A PADDY’S DAY parade float with nobody on it was doing the WhatsApp rounds on Monday.
It was branded “Leitrim senior football team 2025,” as the deserted trailer sat in a street full of flag-waving punters.
To be honest, I laughed as the image pinged around various groups throughout the day. It was as witty as you’ll get.
On closer inspection it looks like it was AI-generated, and plenty of good-humoured Leitrim people saw the humour in it.
But all jokes aside, their failure to field a team for their NFL Division 3 clash with Fermanagh on Sunday was not good.
Steven Poacher’s men were already relegated back to the basement after losing all four games before that.
They gave high-flying Offaly a huge scare on March 2, as the Faithful won out 1-13 to 1-9 with square ball cries after John Furlong’s goal falling on deaf ears.
But the lift from that battling performance was torn to shreds when it emerged on Saturday they were conceding the Fermanagh fixture.
In fairness to Poacher, six of his panel are with Barry McWeeney’s under-20’s, who start their Connacht championship campaign against Galway tonight in Cloone.
When it came to Sunday’s senior game, they all opted out. Injuries left the Down native with 13 fit players, and he saw no option but to pull the pin.
Sure, Leitrim are no powerhouse but are a footballing county as proud as any. Their Connacht championship winners of 1994 are still lauded as Gods, when they won the Nestor Cup for just the second time.
2024 finished with huge hope after Andy Moran guided them out of Division 4, and he insisted there was a lot to be excited about after a Tailteann Cup preliminary quarter-final loss to Wicklow.
But by July, Moran was gone. His coach and former Cavan boss Mickey Graham – who led his native county to Ulster championship glory in 2020 – was swiftly handed the reins.
It left the people of Leitrim content that the upward trajectory would continue, and Graham said as much when he spoke to this paper on October 2nd last year.
Exactly a week later, he was gone. Graham cited circumstances “beyond his control,” but a heave of players refused to commit to the cause.
The Cavan Gaels clubman promptly surfaced as Galway’s new coach, irking those he left behind.
But a whopping 11 players had already gone through Leitrim’s exit door, decimating the squad.
Darragh Rooney, Ryan O’Rourke, Conor Reynolds and Donal Wrynn are the most notable absentees and have been sorely missed, but how did it come to this?
Conceding a senior inter-county fixture seems beyond belief, even for a county of Leitrim’s limited population and resources.
Steven Poacher is a high-quality, progressive coach and manager and a man of integrity, and we have no doubt this was a very last resort.
In fairness, there was a lot of bad luck at play here too. Poacher lost goalkeepers Daire O’Shea and Brian Cull to head injuries in one foul swoop to sum it all up, and you cannot legislate for freak occurrences like that.
But at the same time, there are hundreds of club players who would have relisged the chance to fill the void, if even if it was only once.
Surely his fit players aired their own frustrations, and did everything in their power to get the game played.
OUT OF RETIREMENT
Past players certainly did – as revealed in SunSport today that former star Emlyn Mulligan reached out to the manager and was willing to tog in order to prevent this catastrophe.
A number of other former players were reportedly willing to do the same, and just sit on the bench to make up the numbers and ensure a Leitrim team took to the pitch.
For genuine football people in the county, this was a matter of pride – and they feel that’s been damaged.
We totally understand Poacher’s predicament and player welfare must always take precedent too.
Throwing in a player not fully recovered from an injury is never the way to go, but it feels like the situation was completely avoidable too. Former stars and current club players were ready to answer the call.
Instead, they were reduced to an empty Paddy’s day float at a fictional parade.
