Isolated days of splendour no longer enough

CONNACHT SFC FINAL - KEITH DUGGANon how Sligo persevered in the face of more than the usual mix of good days and bad to start as favourites in tomorrow's Connacht final

TEN YEARS ago, Sligo hosted Galway in the Connacht semi-final at Markievicz Park. A crowd of 15,000 people had showed up, excited by a surprising win over Mayo in the previous round. But rather than build in that victory, Sligo disappeared. The team failed to score in the first half and eventually lost 0-22 to 0-4. This was the sad culmination of the four years’ work Derryman Mickey Moran had put into the county.

“I am hurt and disappointed,” Moran said that evening. “I can hold my head up high. I remember coming to this ground four years ago for a National League game against Limerick and I wondered had the crowd not turned up yet because there was about 50 people in the ground. I could see my own family across the way.

“There was no stand here and we took £150 at the gate. So we have come a long way and we have a long way to go. That was not a reflection of our team. We just lost confidence and no excuses, we were annihilated. But I still believe Sligo will have its day.”

It seemed a fair valedictory.

Just a year later, Sligo appeared in Croke Park for the first time since 1975. In 2002, they reached the All-Ireland quarter-finals when they lost to Armagh, the eventual champions, after a replay that went to extra-time.

By 2007, now under Tommy Brehony, they won the Connacht championship. Tomorrow, under Kevin Walsh, they go into the Connacht final as favourites against Roscommon. If the development of Sligo football has been about anything, it has been about incredible resilience.

“I think that is probably true,” says Dessie Sloyan, a fixture in the Sligo forward line for the last decade and now a selector with Walsh. “But in that particular match against Galway, I remember we simply didn’t show up. I think the whole thing of beating Mayo maybe got to us and we didn’t have our minds properly concentrated and were punished.

“Many of that team would have come through good under-21 teams in 1995 and 1996 and we came into the senior squad together and getting the belief took time. But what happened in the few years afterwards was Sligo players got a taste of what it was like to beat teams and play in Croke Park.

“And since then, something seems to have happened to drive it on after it appears we have run out of steam.”

Identification of suitable managers has been crucial to Sligo’s talent for responding to setbacks. Few county boards have been as shrewd in recruiting managers whose talent made up for an absence of glittering CV.

Tommy Kilcoyne has an unbroken record of service on the Sligo County Board dating back to the 1970s and he recalls the appointment of PJ Carroll in 1995 as the beginning of a slow turnaround in fortunes.

He was the first manager from outside Sligo.

Moran then came in and transformed the expectations of the county by leading his side to the Connacht final of 1997. They lost by a single point to Mayo but it was concrete emphasis that 1975, the year of Connacht’s lone provincial title, need not be seen as an impossible landmark.

Moran’s final match with Sligo was a cruel aberration from the general form the team had shown under his leadership. But it still left Sligo at a low ebb and apparently as far away as ever.

Convincing a new manager the side was worth persevering with cannot have been easy and the county board picked boldly when they went for Peter Ford.

“That was the perception but we knew Peter had been a selector in Mayo and he had Sligo connections and I think in the county board there was a strong feeling he could move things on for us and bring a harder edge to the team. And he did that too. He had a good record and he put a lot of work into that side.”

In addition to bringing Sligo on adventures to Croke Park – including their stunning 2002 defeat of a Tyrone team that would reshape Gaelic football in the coming seasons – Ford was there when Sligo went “all black”, adopting the new set of gear that made them look – and arguably play – that bit leaner and meaner.

“That came about by accident,” Kilcoyne says, “We played Kildare in 2001 and just felt we should eliminate the white from our jersey. Anyway, the black goes back to the Sligo teams of the 1920s, who would have worn the colour.”

But it remained after Ford left. The men who have followed in his path were similarly youthful and determined to leave their own shape. James Kearns missed out on a league semi-final place on goal difference. Dom Corrigan’s tenure did not end happily but his work in Fermanagh made him a smart choice. The board searched around, secured the services of Tommy Brehony and less than a year later, Sligo won the Connacht championship. It was another stark reversal of fortune.

Sligo is a small county with a strong tradition of soccer and basketball in Sligo town. Kilcoyne believes the establishment of a city board by the county board helped to developed Gaelic football players in the urban areas. The rise of the county team coincided with the spiralling success of Sligo IT teams in the Sigerson Cup.

Eamonn O’Hara played for the college in their Sigerson debut in 1997, when they were eliminated by the Tralee side who dominated the tournament for a few years.

But Sligo were in hot pursuit and entered teams that won the competition in 2002, 2005 and 2007. Although those teams were not particularly influenced by local players, six of the current squad – Johnny Davey, Keelan Cawley, Alan Costello (originally from Mayo), Kenny Sweeney, Stephen Coen and Gary Gaughan – play for the college.

“The quality of Sligo players coming into the college has visibly improved because of the coaching players are getting at underage level,” says Michael Harte, Gaelic Games officer with the college since 1997.

“There were always good players in Sligo but only now are local players coming to form the backbone of our team. And the Sligo board have always been very co-operative with us. There is never any conflict placed on the players in terms of the college or the county team and that has been particularly true since Kevin Walsh came along.”

Walsh’s appointment has been the latest feather in the cap for those safeguarding the future of Sligo football. Not only has the big Galway man led them unerringly through the league divisions, collecting two titles on their way from the basement to Division Two, they have been consistently improving in the championship also.

His backroom staff of David Durkin, Paul Taylor and Sloyan have lived and breathed Sligo football for the past decade.

They had known isolated days of splendour but plenty of kicks in the teeth as well. Sloyan agrees the 2002 quarter-final against Armagh was, in retrospect, a golden chance spurned. But they were learning and by the time they met Galway in the 2007 Connacht final, they were ready.

In the way of these things, Peter Ford was on the sideline with Galway that day: he was probably the least surprised man in Hyde Park as Sligo made history. For a while, it looked as if that victory was a flash in the pan.

The following season, Tommy Jordan came in and could not get the squad to reach anything like the heights of the previous year, blitzed by Mayo in the Connacht championship and bouncing straight into the Tommy Murphy Cup as a Division Four team.

That was the unpromising starting point for Walsh but within a year, Sligo had demonstrated just how radically a team can revive its fortunes.

No team came as close to Sligo did last year to knocking Kerry out of the All-Ireland championship. In the league finals, they played eye-catching football. When they hosted Mayo in the Connacht first round, it was noticeable how many leaders Sligo seemed to have. The same was true against Galway.

Brendan Phillips, Noel McGuire and Eamon O’Hara are the senior men but younger players like Ross Donovan, Charlie Harrison and Mark Brehony play with uninhibited drive and ambition.

When Sligo beat Mayo in early June, thoughts of ten years ago flashed across Dessie Sloyan’s mind. He remembered how horribly it all turned against Galway a few weeks later.

Now, Sligo are more even in their approach and expect more from themselves.

Tomorrow, they play in the Connacht final as favourites. They won’t need to be told just how happy Roscommon will be to upset the form lines. But Sligo have illustrated several times over the past decade the importance of resilience.

Ten years after that bedraggled day, Mickey Moran is entitled to say he was right.