HE’S AN ALL-Ireland club winner and was named AIB Club Footballer of the Year yesterday.
Kilcoo wing-back Eugene Branagan recently turned 25 years-old and after such a stellar club campaign, the obvious next step would be to join the Down set-up.
But Branagan opted not to commit to the county panel and says he has no ambition to wear the Down jersey in the future.
An All-Ireland winning club team would command a large number of places on most county squads.
Just two Kilcoo players, Niall Kane and Ryan McAvoy, answered the call from manager James McCartan after their historic triumph at Croke Park in February. It has been a familiar pattern in recent years. Only two players from the club, McAvoy and Ceilum Doherty, appeared for Down last summer.
In a searingly honest interview, Branagan says Down’s core players “don’t have a winning mentality” and a change of manager would be required for county football to be an attractive proposition for the Kilcoo contingent.
“I have absolutely have no ambition and I know Doherty probably is the same,” he admitted.
“We just have no ambition to play. I don’t know why that is. When you’re brought up in Kilcoo and the boys who trained you all your life are the older members now and stuff…I just have honestly no ambition to play for Down and I don’t mind saying that.
“It might happen in a few years but just with sheep and all it’s one of those thing in my head, I just have never visualised it so I can’t see it happening.”
He went on to outline the reasons there hasn’t been a buy-in from the club.
“I think there’s a core of players who don’t know how to win. They haven’t the winning mentality. I think that’s why a lot of Kilcoo boys don’t want to be involved – they’re just there but I don’t think they’re there to win. That’s the difference between Kilcoo and the county.
“Maybe if there was a different manager – Conor Laverty took the U20s and it was the first Ulster they’d won in maybe 20 years. He changed the mindset but I think it would take a different manager for a lot of Kilcoo players to come in.
“I just think it would take a really good manager and a winning group of players that set out at the start of the year to win something. I think the winning mentality is not there and that’s the problem for the Kilcoo players.
“Conor Laverty came in with the U20s, I think it just takes a manager to get a group of players to buy into something and anything is possible. There was talk of Jim McGuinness and Conor Laverty and that going, I’m sure if they had got the job every good player in Down would have been chomping at the bit to go. It’s just getting that man to pull everyone in.
“Two lads went in – and took a lot of abuse for it!” he quips.
“This past few years there’s boys coming back from the county and we feel they would be in a better place if they were training with us. At the end of the day for us, it’s all about winning.
“It’s not about going and getting beaten. That’s no good for us. If they’re going and winning, we’re happy if they’re becoming better players but if we think it’s putting them back, we don’t want them like that!”
Branagan, who has never represented the county at any level, said the invitation for him join the squad arrived “only a week or two after the All-Ireland and we were actually flat out at lambing at work.”
“I had took five weeks off work coming up to the All-Ireland, so just with lambing sheep at home and I had missed so much at work, listen if some of the other boys had’ve went I maybe would have went.
“It was just so few went that myself and some of the others players didn’t think they were a team that wanted to win and that was just my mindset.”
12 years on from their run to the All-Ireland club final, Down football is at a low ebb.
They suffered relegation to Division 3 in the spring and were well beaten by Monaghan in the first round of Ulster which confirmed their place in the Tailteann Cup later this summer.
Legendary two-time All-Ireland winning player McCartan, who oversaw their narrow defeat to Cork in the 2010 decider, returned to the helm this season. Rumours began circulating last month that he had stepped down after a breach of squad rules at a training camp in Dublin.
“I think he was sort of thrown under the bus as well, they had got nobody to take the job and he took it,” says Branagan.
“And I think the players threw him under the bus more than anything, I see some of the stuff that happened this past few weeks, breaking drink bans and it only two weeks before a game, that’s not going to win anything. I actually felt sorry for him the way the whole thing has panned out.
“I think James McCartan is a good manager, it just shows in the past they were just a point off Cork that day, so it was there, it’s just trying to get players to buy in.”
Branagan feels it would be difficult to play alongside players from other clubs in the county.
“If you’re playing against boys in a club game and then you’re trying to play with them with the county there’s going to be rows.
“I’ve never played for a county but I can’t see myself getting on with too many of them just from past games and stuff.”
Asked if there’s a perception that that players from other clubs don’t like the Kilcoo crew, he responded: “Oh yeah, I think that really fuels our fire. Everyone seems to be on our backs and that’s really what keeps us going, that’s what we love. We feel everyone is against us, county boards the whole lot but that’s what we want.”
Kilcoo have lost some of their older guard to retirement – including Aidan Branagan and Niall McEvoy – while others will spent the summer playing football in the States.
“It’s hard. The past number of years since Mickey (Moran) came in, we are telling players to put their life on hold, holiday, don’t be going to America to play.
“Now that we have got over the line and won an All-Ireland, there’s certain things boys want to do in life. There are some of them going away to America and some of them went away travelling there.
“Once you have won an All-Ireland it’s hard, everyone has their own desires. But we are back training hard and there’s a lot of young boys really want to push on.”
Mickey Moran stepped down as manager, being replaced by his former coaches Conleith Gilligan and Richard Thornton.
“Mickey hadn’t been with us for a long time last year,” revealed Branagan. “He was very concerned for his health and he hadn’t been there for six or seven months.
“Conleith and Richard didn’t get all the plaudits but they were there for the majority of the time. We’re back training at the minute and everything is rosy.”
First published today at 06.35
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