Playing McNulty & Foley paid off for Leitrim U20s believes Moran

Rolling the dice isn’t something managers often like to do but when Andy Moran rolled it for Wednesday’s Eirgrid Connacht U20 clash in Ballinamore, it paid off spectacularly as the presence of Senior stars Barry McNulty and Jack Foley helped drive Leitrim to a first Connacht Championship victory over Mayo since 1998.

Leitrim secured a thoroughly deserved 3-12 to 0-16 victory over Mayo but the presence of Senior stars McNulty and Foley rules them out of Sunday’s Connacht SFC clash with Sligo, a price the dual Leitrim manager was prepared to pay: “We made a really big call with our Seniors players to play them today, ruling them out of Sunday, and sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn’t - tonight it paid off. It is a huge result for us in Leitrim.

“It is a start, we want to push on, we’ve a really good team. Obviously we have Barry and Jack again next Wednesday so we’ll try and push it on and give Sligo a good rattle next Wednesday,” said Moran.

The Leitrim manager also felt it was a just reward for the hard work put in by the group: “This is a really, really good group - it is a huge result for us as a management team because I’ve been telling you for the last three years that there is a plan, that we’re going places. We get promoted, then we don’t perform in Croke Park and then today happens. It is great, you can see the S&C and these boys have committed to it. 

“We got them half together last year in the middle of the club championship and we said can you do this over a period of time with your clubs and in fairness, they stuck to it and the difference in the likes of Jake Tobin, Ben Guckian is huge and we have a player like young Honeyman which makes a big difference.”

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For Moran himself, it was a strange day to manage Leitrim against his native Mayo with a couple of former teammates on the Mayo management ticket: “I left the house today and my little girl, she’s nine, she is stone mad into it and I said who are you supporting today and she said I don’t know Daddy so that’s how weird it was in our house even today.”

Moran revealed that Leitrim made adjustments to go after Mayo’s lack of size around the middle of the field, an area where the home team excelled: “We played Barry further in, I know the Mayo boys personally - in a lot of cases, they’re not the biggest size wise and we went after that a little bit.

“All the lads but Tobin, I’d say myself, between breaks going into the half-back line and half-forward line, coming off midfield, he must have had ten breaks in total, it was an outstanding performance but all the boys. We only ended up making two subs because there was no-one really there to say we needed to take them off.”

There were also adjustments from the game against Galway the Leitrim manager revealed: “I suppose we really looked at the first 20 minutes of the first half against Galway, we went a few points down but the next 15 minutes, we were really on top, we missed a few chances, got it down to three points. Honeyman gets sent off and then we struggled. So we concentrated on that part and just a few developments around that.”

Wednesday’s win was a huge pick-up after the disappointment of losing the Division 4 Final but Moran revealed that his disappointment was tempered by achieving the goal of promotion: “I know the players were hurt because I know what Croke Park is like. It takes time to get used to Croke Park, Laois got there last year and it showed. 

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“To be honest, I wasn’t really that disappointed at all - my focus was on Sligo and this game right from Sunday morning - I’m not just saying that, it is God's honest truth. Croke Park is a funny old place - we got promoted out of a Division with Tipperary, Wexford, Carlow, Longford and Laois, we finished second so we can’t be disappointed with that.

“If I’m being honest with you, we went out on Saturday night, we promised the lads after we got promoted that we’re going out, win, lose or draw. We had a few very sore bodies going into that final, we had a few lads who played the last three games injured and there is no hiding place in Croke Park.”