John Mitchells' dream of a return to intermediate football ended in double disappointment in 2005. With a semi-final place beckoning, the Ballybailie battlers lost a group play-off in the JFC before being edged into second place in Division Three of the all-county league. Thus, after challenging on both fronts, the Mitchells finished the year empty-handed and will have to make do with junior football once more in '06. For the second year in a row, John Mitchells' JFC aspirations came unstuck in a replay. They lost a semi-final replay to eventual winners St Mochtas in 2004 and were comprehensively defeated by neighbours Sean McDermotts in a group play-off in '05. Worse still, the Seans also finished above them on the Division Three table, thereby denying the Mitchells promotion to intermediate grade via the league. All of which means another year in the basement division. The real disappointment is that the Mitchells might well have won either of the two main junior competitions in 2005 but slipped up when it mattered most. Pipped in the three-team Group B section of the JFC, John Mitchells can reflect ruefully on another tale of what might have been. They had a bye for the first round before opening their account with a comfortable 3-11 to 2-5 victory over Dundalk Young Irelands at Knockbridge on August 18. Victory over the Seans in the last game would have secured progress to the knockout stage, but the teams finished level, 1-9 apiece, at the Clans grounds on September 18. A play-off was thus required to determine who would top the group and advance to a semi-final meeting with Group A runners-up St Kevins. Alas, only a week after the original meeting, the Mitchells lost to the Seans by fourteen points. That was that. There was still a chance of securing promotion via the league. John Mitchells and Sean McDermotts had set the pace at the head of Division Three all year and the race developed into a two-horse affair. Though they beat junior champions Dowdallshill home and away, the White & Reds lost both four-pointers to the McDermotts. A Round Nine home defeat to the would-be winners proved very costly and the league finished on an unsatisfactory note when Dowdallshill failed to field for their final round clash with the Seans and McDermotts were awarded the points and the Macardle Cup. The runners-up in Division Three get nothing. John Mitchells goalkeeper Darren Hickey looks back upon the events of '05 with more than a trace of disappointment evident in his voice. The Dublin-based Garda notes: "It was disappointing, especially considering that we started the year so well (with three straight wins in the league). The replay against the Seans really knocked the stuffing out of us, and everything went downhill from there. Training wasn't as good and things just seemed to fall apart." What happened? Where did it go wrong? How could the Mitchells draw with a team one week and then lose to the same opposition by 0-15 to 0-1 the following weekend? "Brendan Reilly's injury was a big factor. He did his knee in the drawn game and he was a huge loss. Brendan is a big, big player at junior level and we can play a lot better when he's in the side. Having said that, we have plenty of other good footballers too and we should have done much better in the second game against the Seans. "We let it slip the first day. We dominated the drawn game for long periods but we missed some good chances and gave away a few soft scores. The most disappointing aspect is that we should have put them away that day. "The second day, they were much hungrier and more determined. They were first to every ball. They played with the wind in the first half and used it to great effect. The manner of the defeat was much more disappointing than the fact that we were out of the championship." No team likes to suffer heavy defeats and John Mitchells are no different. The group play-off drubbing numbed the players and left them dazed for the remainder of their league programme. "The belief just wasn't there for the last three games of the league. We lost two of those and any chance we had of winning the division was gone. Going into the last round, we had to beat Young Irelands and hope that Dowdallshill beat the Seans. We knew at half time that Dowdallshill hadn't travelled, so we had nothing to play for. That's not to take anything away from Young Irelands, though, because they beat us fair and square on the day." The team was managed by Gerry Roe alongside selectors Ray Sweeney and Colm Carey (a father of Ciaran Carey who transferred to the Mitchells from Hunterstown at the start of the year). "The three lads gave it a good shot," says Darren Hickey, who is now a permanent fixture between the posts. Was promotion on the Ballybailie agenda at the start of the year? "The year didn't start particularly well as we had a lot of injuries early on but we beat the Kevins away in our first league game [4-6 to 0-11] and that gave everybody a boost. We got a few wins under our belt and realised that we probably were in with a good chance of winning the league, which would have been a great bonus. Division Three offered us our most realistic path back to intermediate football. "We played Annaghminnon away in July and won by 16 points, but then we didn't have another game for nine or ten weeks, which was frustrating at a time when we really wanted the matches to come thick and fast. We lost our momentum, but I suppose it was the same for the Seans and Dowdallshill, so we can't really use that as an excuse." Darren has become a regular with the Mitchells since transferring from the Marys five years ago. He was on the side that won the Kevin Mullen Shield in 2002 and the Mitchells also finished runner-up in the league that year. He's hoping that things will take a definite turn for the better in '06: "When you are junior, you set out at the start of every year with the aim of moving up to intermediate. At the moment, there are only six teams in junior ranks and we're playing the same sides over again, which isn't ideal. But we'll see who'd available at the start of the year and we'll give it a shot. "We should be good enough to beat anyone on our day. We have players like Carl Courtney, James Clarke and Alan Mackin, and a lot of the team that went through 1998 unbeaten, so we have nothing to fear. With the Westerns and the Fechins coming down, we know we won't get anything easy. We haven't been too far off but we're just struggling to get across that line. "But you are always hopeful. We know we can compete at junior level and we have a lot of players who should be good enough to play at a higher grade. We just need to get a break. We were good enough for most of 2005 but didn't get the luck at crucial times. "Two teams out of six will be going up next year and hopefully we'll be one of those…" Tweet

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