squad.
‘This year I’ve just taken a break from the football for now. Getting in all the hurling games. Just enjoying it. It’s completely different. There is not as much pressure on when it comes to the games, and the crowds and all that of Division 1 football.
‘It’s completely different, I suppose, refreshing, in a way. From my point of view, you can just go out and enjoy it a bit more. That’s the main thing for me at the moment.’
At the end of February, the Mayo News carried a series of photos from the hurlers’ league game against Wicklow in Ballina. One featured an action shot of Higgins, in familiar pose with ball in hand – the difference being, he was peering out beneath a blue hurling helmet with hurley in hand.
Another nice shot captured him posing afterwards with two young fans, who had pens at the ready in the hope of an autograph. Wherever he goes, he has that star quality.
Higgins had plenty of reason to smile that Sunday. He scored four points from play to secure Mayo’s place in the Division 2B final, with a game to go, on what happened to be his 33rd birthday.
So will he be back to link up with the senior football team? ‘It’s a question everyone is asking,’ admits Mayo PRO Paul Cunnane. And one which the player himself remained coy on, saying he will have another conversation soon with Rochford.
‘I met Stephen at the start of the year and told him I was looking to get a bit of a break from football for a while,’ Higgins told Parkinson.
‘He was 100 per cent with that. To be honest, I haven’t had a huge amount of conversation with him since. We’ll just see how this weekend goes, get the hurling out of the way.’
But here is the Mayo manager in January when questioned after his side’s win over Sligo in the FBD League with the county’s opening National League encounter against Monaghan on the horizon. ‘He played all the League games last year so we are just giving him a little bit more of an extended break so in a couple of weeks’ time we’ll see what’s happening.’
That ‘couple of weeks’ is now two months. And still no indication of Higgins’ full intentions for 2018. There was no hint that such an important player could be gone for the entire League campaign.
Some other big-hitters featured in that same game. All-Star centreforward Aidan O’Shea was back making his first appearance of the season. All-Star goalkeeper David Clarke, the oldest on the squad at 35, lined out.
As the campaign has progressed, the collection of players who have backboned Mayo’s repeated efforts to win the All-Ireland have returned: Lee Keegan, after hip surgery and footballer of the year Andy Moran, who turned 34 last November. Except Higgins.
Alan Dillon is the only team elder to slip into retirement. Mayo supporters will be hoping that the break will have allowed time to recharge the batteries, to rediscover that desire to go to the well one more time.
Such a dynamic player is a hugely popular figure, a crowd-lifting ball carrier – whose versatility is such that he caused Dublin all sorts of problems in the 2013 final at centre-forward until he was switched back to firefight in defence in the second half.
Like any other player, he has endured his own dip in form. Shown a straight red card for hitting out at Damien Comer off the ball in last year’s Connacht semi-final defeat to Galway, he picked up a onematch ban only to come rampaging back to his best in the replayed AllIreland quarter-final against Roscommon.
It says everything about his character and resilience, never mind his talent that, from that low point against Galway, he ended up an AllStar.
Even if he parachutes back in, Rochford will want to reward the players who have put in the hard yards this spring. Eoin O’Donoghue
It’s refreshing, in a way, you can just go out and enjoy it a bit more
has impressed in the number four shirt that Higgins has made his own, though the sight of Dublin’s Paul Mannion skipping away from him to hit the back of the net in the League meeting was a reminder of how the champions present a steep learning curve.
Higgins goes back a long way with county senior hurling manager Derek Walsh, also from his own club Ballyhaunis. After lining out exclusively for the hurlers for the entire League schedule, what chances of him turning his back then on the hurlers for the upcoming Christy Ring Cup campaign?
He gave no hint on the hurling edition of the SportsJoe GAA Hour that he wouldn’t be playing, instead talking of his team’s chances of winning it.
And if he is all-in for that, will he play football at all for Mayo this season? His own teammates remain in the dark. The clock is ticking. It’s only eight weeks from today to Mayo’s senior football Connacht championship quarter-final against Galway on Sunday, May 13 in Castlebar.
Yet the day before, the Mayo hurlers are slated to play Wicklow away in the first round of the Christy Ring Cup, the first of three round-robin matches. Something is going to give.