By John Harrington

In an era of the game where strength and conditioning has transformed your average inter-county player into a serious physical specimen, Kevin McLoughlin doesn’t quite conform to the new norm.

He’s a will-_o'-the-_wisp type of footballer who snipes and shimmies his way through opposition defences rather than powers through gaps.

His vision, athleticism, and scoring ability more than make up for the fact he doesn’t possess the broadest shoulders in the game.

He does his gym-work assiduously the same as every other top player, but his focus is to enhance his ability to play football rather than pack on unnecessary kilos of muscle.

“The number one goal in doing you gym work in my opinion is to prepare you for game-time - to make sure that you are fit and injury prevention,” says McLoughlin.

“A lot of the gym work is designed to allow us play at our best. Footballers aren't designed to be power lifters, to go into a gym and lift crazy amount of weights.

“The aim is to prepare ourselves for a 70-minute game that mainly involves running. The norm of the county footballer is physically very strong. But it's horses for courses - it depends where you play and the style you play.

“A guy around the middle of the pitch needs to be taller and stronger. Gym work is important but not for the reason most people think.”

Whatever McLoughlin does in the gym it clearly works because he’s been one of the best footballers in the country for over 10 years now.

We’re used to seeing him in the green and red of Mayo, but he’s been just as impressive in recent weeks in the saffron and blue of his club Knockmore who play Roscommon champions Padraig Pearses in Sunday’s AIB Connacht Club SFC Final.

It’s a challenge everyone in the club is relishing because they didn’t have to opportunity to play a provincial campaign after winning the 2020 Mayo Championship due to Covid.

“It has been enjoyable,” says McLoughlin. “When we won the county in 2020 a lot of the lads were relatively happy we had won that. We didn't overly think about it, but still a lot of guys in the weeks leading up to Christmas were saying it would have been great to have a go at the other sides in Connacht - to see where we would stack up.

“That was a motivation going into the following year. The obvious goal was to win the county again and then to see how we would fare against the best in Connacht.”

Last year’s County title win was Knockmore’s first since 1997, which counted as a significant famine for a club with such a proud tradition of success.

“It was massive, a huge achievement for us,” says McLoughlin. “A few of us are on the older side but it still quite a young team - three of the guys were minor the year before.

“We knew we had a good team and the start of the year we knew we had a good chance, but we also knew that things had to fall our way; we had to play to our strengths.

“I think this year things haven't been as fluent for whatever reason. This year we have learned to be a bit more dogged, we have grown a small bit. We're not the same team we were in 2020.”

Knockmore is a big but rural parish between Foxford and Ballina where football is very much the daily topic of conversation, so Sunday’s Final has the place buzzing.

“One of my team-mates Kieran King said after the county final that when you're born in Knockmore there is very little else you can be doing apart from playing Gaelic or soccer,” says McLoughlin.

“Gaelic is the more dominant sport. A lot of work has been done underage in the last 15 years and that is why we have kept a reasonably good team of over the last two decade. The emphasis has been on development to ensure we have a good senior team.”

McLoughlin was glad to have a club campaign to focus his mind again after Mayo’s 2021 All-Ireland Final loss to Tyrone, the Knockmore man’s sixth time to experience the devastation of defeat on the biggest day of all.

“It was one way to keep your mind off things to go and play football again,” he said. “We played a league game against Charlestown a week later. It was tough going back that day but once you're out on the pitch you tend to forget those things and focus on what's on hand.

“There are only a few of us involved with Mayo on the team. For the rest of the players on the Knockmore team, the All-Ireland, to a certain extent, didn't mean awful lot to them. Their goal all year was to play for Knockmore and play well.

“When we came back, Mayo's loss did not bring them down a peg. I was taken by the drive of the players when I came back - the desire to play well and bring success to Knockmore again.”