Mayo will be looking to make it two out of three in as many years in finals in Croke Park on Saturday, when they take on Kildare in the Christy Ring Cup final.
Last Sunday evening Stephen Coyne was back in the familiar surrounds of his home pitch in Adrian Freeman Park in Tooreen to look ahead to the game. The familiar sound of the thud of a sliothar against the ball wall was the soundtrack of our conversation and Coyne kept a good eye on the next generation of young Blue Devils who were getting their eye in and hoping that his and his team-mates' actions on the field can inspire the next generation to drive Mayo on to even greater success.
“Ah it’s mighty, sure sometimes you think to yourself when you’re younger and you are heading up to games and you are six, seven or eight years old, will I ever to get a chance to play out there; and for a lot of lads it is their third year in a row so it is a great feeling and great to be going back for another final."
Getting to the Ring Cup final isn't something that many outside of their tight-knit group would have seen coming earlier this year, he freely admits.
"It is a massive leap forward and I suppose, outside of the group it is not something anyone would have seen coming after what happened in the league but there was a great feeling amongst the group throughout the year even though things weren’t going well.
"There was just a few things I suppose - injuries, lads missing, waiting for lads to come back that have been invoked with Tooreen and stuff that needed a couple of weeks off - so it took us a while to get the year going and there was a couple of lads new into the panel, which made a big difference, but to get all that gelled together and get going in the right direction, it took time.
"We had a few hard enough questions asked of us by management and rightly so after a few league games - the Sligo and Donegal game where we put ourselves in positions to win, but we didn’t see them through to win those games, conceding sloppy goals; but there has been great character amongst the group and there was never any doomsday scenario."
Mayo really got their season back on track with a win away to Wicklow in the second round of the Christy Ring Cup and it was a huge win and they haven't looked back since then.
"We needed that first win, especially for the younger lads in that group, there was still older lads that had been though this before where you had been through a run of games that hadn’t gone well but you just know you had to dig deeper at training and try and come out the next day - and that win in Wicklow, that was a massive game for us.
"It is not an easy place to go, but we played really well that day, there was a massive performance. A couple of new lads came in, Joe Mooney had a great game that day, he really came to the fore. We have an option now that we didn’t have in the league, we have more depth in our squad which has made a massive difference.
“I suppose an example of that, Kenny Feeney started against Sligo, had a great game, didn’t start the last day, came on and had a massive impact; to be able to bring someone on like Kenny off the bench, the day is gone where 15 lads start a game, you need 20 lads there to come on and you need 30 lads in training pushing and if you don’t have that you’re going nowhere."
Having lost a number of key players from the set-up this year for a variety or reasons made it tough for Mayo to get going at the start of the year, Coyne admits
“To be honest, management and the coaches probably saw last year as a great stepping stone to bring that squad on, but then they maybe had to make a rest because they had to bring new young lads in to replace lads who couldn’t commit and a lot of them for fully genuine reasons, they just couldn’t commit to the team, but hurlers in Mayo don’t grow on trees; when you lose five or six really good hurlers it is hard replace that - it is part of the story this year to get to a Christy Ring final while losing them boys."
While Mayo will be up against it, anything can happen in a final, Coyne believes, and it is about being there when it comes to the crunch down the home stretch.
"I’d say outside the group, I haven’t seen the odds, but I’d say it is ridiculous, nobody will be giving us a chance, but it was the same against Derry. I’d say nobody outside of Mayo hurling would have given us a chance of that game. What we need to do is focus on a good performance and if we are in the game with 15 minutes to go, anything can happen."
