Eoghan McLaughlin aims to ride on with Mayo

Eoghan McLaughlin has not been out cycling the Great Western Greenway between Westport and Achill in quite some time.

“I don’t even own a bike, funnily enough,” smiles the Mayo footballer, who was once regarded as one of the top junior cyclists in Ireland. That was long before he was the dynamic player we recognise today. Now he finds it hard to even get back up on the bike.

“It’s weird, I don’t get it at all,” says the Westport man. “Say, for example, if I had to do a bike session one evening because I wasn’t on the pitch, I’d be there on the bike for 40 minutes. I’d be dogging myself and I’d be like, ‘How did I ever do this at all?’ It’s funny, just a complete mindset change altogether.

“Maybe it’s the fact that I’m just inside on a stationary bike, it’s definitely a different experience outdoors.”

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Still, his commitment to cycling during his teenage years was total – regularly getting up at 5.30am to go out on the bike for a couple of hours before school. In the evenings there would then be sessions on a static bike.

“Everyone always says that playing football for an intercounty team is very time consuming, and it is very time consuming, but when I was cycling it was way more time consuming,” he recalls.

“On a weekend then when you don’t have school, you could be on the bike for five or six hours, it was madness. And sure your whole day would be gone then.

“I was very lucky in the sense that there were a lot of people in the area who were cycling, around my age, and competing and racing the same as I was. So we had a great group there, which helped a lot. I did it by myself as well, but I couldn’t imagine going for four or five hours by myself.”

The thing Mayo folk never wanted to imagine happening came to pass earlier this week when McLaughlin’s Westport and Mayo colleague Lee Keegan retired from intercounty football.

His absence leaves a void in the Mayo dressingroom and only time will tell if the group can absorb the blow to remain as competitive as they have been over the last decade.

[ Lee Keegan never bought into Mayo mythology and was all the better for it ]

“He has given a lot of good memories, inspired me and a lot of other young lads in Mayo,” says McLaughlin.

“He is retired from Mayo football but I have the pleasure of going back and playing club football with him. You couldn’t meet a nicer fellah, to be honest.

“He was such a role model for me growing up. I remember going up to the 2012 All-Ireland final and Leeroy playing. I have nearly based my own game off him. He has really inspired me.”

Keegan’s exit came just weeks after Oisín Mullin headed Down Under to pursue an Aussie Rules career. McLaughlin and Mullin are close friends, so he understands the difficulty behind the decision for that move.

“We know from a Mayo football point of view how big of a loss he is,” says McLaughlin. “But on the flipside of that, it is a great opportunity for him to go out there and really show what he is capable of doing.

“I’m delighted for him, me and all my Mayo team-mates back him, although if he came back we’d accept him with open arms. It’s a thing he had been thinking about for the last number of years and I completely support his decision going out there.”

In their absence, McLaughlin could emerge as the player capable of driving the team on from the half-back line. He possesses a huge engine and his willingness to work tirelessly for the good of the team makes him an invaluable asset for Kevin McStay.

McLaughlin didn’t feature for UL in their Electric Ireland Sigerson Cup win over UCC on Wednesday night because of a niggle but he hopes to line out for his college side next week. He is not expecting to feature in Mayo’s sold-out Air Dome Connacht FBD League semi-final against Galway on Saturday.

He had a number of frustrating injuries during 2022, including an ankle problem and a tendon tear in his quad. His aim during preseason has been to build up his body to be “bulletproof for the long season” ahead and to be ready to go for the National League.

But then he has always been willing to go, even if his body suggested otherwise, the toughness of cycling no doubt a factor in his durability.

In the 2021 All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin he suffered a double jaw fracture following a heavy hit from John Small. Remarkably, in the build-up to the final there was speculation he could feature, but ultimately he did not.

“I would have thrown myself in there, I would loved to have played,” McLaughlin smiles. “No, I think it was definitely a non-runner. There were all these stories going around about wearing a hurling helmet and different things playing.

“I don’t know where people were getting them from, they weren’t coming from me anyway. No, just from a medical point of view it was definitely the right call.

“There just wasn’t enough time for me, which was unfortunate. Look, it’s all part and parcel of the game, injuries.”

McLaughlin suffered the injury on a Saturday night at Croke Park, underwent surgery the following morning and by Tuesday he was at training on a spin bike hoping to make a miraculous recovery. But he ran out of time. And thankfully there have been no long-term issues from that blow.

“No, I was fine. I think the media blew it out of proportion, I was fine after it.”

– Eoghan McLaughlin was speaking as the Electric Ireland GAA Higher Education Championships get under way.