WEA Supplement - Flipbook - Page 16
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FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 10 2021
www.irishnews.com
T
HE sliding doors moment for
Lee Keegan came in early
2007. In February of that
year his hopes of making
the Irish youths rugby team
were dashed and the promising
young centre from Westport found
himself at a crossroads in his
sporting life.
He didn’t know it at the time, but
that rugby rejection kickstarted
a chain of events that would lead
to Keegan becoming one of the
best defenders to ever play Gaelic
football, and arguably the greatest
Mayo footballer of all time.
Fourteen years ago, Shane Conway
was the joint-manager of the Rice
College, Westport senior school
football team.
Keegan had opted out of the panel
in order to concentrate on rugby,
but the door had been left open for
a return.
The rest is history.
“Being selected is often one man’s
opinion,” Conway recalled.
“Someone, somewhere, made a
really bad call in rugby. As a result,
Gaelic football was blessed with one
of the greatest stars that ever played
the game,” he said succinctly.
At the time that Keegan was getting
the bad news from Irish rugby, the
Rice College senior footballers were
going on a journey of their own,
preparing for a Connacht Colleges
Senior B Championship final.
Conway recalls future Mayo
stars like Kevin Keane and Jason
Doherty, and plenty of other strong
characters, who went to war every
time they played.
So a warrior like Lee Keegan was
exactly who they wanted to see
coming again. Except that he
didn’t want to be seen to be
just coming back for a big
game. So Conway and jointmanager Martin Connolly
coaxed him to training and
no-one needed any more
convincing.
“It was clear you couldn’t
go to war without Lee
Keegan,” recalls Conway.
He was brought on
at half-time in
their one-point
victory in the
provincial final,
and after an
All-Ireland quarterfinal win over Old
Bawn from Tallaght,
a semi-final in the
sleepy Cavan village of Bawnboy
saw two of the superstars of the
next decade of Gaelic football
face off. We just didn’t know it at
the time.
Lee Keegan was a player with
promise, but had a long road to
travel yet. At midfield for St Eunan’s
of Letterkenny was a very obvious
young prodigy – one Michael
IN ASSOCIATION
WITH
ALL-IRELAND SFC FINAL
Lee Keegan could easily have been starring with an oval ball
only for an early change of direction. Now aiming to cap his
county career by finally claiming Gaelic football’s ultimate prize,
Edwin McGreal profiles Mayo’s metronome and taps into the views
of three men well versed in the qualities of the Westport colossus...
PERSISTENCE
Mayo’s Lee Keegan had a
tough day against Dublin’s
Con O’Callaghan in the 2019
All-Ireland SFC semi-final at
Croke Park, but he has bounced
back from that setback with
a bang
Picture: Philip Walsh
Murphy (left) – whose longrange free near the end won the
game and meant the Herculean
efforts of Rice College came up
just short.
But Keegan’s football journey
was up and running.
Three years later, then-Mayo
manager John O’Mahony was
impressed enough to call the
young Westport defender
into the Mayo senior squad.
What was obvious back then
to Shane Conway was his
hunger to improve.
“While Lee was immensely athletic
and absolutely integral to everything
we did in the school, kicking points
from 40 yards wasn’t something
we saw in those days. He went
away and improved his basic skills
immeasurably, on top of all the
things that were innately in him.”
Former Mayo footballer Andy Moran
recalls playing wing-forward in
Keegan’s early days and letting him
off up the field in training, safe in the
knowledge that the rookie defender
wouldn’t hit the target.
“He’d shoot but he couldn’t score,”
Moran recalled.
“So it’s how he got to that level by
hard work. There’s no secret.
“That point he got against Tyrone
in 2016, I saw Lee Keegan miss that
shot in training so many times. We
laughed about that shot in training
so many times, I used to be like,
‘what are you doing?!’ He’d be out
practicing and he’d say, ‘I’ll get it!’.
“And then he gets it.”
‘Athletically he’s a freak of nature. His work ethic is huge too. The
10ks, stopping Lee Keegan from going training sometimes is the
problem. Like, he’s put up a run on Strava and he could be gone
15k!... After his football career is over, he’ll do marathons or
triathlons or something. He’s not going to stop...’
Former Mayo team-mate Andy Moran
K
EEGAN’S Championship debut
came under James Horan on
his favourite playground of all –
Croke Park – against the
All-Ireland champions, Cork, in
Mayo’s breakthrough All-Ireland
quarter-final win of 2011.
Yet before that year was out, he was
making a big statement.
Kieran Shannon was brought in as
the team’s sports psychologist at
the end of 2011 and he recalls telling
Keegan early on that ‘you can be
anything you want to be in Gaelic
football’ and ‘back yourself’.
Shannon recalls Mayo’s League
tussles with Kerry in 2012 and
Paul Galvin remarking afterwards
that he noticed a different Mayo this
year, in terms of physicality.
“It’s no coincidence Paul said that
after marking Lee,” he said.
Allstars would arrive in 2012
(inset, right) and 2013 and Lee
Keegan was developing a reputation
as the finest man-marker in the
game.
“He’s a gentleman, but once he
crosses the line he is a fierce
competitor and will do whatever it
takes to do his job. One of the first
modern day footballers. People
compared him to Tomás Ó Sé, but
he always played at 5. Lee can play
anywhere in the back eight,” says
Shane Conway.
“Athletically he’s a freak of nature,”
says Andy Moran.
“His work ethic is huge too. The
10ks, stopping Lee Keegan from
going training sometimes is the
problem. Like, he’s put up a run on
Strava and he could be gone 15k! I
can still see Conor Finn and Barry
Solan going off their heads at the
time!
“But that’s Lee, that’s his work-rate.
“After his football career is over,
he’ll do marathons or triathlons or
something. He’s not going to stop.
He loves going out for a run.”
Keegan’s excellence saw him named
Footballer of the Year in 2016, a rare
example of the gong not going to the
All-Ireland champions.
His man-marking jobs around that
time on players like Diarmuid
Connolly and Seán Cavanagh saw
him not only blunt their influence,
but score with aplomb at the other
end.
Goals in the 2016 All-Ireland final
replay and 2017 All-Ireland final
underlined his capacity as a big man
for the biggest of occasions. Andy
Moran saw him at closer quarters
than most and is unequivocal about
just how good he was in those years.
“Lee Keegan is the best player that
ever played for Mayo,” he said.
“Between the end of 2014 to the end
of 2017 there’s no-one ever in the
green and red that produced the
consistency of performance that he
produced in that time.
“I’m not blowing Lee Keegan up,
Bethany Firth
Six time Paralympic gold medallist
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