IF CASTLEBAR MITCHELS are to pull off another surprise in this season’s AIB All-Ireland Club SFC, they’ll need Richie Feeney to be at his best.
The 30-year-old Mayo star has been at the heart of his side’s run to the championship decider in which they’ll take on St Vincent’s this St Patrick’s Day at Croke Park.
But the half-back says that the Connacht champions travel to the capital to take on the Marino side more in hope, as they say, than expectation.
“Because we haven’t won it in so long I think the expectations weren’t that high within the club,” he says ahead of Monday’s showdown.
“I suppose there’s no real expectation on us. The lads kind of feel that way. We just go out and play every game and give it what you have and it’s been good enough so far and hopefully we’ll put in another good performance the next day.
“We had a few misses there in ’10 and ’11. Kind of the most frustrating thing was that we didn’t play well enough, even though we weren’t good enough. We’ve been kind of brewing on that for a while. People were kind of surprised when we kind of came out of the county and looked like a good strong team. People were wondering why we hadn’t won a county title in so long. That was frustrating alright but it probably helped us in a way that we’d been there or thereabouts. We’ve built up a good team and we knew that once we got out of the county, we’d a good chance at going far.”
The Castlebar outfit did get over the line with a county win over the O’Shea’s Breaffy side. What was the difference last season?
“There was a lot of underage success over the last three or four years, I think there was a four-in-a-row won at one stage. Lads have been going away travelling and that kind of thing and there was never a group commitment to give it a kind of full year. We sat down at the start of this year and everyone put their hand up and said, ‘look we’re all staying around, we’re putting everything into this’. Thankfully it’s worked out so far.
“A few lads had gone (previous seasons), and travelling has to be done. I suppose we have such a good group of players and everyone realised that if we could keep everyone together then we’d have a serious, serious team.
The class of 2014 will hope to go one better than the Castlebar team of 1994; they were beaten by Nemo Rangers in the All-Ireland finale 20 years ago.
“My father was actually involved, a selector on the Mitchels team that year,” says Feeney. “So that would be it. And I suppose Tommy O’Malley was the manager that year. He’s been involved with a lot of the lads on the team now, growing up, at underage level and that. So there’d be a good few links alright.
“[The memories are] vague now, vaguely, I remember coming home on the train and that kind of thing but I was only about 10 or 11.”
There’ll be no fear this time out for a Mayo side taking the pitch at Croker, however.
“No, Pat has everything fairly well organised. We had a few challenge games as well leading into it so that kept us on our toes as well. No, everything felt good going into it.”
