‘It is massive for us, west Sligo and the county’
EASKEY captain Eugene Mullen believes Saturday’s Connacht championship win heralds a coming of age for the young west Sligo side.
The Sea Blues suffered recent consecutive relegations from senior to junior football, but can look forward to intermediate competition again in 2019 following their county final win over Owenmore Gaels in October.
Speaking of a youthful panel, peppered with the experience of the likes of Mullen and the evergreen Noel McGuire, the Easkey skipper says Saturday’s victory was the result of the maturity gained by the younger players over the past three years.
“We had a lot of young lads coming through in the last while and those years in senior and intermediate football probably came too early for them”, Mullen said. “But they’re gathering that expe- rience and as you saw today, that was the difference.”
Reflecting on the game itself and the significance of a provincial title not just to Easkey but Sligo as a whole, Mullen considered: “It’s huge for us. It’s something you dream about as a young lad to win a Connacht title with your club.
“I can’t put it into words really. Since the start of the year we’ve been training as hard as we can, thinking in the back of our minds we’d be able to get out of Sligo. But you’re never expecting what’s happened today. It’s unbelievable. And it’s massive for us, for west Sligo and for the county.
Despite a commanding lead at half-time, Easkey almost let this one slip away and had to rely on Ryan McKenna’s late, late wonder strike to avoid extra-time or even defeat.
On the late drama, Eugene continued: “To be in that position, level with a couple of seconds to go and to kick that winning score, it’s an unbelievable feeling. We probably dropped off in the second part of the second half. It looked like we were maybe done towards the end but we pulled it out of the fire with the last kick of the game.”
Man-of-the-match Rory McHugh praised McKenna’s bravery to execute such a pressure kick. “I thought he was daft!”, McHugh laughed, but added: “Ryan is always doing that in training though. He’ll always back himself and we knew he could do it.”
McHugh revealed manager Dessie Sloyan’s message to his players at the interval.
“Dessie was telling us they were going to come back into it.
“We probably did think that we were home and dry and that had we stayed tight at the back, we’d be grand.
“We started the second half well, but dropped off and probably thought we had it won.
“We knew how tough that would be going against the wind.
“We got the lead but we knew they’d come back especially with that wind against us. When we got that final score, we had gone so long without a score so to win it with the last kick was great.”