THE LAST POINT: Regrets and the blossoming of hope

Maybe we’ve become very difficult to please, the oh so modern affliction of always wanting more but it was hard not to leave TEG Cusack Park last Sunday afternoon without a sense of regret hanging heavy over this particular observer, in spite of a long awaited and thoroughly deserved first win of the year for Leitrim.

You’d have thought we’d have been doing cartwheels all over the pitch and, to a certain extent, we were - the smiles and hugs on the pitch afterwards, the mingling of family and die-hard fans who made the journey to Mullingar showing exactly how much Sunday’s Tailteann Cup victory means to the Green & Gold.

The fact that so many players lingered on the pitch, happy to be in each other’s company at the end of a torment of a year, the sort of year that normally gets you questioning everything you think you know about Gaelic games, speaks volumes for the bond that exists in Steven Poacher’s camp.

But scratch beneath the surface and it didn’t take long for regret to rear up - I don’t know what the players knew on the field during the game but up in the press box, social media was being followed as avidly as what transpired on the pitch in front of us, each score relayed with either joy or despair as the crucial Antrim London clash  swayed one way and then the next.

Darren Mulvey has my admiration as he managed to keep his listeners on Shannonside updated with what was happening in both the match and the overall qualification situation, yours truly lobbing updates his way as, for a few minutes, it looked as if Leitrim had pulled off a miracle, two points ahead of Antrim on points and heading for the knockout stages.

THE LAST POINT: TROPHIES NOT THE SOLE MEASURE OF SUCCESS

But as it had all year, hope that flourished oh so briefly was brutally ripped away in heartbreaking fashion as the Saffrons put in a late surge that saw them pip Leitrim to the third qualifying spot, New York again dashing Leitrim’s dreams for the second time in three years.

It is pointless railing against the Stateside exiles’ inclusion in the preliminary quarter finals but with their hurlers battering Cavan in the Lory Meagher Cup Final, New York's transatlantic involvement  that may garner a good bit more attention in the future if they continue to go up the hurling tiers, as they certainly look capable of doing.

That’s a discussion for another day, another of the regrets that will assail Leitrim over the coming months - they had three or four more goal chances that, had they been taken, might have propelled Steven Poacher’s side into next weekend’s preliminary quarter-finals. The atmosphere was fairly frenetic as it was, imagine the madness has Leitrim managed to get across the line?

That’s one regret but there are bigger ones - Steven Poacher mentioned the Kildare game when the Lilywhites over-powered the Green & Gold on their way to a 25 point mauling, a mauling so damaging that had Leitrim simply lost by 15 points, a staggering 15 points, they would have qualified for the knockout stages.

Tom Prior cast his mind back to the closing 20 minutes of the Sligo game - Leitrim had the Yeatsmen on the rack but it was the visitors who took the victory, another glut of goal chances going abegging in the final minutes that might have seen Leitrim across the line.

All those regrets are before we even get to the National League with a succession of batterings that had to have sucked the very life out of the Leitrim camp. It wasn’t fun watching those game, I imagine it was far worse to  endure them on the field of play knowing that you were playing with the metaphorical one hand behind the back, thanks to a litany of injuries and absent players that doomed Leitrim’s Division 3 campaign before a ball was even kicked.

We’ll not talk about the Mickey Graham debacle that left Steven Poacher with a herculean and ultimately impossible task to prepare a team minus the entire spine of the squad that lined out in last year’s Division 4 Final. Just consider the difference that two or three out of Mark Plunkett, Pearce Dolan, Ryan O’Rourke, Jack Gilheany, Shane Quinn, Darragh Rooney and Radek Oberwan might have made to Leitrim in 2025.

That’s not a slight on those who did tog out in the county colours - in my humble opinion, they proved to be more than ordinary players this year. Each and every year, without fail, players depart the panel for one reason or another but not this year, they stuck with it through thick and thin and kept turning up for their County.

Darren Cox was the latest to suffer the injury curse that afflicted Leitrim in 2025, missing last Sunday’s game as he joins a list that included, among others, Barry McNulty, Paul Honeyman, Donal Casey, Adam Reynolds & Cillian McGloin and it was startling to hear Poacher reveal that it was only in the last two weeks that he had enough players fit enough to play 11 on 11 matches in training - that is simply mind-boggling.

Regret will linger from last Sunday for some time but hope is also flourishing - Poacher would have been in an impossible situation had Leitrim qualified with fairly serious looking injuries for Mark Diffley, Cillian McGloin & Keith Keegan but, long term, the break might just be the making of the Green & Gold.

Retain that unshakable bond that  clearly exists in this squad, add a few players and allow a young core to grow, physically and mentally, and Leitrim are in a better place. They have played some quality football in the championship - against Mayo, Sligo and Tipperary and even in patches against Kildare. The quality is there, it just needs time to develop - these lads are a bit older  now so hopefully, the reliance on U20 players will ease and a full off season of strength & conditioning could do wonders for Leitrim.

Next year, it is back to Division 4 - on paper, you have to be confident Poacher can lead Leitrim to promotion but in Division 4, nothing is certain. Antrim, Wicklow and Tipperary will pose a challenge, Carlow could be a wild-card and you never know what London are going to do.

THE LAST POINT: TIME FOR FAITH TO BE REWARDED

This young squad will probably have more pressure on them than they have for some years and Leitrim teams haven’t normally reacted well to that. But given the strides they’ve made in this most horrible of horrible years, you’ve got to have quite a bit of confidence about their chances.

Credit Steven Poacher and his management team - the Down native didn’t claim vindication last Sunday but instead spoke of the challenges facing his young players and his pride in how they have dealt with all that was thrown in their path. That bond seems to be mutual as the players speak very highly of their manager and his team - keeping that backroom team together might be a challenge given the job they did this year.

Most of all, what will stick in the mind from last Sunday was the sense of hope - I had a notion that Leitrim would struggle this year with the departure of so many stalwarts of the previous decade, no county could survive that. But in their fearlessness and courage in even donning the jersey this year, these players have demonstrated a quality that is priceless.

I'm naturally wary of placing too much expectations on any team and one never knows what might happen, Leitrim's progress might stall unexpectedly next year for all I know and Division 4 is a bear pit, shocks happen all the time but right here, right now, it is hard to stop the hope from blossoming and that is only a good thing.