THE WEEK WHERE a particular Mayo football dream ended.
From his league debut in February 2011 against Galway and championship debut in July 2011 against Cork, Lee Keegan was a flagship footballer for Mayo. Defiant and compelling and wondrous to watch in full flight.
Last Monday morning delivered the confirmation that his time in the Mayo senior ranks was over. His form had still been strong, his fifth All-Star collected as recently as 2021.
And yet reading through his former team-mates’s statement brought perfect clarity for Tom Parsons as to why now it was family was winning out over football in the priority stakes.
“I’ve two kids myself and even for myself retiring, it is a real game-changer. You need to be so selfish playing the game, in terms of your sleep, your preparation. It really is the first thing that goes on the diary every week.
“[When you have a baby], sleep is so sporadic and it’s out of your control. It becomes very challenging when you’re playing an elite amateur sport, and when you have the life pressures – which are great – of starting a family. It’s very hard to balance.
“I’ve no doubt that he did an analysis of his life. You’re never ready to step away.
“We always say that, if you can’t maintain that standard, you’d be a shadow of yourself. So I admire somebody who puts their hands up and says, if I can’t give 100%, then I’m going to opt out.
“That’s what it looked like, from being outside of the group.”
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Within the Mayo camp there was an innate understanding of Keegan’s significance. Further afield they grasped what he had to offer as well.
Kerry were a familiar presence in Keegan’s Mayo football narrative.
In 2011 he popped over a point when nudged on from the bench in the All-Ireland semi-final defeat.
In 2014 and 2017 the two counties played out four All-Ireland semi-final ties, a mixture of epic and absorbing clashes that generated two draws, a win for Kerry and a win for Mayo.
Kerry were superior in the 2019 Super 8s, as they were in last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final which transpired to be the farewell in Mayo colours for Keegan.
He was central to all those games, a permanent fixture from the 2014 draw on – a match where he was shown a red card in the opening period – and constantly provided Kerry with plenty to worry about.
“There was no end to him as a competitor,” says Kerry footballer Paul Murphy.
“Whatever, you’d throw at him, he’d relish it, he would come back for more. A big thing about his impact as a player was that he backed himself in those big moments, to take on the big opportunities at scores, and invariably he nailed them. A really tough opponent, fantastic athlete, very strong, very quick, very mobile.
“For Gaelic football in general, he’s been a huge part of the last ten years. He’ll be a big loss for Mayo. That’s the nature of inter-county, it’s always rolling. One guy retiring is opening the door for someone else. Mayo are going nowhere, there will be guys who’ll step up and have a big impact in Lee Keegan’s absence.”
Keegan had the capacity to be employed as a marker close to goal with strictly defensive responsibilities or as a runner in the half-back line with a licence to roam forward at will.
Marrying those two roles in a season isn’t easy. Murphy is well-versed in county requirements but saw Keegan as someone who could slip seamlessly from one position to another.
“It’s pretty difficult but he was able to do it, and do it better than most, better than almost anyone. There is a lot of fitness required for what he was doing. Maybe it’s a timing thing? You’re picking your moments to break forward and then timing to get on the ball at the end of the move.
“Also, the style that your team plays, some styles are more suited to that. It’s a difficult role but he made it look like we should all be doing it.”
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On the Mayo training ground Parsons would see Keegan come alive.
“Lee would train with a smile. Those tough, hard tackling drills when your body and your mind is put to the test, you don’t see many fellas going into the ring with a smile. But Lee seems to just love the battle. So what was great about Lee, you pick him up in a drill in training, you’re going to get it and it’s going to be hard. But it never carries through. If you weren’t giving it your all, and he was getting the better of you, he’d tell you. He’d say ‘come on, you’re at 90%. Lift your game’.
“In training, he enjoyed the hard stuff. In the off-season, Lee might drop everything for two months, and he’d come back. And he’d work so hard to get back in shape.He’s naturally so explosive and fit, but he still had to work as hard as everyone else to get into that shape in December and January. I always remember his work ethic, coming back in the pre-season in terms of getting back up to peak physical condition.
“Just incredibly unselfish guy, and very liked around the group. Very open to young fellas going in, very friendly.”
They were colleagues on those heady days in Croke Park when the Mayo pursuit of success unspooled into this fascinating tale.
Yet Parsons also saw Keegan as an opponent, someone to face off against in training scenarios or in club games.
He saw the Westport man used by many as a barometer for where they stood.
“We met in the group stages in 2020 at midfield. I was just a year back from my (knee) injury. You’re not going to get anything easy and he wouldn’t respect you as a player if you didn’t give it back to him. And he’ll tell you about it. It’s a very subtle way of driving standards. To build on the relationship that you have with Lee, you have to go toe-to-toe and you have to go hard with Lee.
“In training, you don’t want somebody that’s happy to drop to 90% in a box tackling drill, and you’re getting away with it. To be your best, you want to be looking at ‘Where’s Lee?’ Even through the years, when you’re doing the block runs, 100 metre runs, 80 metre runs, you would have seen the likes of Paddy Durcan and Stephen Coen, they look to the strong runners to benchmark themselves.
“In those years when Lee was 27, 28, 29, you could see the guys going over, not a million miles away from Lee so they could benchmark their performance on him. To to be a better player you want to be toe-to-toe with Lee.”
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Across 2016 and 2017, the Cork footballers crossed paths twice with Mayo.
There was a league opener in January 2016 when Cork won by nine points and then in July 2017 it was Mayo who prevailed in a qualifier in the Gaelic Grounds that crackled with electricity, extra-time required before the result fell in Mayo’s favour by a point.
Keegan was at his peak during that time, Footballer of the Year in 2016, and immersed in those battles with Cork. He sustained a concussion in the league tie and seeing his evening end courtesy of a black card in the championship tie.
“The fact that he was able to shut down your most dangerous, mobile forward was a big problem,” says Conor McCarthy, part of the Cork management team at that time.
“His ability to hurt you going the other way and score heavily made it a serious headache.
“The fact that he (as the defender) dictated the match up made it really hard to counteract. Those players are rare but they are game swinging match ups - think Philly McMahon on Cooper, John Miskella on Declan O’Sullivan, Keegan on Connolly.
“One other bit that sticks out for him was his bravery, especially at the pace that he was moving. I remember there was a big collision between himself and Eoin Cadogan in the first league game in 2016.”.
The theme of Keegan’s attacking abilities, producing those rampaging runs from deep, is taken up again by an inter-county forward who marked him on a couple of occasions in championship encounters.
“Ultimately you wanted to keep him as far away from your goal as possible. Try to keep him pinned back inside his own ’21, because the further out the field you went, he was lethal. His accuracy from distance when shooting and the timing of his runs caused havoc for your defence.
“So it was always safer to keep him pinned as deep as possible.”
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Eoghan McLaughlin counts himself as one of the fortunate ones in Mayo.
While the rest of the football-mad county is in mourning at the loss of Keegan from the team that slavishly follow, McLaughlin is consoled by the knowledge that he and Keegan are club-mates.
The page is not being turned on the Westport chapter just yet. the club just coming off the back of their maiden county senior title win last October.
“Leeroy is a role model to me and obviously a few of my younger teammates. It was difficult to see him hang up the green and red jersey. Thank God, I get to go back and play with him in the club, so I’m lucky in that sense.”
The parallels have been drawn between Keegan and McLaughlin since the latter first emerged on the scene with Mayo.
“Yeah, a lot of people do say that. We’ve a lot of the same characteristics and strengths on the pitch. Growing up, watching Mayo football, and because Leeroy was from Westport, he inspired me a lot. A bit of my game is definitely tailored to his.
“I’ve played with him with Mayo now for the last three years and he just came to training every night willing to work. Just talking to more of my older teammates, he hasn’t changed since the day he walked into the dressing room.
“He’s always been a leader and someone who you could bounce stuff off and chat to about different things and he’d give you a straight and honest answer.”
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Where does he rank then?
It’s a typical subjective, barstool debate that flares up in every county when one of their stalwarts retires.
In the Mayo conversation, Keegan’s place in the top tier of players is unequivocal.
“It’s the consistency,” says Parsons.
“When you need somebody, a warrior beside you, there’s complete trust and complete faith, all the time. And you know if Lee doesn’t score three points or he’s not bombing up the field, his opponent or his detail is nailed.
“And he received some details over the years that the public would have said ‘this is a really challenging detail’. He’d always nail it. And if he didn’t nail it, he’d work three times [harder] and he’d bounce back, and the next time he’d get that detail, he certainly would nail it.
“When you look at some of the best players of all time, you have to look at the consistency of performances. Lee was consistently a top-three player every game. For a lot of games, our best player.
“I would certainly have him as one of the best players that ever came out of Mayo for sure.”
- Interviews by Brian Barry, Fintan O’Toole and Stephen Barry
