By John Harrington

The two most populous towns in Mayo, Castlebar and Ballina, can also lay claim to be the homes of the most successful Gaelic football clubs in the county with 36 (Ballina) and 31 (Castlebar) Moclair Cups respectively.

It doesn’t take too much of a mental leap to posit the theory that a sheer weight of numbers has helped propel them to the top of the Roll of Honour.

But then there’s Westport, the third most populous town in the county, who until this year hadn’t won a single Moclair Cup.

There’s all sorts of theories as to why the Westport punched way below their weight until relatively recently, but none of them really hold much water.

Yes, it’s true the town has always had a strong tradition in other sports so there were competing forces at play, but you could say the same for Ballina and Castlebar.

It’s probably easier to come at the conundrum from the other side of things – how have Westport gone from being consistent lightweights to the heavyweight champions of Mayo football?

It’s been very much a collective effort from many people in a club that’s now brilliantly run from top to bottom, but it’s no exaggeration to say that it wouldn’t have been possible without the Trojan work of one man – Martin Connolly.

A teacher in Rice College in Westport for 38 years until his retirement in 2018, Connolly consistently churned out successful school teams even when the club itself was at a low ebb.

He also played a big role in getting the club well organised at Bord na nÓg level, and with the school and club now moving together in unison like two well-oiled cogs, a conveyor belt of talent was put in motion that has now produced a generation of gifted footballers.

Apart from Liam Shevlin who’s a native of Louth, every member of the Westport team that defeated Ballina in the county final is a past pupil of Rice College.

And the manager of the county champions? None other than Martin Connolly who has coached these players for a good chunk of their lives between club and county.

They’ve been on a long journey together to get to this history-making moment, and that made it all the more special for Connolly himself.

“It makes it all the more satisfying alright,” Connolly told GAA.ie. “Especially as we had so many tough losses over the years in schools especially. There were a few Connacht finals that we left behind us for one reason or another. The usual, coulda, shoulda, woulda, but didn't.

"Obviously the Hogan Cup Final in 2018 which was very winnable as well, we ended up losing by a point. That was a big one. Kevin Keane and Lee Keegan played on a team defeated in an All-Ireland ‘B’ Final in 2008.

“There's been lots of ups and downs along the way. All of the team with the exception of Liam Shevlin are ex-Rice College students. Five of them on the team that played in the Hogan Cup Final in 2018.

“And all the rest of them had played in different successful and not so successful campaigns during their six years in Rice College and I was involved as well with the likes of Lee Keegan and Kevin Keane at Bord na nOg level so it goes back 15 years.

“Every little victory along the way added to the next one. We won the Mayo Intermediate Championship when I was manager in 2009. That was the first intermediate ever. That put a bit of a crack in the wall.

“We went back down again but then won the Intermediate again and went on to win the All-Ireland Intermediate which was a huge boost for the club.

“Around the same time Rice College were going well. We went up into the A Division with the first years we had in 2013 and they went on to win every Connacht Championship from first year up to senior so there’s a good group of them with a fistful of Connacht medals.”

The highlight for that group was winning Rice College’s first ever Connacht A Senior title in 2018 when they defeated St. Attracta’s, Tubbercurry in the Final.

Connolly wasn’t in his usual spot on the sideline though, because he took ill during the semi-final win over St. Jarlath’s and was taken to hospital where he required the insertion of four stents.

You can’t keep a good man down though, and Connolly was in Croke Park to watch his team lost the Hogan Cup Final to St. Ronan’s, Lurgan, by the agonising margin of one point.

That was tough to take, but by his own admission the health scare gave him a new perspective on things. As he says himself now, football is serious but it’s not that serious either.

It wasn’t long before he would experience the winning feeling again anyway. In 2019 he managed the Westport U-21s to the County A title.

That precipitated his return to the senior team hotseat where he was assisted again by his right-hand man for so many years in Rice College, Shane Conway, a highly capable coach who is a big part of the Westport success story too, both at school and club level.

In his own head, this was something of a last throw of the dice for Connolly, who had been trying and failing to win a Moclair Cup in a variety of roles for 40 years. So to finally reach the promised land was very satisfying indeed.

“It was fantastic because for me it was my fifth county senior final,” he says. “I lost one as a player with Davitts in '83 when Padraig Brogan scored 12 points or something ridiculous for Knockmore. I lost the 1991 Final then with Westport against Hollymount.

“And then I was manager of Burrishoole when they were beaten by Crossmolina. And I was coach with Ballintubber in 2017 when we were beaten by Castlebar in the final by a point. So this was my last final attempt, it was all or nothing.

“When the final whistle went it was more relief than anything else because there was a fair pressure on from myself I suppose realising that if it didn't work this year then that was going to be the end of that.

“And then from within the club it's so easy for great potential to turn into great underachievement. In the space of five years that can happen.

“If we didn't win this year there would extra pressure next year to win it and chances are it might never happen so it was great just to break that glass ceiling once and for all. God knows now they should be around for the foreseeable now.”

Most of the current Westport team are in their early twenties and there’s a cohort of gifted teenagers following hot on their heels too so the coming years look very promising for the club.

Perhaps more importantly, there’s now a culture of high achievement in the club that suggests the medium to long-term future is pretty rosy too.

“Definitely,” says Connolly. “There's been an absolute sea-change over the years. Going back to 1991 when we played in the County Final there was very little interest in the whole thing.

“There was just one or two flags around the town, that was it. Whereas this year the whole place is festooned with flags and all sorts of best wishes around the place.

“The club has won two minors, two U-21s, two Intermediates, an Intermediate All-Ireland, and now the senior in the last 12 years going back to 2009. We also won Division 2 of the Féile Peile this year, so there's another group of good young players coming through now.

“The club has a huge membership and it's all really building on the previous successes. The expectation now is that you're going to do well, that you're going to win. Whereas before that nobody took Westport seriously.

“And with good reason, because they'd never won anything really. They were always the whipping boys. They went 40 years without winning any county title from 1970 to 2009 at any level.

“So it's massive change. There's a very good structure now in the club from Bord na nÓg up. There's very good people involved who are all very well qualified and ambitious. And the players are all expecting to win things now and be in the shake-up which is the biggest change I think. The expectation now is that you're one of the top teams in the county.

“Someone actually brought it up recently that back in 2009 Westport couldn't field a minor team. Even though we had two or three county minors we couldn't field a team for the championship. And that's not that long ago.”

They’ve come quite a way in a short period of time and Martin Connolly is the sort of person who would like the credit to be spread as far and wide as possible.

But you ask those in the know, and they'll tell you none of this would have been possible were it not for the decades of graft he’s put in both with Rice College and the club itself.