Championship triumph proved elusive but it was nevertheless a very good year for Ballivor GFC. Royal County spoke to their manager Willie Keegan and suddenly found himself indulging in a bit of nostalgia. Promotion. Division Three champions. Good times for all. Yes, despite failing to realise the sweetest dream of Intermediate glory, Ballivor GFC can look back on the tribulations and triumphs of 1998 with the satisfaction that Mick Jagger, judging by his reluctance to leave the stage, has never quite found. With a quick wink, the Ballivor gaels could, indeed, say 'yes, that was a very good season' and justifiably evade censure. But they don't; or at least prudent Willie Keegan doesn't. Then again, at the beginning of our interview, it's quite difficult to get Willie to say anything at all. Willie, the manager, wants to deflect attention. Laughs and says he's the wrong person to be speaking to. As it happens, that was the only lie he told in what turned out to be a rather fruitful conversation. This writer remembers Willie Keegan well. Remembers him from the old days, which in my case are the eighties. It was when the kids weren't cheeky, and I was a kid, kicking football and on the road beside Willie Keegan's house, which had an exuberant garden. If Willie was clipping in the garden and we were kicking football, we would surreptitiously seek Willie's approval with moments of skill we thought were worthy of yellow shirts. If we fell over the kerb and grazed our knee, we quickly forgot about the knee and looked up to make sure Willie saw nothing. Phew! Willie was at the rose bushes. For us, Mr Keegan was our capacity attendance; all we needed to feel nervous when the ball rolled our way, or, as it turned out mostly, all we needed to feel inspired. His words from the garden gate could put you two goals up. And it was all because he saw the small things; the things you hoped people would see, like the left footed goal and the last-gasp tackle. He could make you feel taller, and to the smallest fella on that makeshift pitch, which was me, that meant more than a new pair of glossy runners. But what, you might ask, have these childhood revelations (that would probably make Willie blush and go wha?) got to do with Ballivor? Well, I never thought about it ... but if I did I'm sure I could have come to the conclusion that Willie Keegan, whose words were the paragon of sense and stability, would have made a very good manager indeed. Nine years after he left my boyhood estate, it seems I would've been right all along. This year there were a couple of moments when a sense of real self belief rippled through Ballivor. When they thought that, hey, you never know, Mr and Ms Intermediate might well be joining us for dinner at the end of the season and, afterwards, for the big drunken hooley that is going to destabilise the whole village. Club PRO and Secretary, Caroline Burke, remembers one of those moments as the day in June when Ballivor beat Donaghmore/Ashbourne in Kilmessan. As the Meath Chronicle had it: "A magnificent second half display saw Ballivor overturn a 0-3 to 0-5 half time deficit to defeat ..." in the end the scoreline read 0-12 to 0-8. Not quite comprehensive but that's not what Ballivor were looking for. "We always held out the hope that we would get to the Intermediate final; we believed we could, but were never that sure. Beating Donaghmore," says Caroline Burke, "really gave us confidence, because Donaghmore, over the years, had always beaten us. To beat them was an indicator of our progress. It was psychological boost more than anything else." The Donaghmore win maintained Ballivor 100 per cent record, complementing the team's opening 3-12 to 1-9 victory over last year's Junior champions, Bective. "This year was Willie's second in charge and the difference he had made is quite something,' attests Caroline. "We've always had talented players in Ballivor but we haven't always had the self belief or confidence. That's what Willie had instilled in the team - confidence, and it has made an awful difference." Mr and Ms Intermediate never did join Ballivor for that dinner. In the group stage, the men in maroon subsequently drew with Castletown and, in the crucial, deciding clash with the ultimate champions Blackhall Gaels, lost convincingly by 3-9 to 0-9. While this signalled the end of one half of Willie Keegan's roster of seasonal objectives - to reach the Intermediate semi-final - it did at least solidify the conviction to achieve the other - which was promotion from Division Three. That was realised with stylish football and handsome victories. A slim win, however, clinched them the Division 3 title - 1-13 to 2-9 over St Colmcilles. "Winning that was a bonus," Willie contends. "We are happy with the season in general, even if we fell short of our aims. We did believe that a semi-final spot in the championship was a realistic objective - but we learned some vital lessons. Next year I would like to think that we would be serious contenders for the championship." 1999 is the last of Willie Keegan's projected three years in charge. He came in with a three year plan and a grand aim, and has since moulded a team that is a nice blend of youthful exuberance and old stalwart reliability. Six minors played with Ballivor this year. But that wasn't a problem. Having helped shape their formative football days, as headmaster of the local primary school, Willie knew their ability and little nuances like the back of his hand. For him they possessed no unknowns which could inhibit his decision to include them. Anyway, on the pitch there was ample experience to guide the young tyros: there's county goalkeeper Conor Martin who alternated this season between midfield and centre back; full forward Terry Connor, a pivotal figure in the Ballivor attack, who won All-Ireland minor and U21 titles with Meath; then there's Noel Davis, a strong defender whom Keegan describes as the 'anchor of the backline; and Fergus McMahon, an accomplished dual player who lines out with the county seniors in hurling, and the U21s in football. From the outset, the former Simonstown clubman has taken this manager's job seriously. The birth of this year's campaign, November 1997, saw him adopt probably the club's most serious approach to any season yet. He brought the boys to the gym in Trim. They would need the strength, garnered throughout a perspiring winter of weights, to ride those tackles when the evenings were long. "By the time February came around and it was time to head outdoors, we had a lot of training already completed,"explains Willie. The previous year we had struggled and were in danger of being relegated. This year we were unbeaten in the league, with the exception of one game, against St Brigids," and here Willie begins to laugh because he knows that excuses are not his métier. "We played them the day after Terry Connor's stag party - all efforts to move the match failed." They were narrowly defeated and could have stolen it. He continues: "The fact that we have gone from near relegation last year to promotion this year is a good measure of the progress this team had made." The championship also went down to the very last game. August 30th in Trim against Blackhall Gaels. A deeply disappointing result. Ballivor led 0-6 to 0-4 at half time, but it was arguably what occurred just prior to the interval whistle that dictated the nature of the final 30 minutes. A Blackhall player was dismissed for a tackle on Fergus McMahon, and while ostensibly that would have appeared to put Ballivor firmly in control, the opposite - with McMahon failing to cover sufficiently from the blow - turned out to be the case. Keegan admits he should have replaced McMahon but the temptation to persist with one of the team's principle fulchrums proved too powerful. McMahons eye injury critically negated his impact and he was almost anonymous until he missed a penalty. Still, probably not even the oddest of interventions would have prevented an irrepressible Blackhall Gaels side from advancing to the knock out stages. Their second half display was goal-filled and stupendous, and it left Ballivor both sober and dazed, wondering where it all went wrong. "On the day we were beaten by the better team, but it's an experience that will stand to us for next year." Thankfully, the climax of the league campaign provided the perfect opportunity to flush away the residue of championship sadness. The final, against St Colmcilles, was all about grit and spirit and coming back from the dead. It was a topsy-turvy game, which for long periods Ballivor led - not with three minutes to go however. At this crucial juncture, they trailed by three points and their chances looked as rosy. Only the absurdly optimistic voiced hope, and what subsequently happened, in an utterly rip-roaring denouément, proved unbelievably that these people weren't deluded. Brian Flynn scored a goal and Terry Connor knocked over a pointed free, and it was as simple but ecstatic as that. Ballivor celebrated. This barnstorming conclusion encapsulated the very reasons why they will again be one of the forerunners in next season's Intermediate championship. Already Willie Keegan, their prudent but enthusiastic manager, is looking forward to it. The Ballivor team which beat St Colmcilles: C Martin, C Keogh, B Perry, C Connor, D Cunningham, C Feeney, D Davis, F McMahon, N Davis, B Flynn (1-1), C McCarthy, P Kavanagh (0-1), T Smith (0-3), P Feeney (0-1), T Connor (0-7). Tweet

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