The Mayo club are bucking the trend in these recessionary times as their fluid pattern of development continues, writes KEITH DUGGAN

THIS WEEK, the Mayo town of Ballintubber has been insulated from the general gloom and appalling weather that has swept the country. Since the senior team won the club’s first Mayo title – a perfect nod to the centenary of the foundation of the club – preparations have been on-going for tomorrow’s intriguing Connacht championship semi-final clash against Killererin.

In the meantime James Horan, the former Mayo star and present club manager, was appointed manager of the Mayo senior team. That honour – challenging though it promises to be – marks the culmination of a heady three years for both Horan and his charges.

In 2007, they won a thrilling intermediate final against Kiltimagh and since that point they have not looked back. The year 2008 ended with a narrow quarter-final defeat against Ballaghaderreen.

The season ended on the same note a year later against Knockmore but Ballintubber were pushing. This year they went and won the title in a final against Castlebar Mitchels. There is literally no telling as to how far Ballintubber can take this season because they have never been here before.

“We just kept building on the success of 2007,” Horan says when asked about the rapid rise his side had made. “That was an extremely close final and if we got a bit of luck that day, we used it.

“Everything we do has involved concentrating on the basic skills of the game, trying to get our passing and shooting right and by working very hard.

“We try and play good football. We have been fortunate to have the same group of players throughout that time and they apply themselves to every single game they play. In the last 32 matches this team has played, they have been beaten just twice – both times by Knockmore, actually. So they have a track record of competing in the games that we have been involved in.”

The rise of Ballintubber is a perfect example of how the foundations of a senior side can be re-established within a generation. The success of the senior team may have had its genesis in the minor side that won an A title in 2004. Ballintubber had won the last two Mayo under-21 titles prior to losing this year’s final to Castlebar.

When Tony Duffy and Horan took up the intermediate team in 2007, those players were beginning to graduate onto the side. Since then, Tom Prendergast, Jim O’Toole and Jim Twohig have joined Horan’s backroom team. This marked a fluid pattern of development that was not always possible in earlier generations.

Seán Hallinan, the club chairman, instances the 1960 season as one when Ballintubber, having had a fine intermediate team the previous year, had to start from scratch after losing 11 players to emigration.

The 1980s also took its toll, with Ger Geraghty perhaps the most heralded of the Ballintubber players to leave the community to find work elsewhere. In Geraghty’s case, Chicago beckoned and although John O’Mahony made strenuous efforts to persuade him to return ahead of Mayo’s famous 1989 All-Ireland final run, it did not happen.

The rise of the current Ballintubber team has taken place against a national economic outlook that threatens to eclipse the mood of the 1980s.

“Naturally there is a fear that we could lose players,” Hallinan says. “Some of the more senior players are thankfully established in terms of work, but we do have a number of lads between 18 and 22 who are at college in Galway and Dublin and here in Mayo and the fear would be that they might have to leave if they cannot find work. But there has been a tremendous commitment from this group and hopefully that won’t happen.”

The Mayo championship is notoriously competitive and the emergence of Ballintubber is significant. They offer something different from established clubs like Ballina, Crossmolina, Charlestown and Knockmore – all of whom have had enjoyed good All-Ireland club runs in the past.

Ballintubber always had a good tradition and produced its share of county players, from the late Ger Feeney – whose tragic drowning last month cast a dark shadow over Ballintubber’s football season – to Horan’s splendour in the 1990s through to Alan Dillon. “If you ask anyone in Mayo, they would probably acknowledge that Alan Dillon has been the best club player over the last six-year period,” Horan says.

“His commitment to this team has been phenomenal and he is a great example because he is always looking to improve. I see him playing for Mayo and sometimes wonder how he finds the energy to give the club as much as he does, but he always seems to have more in him.”

Tomorrow’s match contains a potentially riveting indirect battle between Dillon and Killererin’s talisman Pádraic Joyce. The one glitch is that Joyce is currently on honeymoon and his brother and player-manager Tommie was uncertain as to whether or not the forward would be lining out.

The absence of the prolific Joyce, who was in tremendous form for club and county this season, would theoretically make Ballintubber’s task more straightforward.

“Look, we are planning on playing Killererin with Pádraic Joyce playing,” Horan says. “It is not an issue. We expect to see him on the field and we can’t be second guessing what they are trying to. We just want to get ourselves right.”

So Sunday brings the Ballintubber crowd to the iconic Tuam Stadium, a short journey usually made to see Mayo teams play. Horan is adamant that the venue should make little difference and points to the fact his team have been consistent both home and away in recent seasons.

In any event, home is notional. There will be intense interest in this match not just through Mayo but in certain pockets of Chicago and other distant cities as well. A chance to fly the Mayo flag in Connacht has been a long time coming for Ballintubber.

They will savour this day.