Croke Park, February 2017. The mist had fallen around Dublin 3 and the junior and intermediate All-Ireland finals were done for another year. Glenbeigh-Glencar from Kerry had taken the junior crown, wet-nursed through the endgame by a limping, clinging-on Darran O’Sullivan. Westport prevailed by a point in the intermediate final, driven on by a galloping Lee Keegan.
Keegan was 27-years-old, the reigning Footballer of the Year, halfway(ish) through one of the great Mayo sporting careers. After the final whistle, he found his father, Phil, leaning over the advertising hoarding and wrapped him in a bear hug. Phil Keegan grew up in Cheltenham playing cricket and bowls but here he was, giddy at an intermediate club title. The embrace was broken by a Croke Park steward looking for a selfie with his famous younger son.
When we managed to grab him and ask what he put it all down to, his answer was swift and succinct. “Kids with big balls,” he grinned, waving his arm in the direction of his young team-mates pogoing out on the pitch. Five of the Westport side were Leaving Cert students, including the whole full-forward line that had just scored 2-4 between them. “That’s what they are.”
Five and a half years later, Westport are Mayo senior champions for the first time in their history. Keegan has just turned 33 and has never had a feeling like it. The pictures of him holding the cup in the aftermath of the final against Castlebar show a man surrendered, lost in the rapture of it all. And behind him, those kids with the liathróidí mór from 2017, all in their mid-20s now, champions as if it was their birthright.
The bird-shaped obsession that drives James Crombie, one of Ireland’s best sports photographers
St Martin’s get Wexford challenge back on the road after years of stalling
Johnny Murphy on refereeing the All-Ireland final: ‘Hand on heart, I was happy with the way it went’
GAA previews: Remaining provincial final places down for decision in three provinces
“When I said that in ‘17, it was a true thing,” Keegan laughs now. “Those kids came to Croke Park and they didn’t care. They just went up and performed. And in the five years since then, they’re the guys that are pushing the club. It’s not the likes of myself or Kevin [Keane] or the older guys. We’re hanging on to these kids. They’ve won everything at underage, they’ve nearly won everything at senior level now. They want more as well. They’re the guys who have driven this.
“When I said they have big balls, they’ve shown it time and again since that day in Croke Park. They’ve shown they’re not afraid to go and win. If you look at our campaign this year, from the last group game to the county final, we only won by one score in each of those games. That’s four games in a row and, every time, there was only a kick of a ball in it and we drove on and won each time.
“Even against Castlebar, we went two points down with 40 seconds to play. Sometimes you look around you in these games and it’s doom and gloom. You can feel lads letting go or starting to feel that the thing is gone. But when Castlebar scored, I looked around and I saw seven lads already running the other way to get in position to go at them. And even just by doing that, you could see them thinking, ‘We’ll get one more chance here.’ That’s the beauty of these guys.”
It’s time you don’t get back as well, you know? You want to be a present parent. I don’t want to be dipping in and out, missing milestones and events and that kind of thing.
The season could end with Galway champions Moycullen this weekend or it could, given a fair wind, stretch beyond Christmas. One way or the other, Keegan knows he has a reckoning due. He and his wife, Aoife, have two daughters: Líle is 2½; Rhea has just turned one. He and Kevin McStay will sit for what he calls “a big-boy talk” at some stage and he genuinely doesn’t know yet what he’ll be saying. All he knows is that intercounty football and fatherhood are uneasy bedfellows.
“It’s getting harder. I’ll admit that straight up. There’s always the guilt of having multiple people picking up the slack behind you. Stuff that you should be helping out with and getting hands-on with. There is that guilt. I think it’s only getting older that has made me realise what the older guys went through when I was a young player. You’d often be looking at lads and thinking, ‘Why didn’t they stay another year? They had plenty to offer.’ And I get it now, I definitely do.
“I have to get my ducks in a row. How much longer can I be relying on people to do all the hard work for me? Albeit I’m at home as much as I possibly can be. But it’s time you don’t get back as well, you know? You want to be a present parent. I don’t want to be dipping in and out, missing milestones and events and that kind of thing.
“I know, it sounds like a real old-man decision. But sometimes you have to put priority ahead of everything. It can’t all be about, ‘Well I want to go playing football again because I love it.’ What about the stuff I leave behind me that isn’t getting done because I’m not there to help or to pull my weight as much as I should be? And it’s not the kind of thing where you say, ‘I’m going out for an hour.’ You can be gone six, seven, eight hours between travelling, training, location, everything that goes into it. It all clocks up. So obviously I will have a pretty tough decision to make somewhere down the line.”
The Keegan kids will, in time, be able to document their early years in post-match photos. Líle made her Croke Park debut in the aftermath of matches on Mayo’s run to the 2021 All-Ireland final. Rhea is more of a club woman, it turns out, and took to the pitch in MacHale Park after the county final victory. Their father treasures every bit of it.
“Home life doesn’t be long bringing you back. We lost to Kerry this year and it was disappointing but kids don’t care. They don’t give a flying f**k. And you know what? They’re dead right. I remember after we lost the All-Ireland against Tyrone, I was chasing my eldest one around the pitch. It couldn’t have been less important to her what had happened. And I had a great time running around after her.
“Look, I sat on the pitch in Croke Park and cried enough times in my life. What was the point? It didn’t change the result. I still had to chase this absolute nutter around the pitch. At least it added a few more miles to my GPS stats. That’s life.
“So it’s going to come down purely to what’s the priority in life. What’s more important? And the good thing about it will be that whatever decision I come to, I’ll be happy with what I end up doing. I won’t lose out either way.
“Sport and the world waits for no man or woman. I am probably more of a realist with certain things when it comes to sport. I don’t know if that’s right or wrong. But I see the bigger picture sometimes. We have to get on with life. Things can’t stop just because of a bad day or a defeat. Life just keeps moving and if you don’t keep going, you’ll be missing out.”
When you make history with your club, there’s something unique and special about that. Special for the club, special for the family. But special too for the people who have tried and tried and tried down the years to win it
The bigger picture is everywhere, all of the time. His brother Phil was a part of that 2017 team but subsequently went back to his first love and threw his lot in with the local soccer team. Around this time last year, he had to retire from all contact sport after doctors found irregularities in his heart, not unlike those suffered by Christian Eriksen during the 2021 Euros.
“He’s lucky to be alive,” says the younger Keegan. “Very lucky to be honest. He went through serious surgery, he was in hospital for a month. He had a bad oul’ time of it. It wasn’t hereditary, it was just something that happened, maybe from over-training or whatever. We all got tested to make sure it wasn’t hereditary. He’s okay since. He had to get an ICD [implantable cardioverter defibrillator] fitted.”
They’ll pocket their luck and keep trucking. The county final was a day of days, so they made sure to turn it into a week of weeks. Westport, of all towns, doesn’t lack for places to celebrate, and management told them not to stint on any bit of it. You only win the first one once.
“When you make history with your club, there’s something unique and special about that,” Keegan says. “It was special for a lot of reasons. Special for the club, special for the family. But special too for the people who have tried and tried and tried down the years to win it. They were as happy as we were. It would have been easy for them to be selfish and be annoyed that they didn’t get there but they all put it aside and they celebrated with us.
“We didn’t go back training until Thursday and that was completely at the management’s instruction. They were very clear that we were to go and enjoy it because you will never get this time back again.”
Bliss it was to have it at all. Keegan knows that better than most.
