This evening the latest generation of Mayo minors go looking to follow in the footsteps of the seven other minors sides from the county who have brought the Tom Markham Cup home to the county.
Gary Ruane has been there and seen it all before as a Mayo footballer, playing over 60 senior games for the county and captaining the side in the 2004 All Ireland senior final against Kerry.
This evening he'll be on the sideline ably assisting manager Sean Deane as they look to take down Galway for a third time this year in the championship and claim Mayo's eighth All Ireland title at this grade.
While winning titles is the goal at underage levels, bringing through the next generation of players who will be able to step up and wear the green and red for the senior side is the ultimate goal with these sides and getting involved with that is something Ruane has relished since he joined up on the coaching ticket of the Mayo GAA academy a number of years ago.
"I suppose, I got involved a couple of years ago when Liam Moffatt was in the chair and decided to pull a development academy together.
"They got in touch with a lot of ex-players and asked them to get involved and I was one of them and I was apprehensive at the start, but once I got involved then it was great.
"It was only once a week, you used to come in on a Saturday morning and I was involved then with Sean (Deane ) for three years at u16 and it is great to see the lads that have come up from u14, u15 and u16 and see the development that they have made along the way.
"And you’d be listening to the other coaches down along and they would be telling you about players coming along and telling you how good they are and to see the development amongst some of the players they are on about is very pleasing to the eye.
"This year we came to the minors and it is great to be involved and you can see lads getting better game on game and they are willing to learn and ask questions. Years ago fellas might just sit in the corner and do their job, but they don’t - these fellas will ask questions, like ‘why am I playing there?’ ‘Why am I not in the squad?’ So they all want to learn and play."
The questioning and the looking for answers from the players is something that Ruane relishes as part of his role and it's all bout helping them become the best they can be as players going forward, he explained.
"Sometimes you know the lads listen more in a one-to-one situation rather than out on the field shouting at them, they come to you afterwards and say - what do you think I need to do - and we will set them up for what works best for them - the lads love to listen and talk and see and will come and see and say, how did I do, what can I do to be better; it is great to hear, there's none of lads in there that isn’t open about learning.
"When we took (them ) over I suppose at Christmas we watched them up in Bekan in an in-house game or two when Diarmuid Byrne had them, it is amazing how some have developed and learned and are willing to take the learnings we gave them.
"We don’t know everything, but we hope that we know enough to give them enough to get them where they are. Some of them have come on in leaps and bounds and played in positions that are unfamiliar to them and they have taken it in their stride and just gone with it and they are easily coachable and they want to learn."
Learning all the time
Ruane has seen the benefit of the underage academies and how the process has allowed players to develop and become comfortable in their surroundings as a Mayo player - even at the young age the minors currently are - and he thinks it's been a good thing for them.
"It has probably shown how comfortable these lads are at playing and probably they have been on the journey of wearing the county jersey from u14 and going off on buses on a Saturday to different parts of the country, so it is nothing different for them now to be heading off to Tullamore, Roscommon or Tuam and that is a great thing for them that they have that in their system; so it is just basically for them going out and playing another game."
This year's minors have had the benefit of a year at u16 level and a round robin stage at the provincial level that was missing for the previous years minor team and he thinks that it was unfair on them that the championship last year was run off on a knock-out basis.
"Last year when we had the minors, some of those lads were pulling on a county jersey for the first time and going out playing in a one off match, there was no round robin; at least this year these lads knew if we didn’t win, we had another game, so that was a lot of pressure off them early in the rounds, the pressure grew but it was early in the rounds they have developed.
"I don’t know why it was like that last year, the football was back so I think myself all the football should have been back and a oneoff game didn’t make any sense, because of the extra pressure it put on them and it probably took from the occasion as well; because they knew they had one shot and if they didn’t perform, then some of them might never wear a county jersey again and that might be the highlight of their career to play once for Mayo in Hyde Park - whereas if they had got the chances this group had got, the sky is the limit for some of these lads."
Taking nothing for granted
The fact that Mayo have beaten Galway twice already in the championship has them as favourites to make it three from three this evening, but Ruane and the rest of the Mayo management team aren't taking anything for granted or leaving it to chance.
“The first game playing Galway in Tuam ended up like it was very one-sided, but Galway have improved every single game sine we played and we have seen it, even in the Connacht final they weren’t that far away, even look at a save by David Dolan or it hit the crossbar and it saved us when they were four or five points down; small things in a game can change it in a game and things like that.
"We know they will be a lot closer than that to us this time and we need to work as hard as we can and play the best football we can and play the football we want to play and hopefully that will get us across the line."
While he admitted he did have a little apprehension before getting involved with the academy when he first did, Ruane has thoroughly enjoyed his time working with the underage sides in Mayo, including this one.
"Definitely, I have been involved with Sean for a couple of years and when he was going for the minor job he asked me would I get involved and I was happy to. It was a one-off last year, it has been a much longer year this year, but it is great and they are a great bunch of guys and you can not talk highly enough of them, a lovely bunch of lads. We are just lucky to be the minor management here at present; the lads who have done the three of four years work and the clubs should be all taking pride from what they see out here."
