#TheToughest: Why playing in an All-Ireland club final was the best and worst experience of my GAA life

JOE’s Conor Heneghan played in an All-Ireland Junior Club Final with his club, Mayo outfit Kiltimagh, in Croke Park in 2010.

Playing well and winning by two points with a minute left on the clock, Kiltimagh conceded a last-minute goal and while they forced extra-time, they eventually lost by two points.

Here, Conor recounts the day and tells why it was both the best and worst experience of his GAA life.

*** The first thing that comes to mind when I think back to the 2010 All-Ireland Final is not of anything that happened out on the pitch, but an incident immediately prior to the game that scared the hell out of me and all the Kiltimagh squad. There we were, 40 or so lads trying to cope with nerves ahead of the biggest game of most of our lives, when the team bus came to a shuddering halt just as we were about to pull up outside the Croke Park dressing rooms. Now, Johnny ‘Tank’ Lydon, our bus driver, is one of the safest pilots around and God forbid he’d risk the safety of the players and management, especially with his six sons – all of whom were togging out on the day – on board. It turns out that nobody had informed Johnny of the height restrictions that applied to vehicles driving in and around the stadium and when the roof of the bus collided with some metal hanging overhead, it produced a screech so loud that it sent shivers down the spine of everyone who heard it. And not good shivers either. As if we weren’t nervous enough already! If anything, it concentrated the minds and at just the right time too. When you’re not used to an occasion of that magnitude, you nearly have to remind yourself that you have a game to play because it’s easy to get distracted by the novelty of an All-Ireland Final in Croke Park with your club. Novelties like the buzz around the town in the weeks before the game. Staying in a hotel in Dublin the night before. Getting a Garda escort into the ground. The dressing rooms. The huge indoor warm-up area. The carpet-like surface on the Croke Park pitch. To most of us, all of that was completely new and though we had familiarised ourselves with Croker the day before, had a walk around the pitch and took it all in, the day of the game itself is a different proposition entirely. It didn’t take long to bring me back down to earth with a bang anyway, because as the teams were listed out on the big screen, ‘No. 6: D Heneghan’ flashed up in giant letters. Many pictures were taken to record it for posterity and needless to say, my brother Darragh has been living off his accidental fame since. As for the match itself, it might be a cliché, but as far as I can remember, once the whistle blew it was just like any other game and the occasion didn’t seem to affect us at all. In fact, we probably played as well as, if not better than, we had played all season. Six years on, I’m still convinced we were the better side and I distinctly remember looking up at the clock on the big screen, seeing that there were two minutes left – we were two points up and motoring well at this stage – and allowing myself to think that we were going to do it. Then, disaster. Our opponents, Castlegregory of Kerry, launched a speculative free-kick towards our goal at the Davin End and the ball somehow made its way through a sea of bodies and ended up, untouched, in the back of the net. It’s something that still haunts me today; it was as if the O’Neill’s was travelling in slow-motion but all of us were powerless to stop it. We rallied and a teammate of mine, Ciarán Charlton, nailed a tricky free to bring us to extra-time, but a lot of us, myself included, were spent at that stage and we went down by a couple of points in the end. It’s hard to describe the disappointment that followed because, being honest about it, I’ve tried not to think about it too much since. As anyone that plays any sport knows, defeat is that much harder to take when you know victory was within your grasp. It comes up every now and again but I wouldn’t have had too many ‘Could you imagine what it would have been like if we had won?’ conversations because you’ll only drive yourself daft thinking about it. All of us were desperately low afterwards but that was when our supporters came into their own. Kiltimagh people had travelled from all over to make it to the big game and as for the town itself, there mustn’t have been a soul left in the place because it seemed as if they were all in Croke Park. And they were brilliant. The reception they gave us when we went to greet them immediately after the game is something that will stay with me for a long, long time and it was the same when we arrived back West to be greeted by bonfires a few hours later. Yes, we lost but there aren’t many clubs in the country who get to play in an All-Ireland Final and we certainly gave it our best shot. For the vast majority of club players, it will be the biggest game of their lives and my advice to anyone involved is to savour every minute of it, before, during and afterwards... because it all goes by in a flash. Brought to you by AIB GAA, proudly backing Club & County. Follow AIB GAA on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.