Loughinisland’s madcap final

Rory Mason reflects on Loughinisland’s rather unconventional Ulster Intermediate final win in 2015

By Shaun Casey

SCORING a single point in 60 minutes of action wouldn’t win too many championship titles but for Loughinisland, it only needed to happen once. That fateful day came in 2015 when they created history for the club.

It’s worth mentioning of course that along with the one point on the scoreboard, there were four goals beside it and they were key for Loughinisland getting their hands on a first-ever Ulster title.

Three of those majors came in the final ten minutes as the Down men squeezed past Bundoran in the most incredible of victories. Looking back on the 4-1 to 0-7 scoreline, it’s something to laugh about all these years later.

“When you’re dreaming of the game the night before, it’s probably your worst nightmare and it did feel like it wasn’t our day,” said key attacker Rory Mason ten years on. “We had a good laugh about it on the way home.

“I think Niall (McCoy) in the Gaelic Life tweeted about it being like an u-10 game and it was like that but we’ll never forget that game. Sometimes finals can pass you by but that’s one that no one will ever forget because of the scoreline.”

The Loughinisland club is used to dealing with Senior Championship concerns, having claimed the top prize on two occasions and reached the decider a further seven times, including back-to-back appearances in 2008 and 2009.

They are more commonly recognised as a senior club in the Mourne County so dropping out of the top tier in 2014 was a tough pill to swallow. When the 2015 season came around there was only one thing on their minds, returning to senior football as soon as possible.

A new management team of Paul Duffin and Jerome Johnston was formed and Loughinisland set their sights on a firs- ever Intermediate Championship title. That was the first step, before taking a trip into the unknown of Ulster.

“We’ve generally always been a senior club but we had one bad year and we fell out of the Senior Championship. So at the start of 2015, it was all about regrouping and trying to get back into Division One and win the Intermediate Championship.

“We got a good management team in place with Paul Duffin and Jerome Johnston. They set the stall out early that we were going to try and win the championship and the main thing was to get back to senior.

“Jerome was just amazing for our group of players. He wants to play football the right way – he wants to play quick, attacking football and if you can hammer a team into the ground, then you hammer them into the ground.

“There was just such a high standard set that year and everyone knew they had to be on it every single night. He was honestly brilliant and Paul Duffin took a lot of the training and he was fantastic.

“It was a bit of good cop, bad cop between the two of them but they worked so well together. When Jerome first came in, you just knew you wanted to play for him and after the first couple of meetings we knew something good was going to happen.”

Dropping down to intermediate football wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows of course. There was the added pressure of expectation and the shift in mentality was a challenge that the club had to face head on.

“Normally when we’re playing in the Senior Championship, especially in those years, we’d have always been the underdog. We were used to not many people giving us a chance and we’d have been used to trying to go and prove them wrong.

“Then going into the Intermediate, you were expected to not only beat teams but to hammer them. It was hard and there were games that we won easily but towards the end of that championship, there were plenty of tight games.”

Loughinisland saw off Ballymartin before defeating An Riocht in the decider to confirm their place in Senior football for 2016. Goals were key in the final, a constant theme that season, and they ran out 3-11 to 0-8 winners.

“We played Ballymartin in the semi-final and we ran away with it against An Riocht in the final, but the Kingdom were a good side and we knew that we had to be on it so there was a bit of pressure, even around the club,” added Mason.

“It was a nice position to be in all the same. We knew going into matches that if we performed well, we had a really good chance of winning and it was nice to get over the line, even if we were expected to.”

Ulster was new ground for almost everyone in the changing room, but the knowledge and guidance of one man made the step up that little easier. Dan Gordon was the captain of the Loughinisland side and an experienced county campaigner at that stage.

Gordon had played in Ulster and All-Ireland finals for Down, and held various different roles and positions on the pitch. Mason, along with everyone else from the Loughinisland club, looked up to his example.

“Dan is a legend of our club,” insisted Mason. “He was the captain and whatever he said, men on that team and all down through the years would follow him. He’s such a good leader and we always just looked up to him.

“If you needed a ball caught in midfield, he’d have caught it or he’d have made a big block – he was just brilliant. It wasn’t even what he said but it was how he acted and how he played.

“I was lucky enough to play senior football with him for a good few years and he is a complete legend in our club. The term legend is maybe swung around an awful lot but in Loughinisland, Dan is just unreal.

“He was vital for us that year. He was marking all the bigger-named players and especially when we got into Ulster, his experience probably came into it more. He’d have guided all the younger lads so he was really important.

“We were nearly out of Ulster before we won it, Greenlough should have had us beaten in Newry but we scraped over the line and then we were really good against Edendork and Doohamlet.”

Those three victories led to a showdown with Donegal’s Bundoran and despite a decent start from Johnston’s charges, things were going against Loughinisland for most of the day. “We didn’t score in the game for 42 minutes,” recalled Mason.

“The conditions were really poor up at Owenbeg that day and it was absolutely freezing – I think that’s the coldest I have ever been playing a game of football and the field was heavy and wet.

“We actually started the game well, we scored 1-1 in the first ten minutes and didn’t score for another 42 minutes. Bundoran were good that day, they played the conditions a lot better than us and they had dangerous forwards.”

Seamus O’Hare had the ball in the net after just four minutes before Mason added a point moments later, but the Loughinisland end of the scoreboard froze for the next 42 minutes and it looked like the chance of a lifetime was slipping from their grasp.

Paddy McKenny added a second major in the second half to tie the contest, 2-1 to 0-7, and it was then that Loughinisland kicked into gear. Two goals from Mason and Sean Cochrane sealed a dramatic victory for the Blues.

“We ground it out and kept it tight even though we were playing really poorly. We weren’t playing well at all but we just managed to dig in and we got two flukey goals near the end. They were just high balls in and the keeper missed the flight of them.

“It nearly made it more special because there was a bit of craic about it and we could all laugh about it at the end. We should never have won that game, it was crazy. The conditions were terrible but it was hard to believe that we actually won the game.

“I sort of felt sorry for Bundoran too because they had played all the football in the game and we just snuck it at the end. We were just happy enough to win it and pick up another trophy along the journey that year.”

Like most teams, their season ended in heartache as they crashed out of the All-Ireland race at the semi-final stage against amalgamated side Hollymount Carramore. Unlike the Ulster final, they just couldn’t find the goals that would turn the game in their favour.

“It was probably a role reversal of the Ulster final and we ran out of a bit of luck. In that game, we played a lot of the football. We hit the post, we missed a lot of goal chances, especially early on.

“We probably didn’t get the rub of the green but considering the amount of luck we got in Ulster, we probably just ran out it. Performance wise, we played better than we did in the Ulster final but that’s the way football goes.

“It was disappointing because it would have been unbelievable to bring the club to Croke Park but it just wasn’t to be. When we look back on it, at the start of the season we were just focusing on winning the Down Championship and we ended up winning Ulster so they’re definitely special memories to have.”