To many, Leitrim’s last Connacht title was a classic of the flash-in-the-pan genre of 1990s Gaelic football upsets, vying with Clare and Donegal in 1992 or Derry in ’93.
We were in Division 2 for ten years,” counters Aidan Rooney, the man who kicked the winning point in a victory that effectively started the county’s last period of true competitiveness.
It wasn’t, contrary to popular opinion, just a single season of success in a province that hadn’t produced an All-Ireland winner since the 1960s.
“Leitrim were probably in the top 12 or so teams in the country, from the late ’80s,” Rooney recalls.
“We were playing Cork, Tyrone and Kerry regularly. They were the venues where we played our league football. We wouldn’t have spoken about ourselves like that, but we were an elite team, really.
“People would regularly ask me now what would have happened if we’d had the qualifier system back then. And it’s a valid point. We would have been a Monaghan or someone like that: always competitive, always in with a chance of provincial honours. That’s where we were.”
In ’93, a season before capturing just a second provincial title in the county’s history, Rooney scored the winner as Leitrim beat Galway for the first time since 1949 in front of 7,000 people in Tuam.
It started a run of games between the counties – five in four years – where the spoils were shared; two wins apiece and a draw, with Leitrim losing by just a point in 1995 and two points in ’96.
“I know there were grown men crying that day in Tuam, including my father,” he recalls now. “But we went there expecting to win those games. ‘Johnno’ (John O’Mahony) had come in and there was an expectation around the place that second place wasn’t good enough.
“We had that kind of mindset. We had an inner confidence that we should be winning these games. We did win the one in ’93, and all of a sudden, that belief went further.
“We had the upper hand on them for a couple of years, and then, in ’95, we blew it in Carrick. Absolutely blew it.”
Improbable though it might seem now, by 1995, Leitrim fully considered themselves All-Ireland contenders. “We would have felt in ’95, and this was a genuine feeling around the camp, that we had the potential to win the All-Ireland that year,” says Rooney (below). “Galway went on and lost to Tyrone in the semi-final, but we would have felt that we were more experienced than Galway and that we would have had a great chance of beating Tyrone because we had beaten them in the league.
“People might say that was mad. But it wasn’t mad. We had done the calculations and it was very much on our radar.
“And that was probably the mistake we made in Carrick, having it on our radar. And there was no back door. We were 0-11 to 0-9 up and Galway scored the last three points to win by one. It was the most deflating day. That burst the bubble.”
And that was effectively that. Leitrim played in a Connacht final again in 2000, when Rooney and a few of the other survivors of ’94 were on their own final gallop.
But, mostly, it was a last hurrah for the county before fading to a dot in the wing mirrors of Galway and Mayo.
Rooney now lives in Sligo, where he coached the county’s minors in 2015, and he sees a direct parallel in the issues afflicting both counties now. “My father always said to me, ‘What’s the difference between you and a fella from Kerry?’ And the answer is: nothing. So why can’t I be as good as him? And that’s where my mind is on all of this. People say I’m naïve. I’m not.
“I don’t know if players realise the amount of work it takes,” he insists.
“I don’t think players nowadays are putting in the level of work they think they are. There’s a grey area in there. Players now in the lower leagues are not working to the same consistent level that the top teams are doing.
“Because, ultimately, players are looking at resources – but they’re the resource.
“Players don’t always realise that they can eat properly, they can condition themselves, they can practise the skills, they can do the work. They don’t need resources from the GPA or the county board because they are the resources. If you can be the strongest, the fittest, the fastest – what’s to stop you?”
This isn’t to say that Rooney believes the gap, which has become a chasm, can be quickly bridged. He is a pragmatist, albeit one whose glass tends to be half full. “If you want to do it, it’s still there to be done,” he stresses. “Look, Galway on Sunday is going to be tough. Are Leitrim going to come out of it with any credibility or learn anything out of it?
“That’s where you’re at. You’re not going to Salthill with confidence that you’re going to win the game. That’s not realistic. Even if the wind changed direction at half-time and you had it in both halves, that’s just the reality of the situation at the minute. The challenge is to get Leitrim into Division 3. And then, if you can stabilise in Division 3, Division 2 becomes a possibility.
“Then the bandwagon is moving again. It takes effort, it takes work. But what’s to stop you? Sure, isn’t it the great Cinderella story that everyone wants?”
