Patrick Fox says it was a team effort from Mullinalaghta that limited Paul Mannion’s influence in Sunday’s Leinster Club SFC final.

St Columba’s full back Fox produced a textbook man-marking job on the Kilmacud Crokes dangerman as the Longford champions recorded a historic victory in Tullamore. His efforts have been widely lauded in the aftermath of Mullinalaghta’s magical victory but the Man of the Match says his team-mates did as much as he did in addressing the very obvious threat posed by Mannion:

“Well, yeah, there was lots of help there as well. In fairness to the boys, especially the half-back line, a couple of times that he was out in front of me Gary Rogers was behind me, Donie McElligott was behind me, they were doubling up,” he told The Irish Sun.

“I knew it and that helped. But Paul is a super footballer. Mickey Graham just said to me, ‘Go out and do your best’. I knew he was going to get on ball and kick a couple of scores.

“It’s just down to it being a team shift, everyone goes out and tries to do their best in their individual battles. If we won nine or ten of those individual battles we’d probably win the game and I think we did that.

"When Paul was in the full-forward line, I took him. When he went out to half-forward line, Donie took him. He spent most of his time in the full-forward line, we didn’t go out to change our game plan. You can get too hung up on what the other team are doing and take away from yourself. We kept our shape and just played as we always played.”

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