2021 in the past for Dean as champs set sights on retaining their crown

They may be the team everyone is trying to knock off their perch but defending Connacht Gold Leitrim Senior Champions Ballinamore Sean O’Heslins have parked their historic 2021 triumph as they set sights on the defence of their crown.

That's according to captain Dean McGovern who dismisses any notion that the defending champions  have a target on their backs ahead of   this year’s Championship: “We haven’t really thought a huge amount about that - we’ve parked that. We had our Dinner Dance at the start of March and once that was over, that was really it so we’re  the same as everyone else so it doesn’t feel any different to be honest with you.”

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In fact, Ballinamore’s captain believes  his team are in the same boat as anyone else when asked if their standing as defending champions brings any extra pressure: “I don’t know about that -  I still think Mohill are the team to beat. It is not really any different for us - we’re just looking to improve week on week. 

“Obviously we didn’t make the league final which was disappointing, you want to reach these finals but we feel we’ve got what we’ve needed out of the League.”

Nevertheless the 2021 victory over Mohill did make an impact: “Seeing what it meant to the older generation in Ballinamore was the stand out thing. Obviously they’d have been waiting over 30 years for us to win it and just seeing their excitement and happiness, I’d say a lot of them thought it might never happen. 

“We weren’t giving them a whole lot to shout about. What it meant to the people and what it meant to the players as well, a lot of hard work had been put in since  we were ten or 11 years of age and just to see all that come to fruition was nice.”

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One big change from last year was the departure of Dominic Corrigan from the manager’s hot seat but Ballinamore quickly moved to install Eddie Bouabbse as the Fermanagh man’s successor. And it has meant continuity for the Ballinamore camp.

“Eddie was with us in 2019 and came back again to us last year. We’ve kept pretty much the same backroom team and obviously Paddy has come in. But it is great, Eddie is really good guy, he knows us all really well, we’ve a great relationship there so there hasn’t been too many changes really.”

Ballinamore missed out on Saturday’s Division 1 Final thanks to their head to head loss against St Mary’s but Dean feels O’Heslins got what they needed from the league: “We    wanted to be competitive and have a few good challenges along the way and we did it without Tom Prior who didn’t play any part in the league. 

“I think we have five or six from the U20 team playing, they have been a real breath of fresh air, they push you hard. Obviously they are a lot different from when we were that age, strength and conditioning has come on a nice bit since that. 

“It is always nice to keep lads on their toes, no-one is safe in their positions, we’ve had people drop in and drop out of the team, different players not play due to injuries but it has been pretty much business as usual. It looks like all our injuries are starting to clear at the right time.”

The new format to the Senior championship is not one Dean has given a lot of thought to as the champions adhere to a mantra of ‘one game at a time’ - “To be honest, I haven’t actually looked into the full system of it myself, I know there is four round robin games and you just want to go out and give as good as account of yourself in all of them. It is a wee bit different but you can’t look past week on week.”

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Neither does he get drawn into who he thinks might be a threat to Ballinamore retaining their title: “You are looking at every team and they’re going to be saying why can’t it be us. Obviously we broke the duck of 31 years and every team starting out is trying to attack this championship. No team is unbeatable as we know in football, we’ve seen how the Dubs have fallen over the last while. 

“Every team will be thinking ‘we’ll be there or thereabouts’ and it's all about keeping your panel injury free and being able to dig deep. That would be a part of it but you’d go into every competition with that attitude. We look at things we can build on from the previous game, what we can improve and how we can be a little bit better each week.

“We’re not looking past training and who we get in the first round draw, we’ll prepare for them as best we can and look to get a performance each game.”