Sligo's Greatest: Mickey Kearins

By Arthur Sullivan

Michéal Kearins, perhaps better known as Mickey, is commonly regarded in Sligo as the greatest footballer to have ever played for the county.

He has all the credentials. Named on the 'Non All-Ireland winner' Team of the Century in 1984 in the right half-forward position, he also won an All Star with Sligo in 1971.

He played for Sligo for nearly 20 years, from the early 1960s until the late 1970s, and was a central figure when they won what was only their second ever Connacht title in 1975. He scored a remarkable 36 goals and 1,158 points in his 215 games for Sligo - a tally that bears comparison with anyone, from any county in any era.

As well as his exploits with Sligo, Kearins was a key player for Connacht at a time when the Railway Cup was still a very significant national competition. He was on the winning teams of 1967 and 1969, the latter being Connacht's most recent win in the competition until they won it earlier this season.

In recognition of Kearins' achievements, he was recently inducted into the GAA Hall of Fame at the GAA Museum in Croke Park - alongside Mick O'Dywer (Kerry), Noel Skehan (Kilkenny) and Pat McGrath (Waterford).

However, perhaps the most telling tribute to Kearins' greatness is not in the bullet points of his career achievements - the medals or the individual awards - but in the simple words of Mick O'Dwyer, who said quietly at the induction event at Croke Park recently: "Michéal Kearins was a really great bit of stuff."

But Kearins himself is certainly not overly eager to talk up his achievements. The 70-year-old Dromard native is very quietly spoken, and one could be forgiven for mistaking him for someone other than a Gaelic football legend. When asked to reflect on being inducted into the Hall of Fame, Kearins was quick to highlight what he saw as the main issue of his career - his failure to play in an All-Ireland final.

"Well it is a great honour for our family and for myself and for the club and for the county to be here," he told GAA.ie at the event in Croke Park, "But nothing would compare with playing in an All-Ireland final and that's the one thing I missed out on. We just weren't good enough to get to a final."

The closest Kearins came to achieving the feat was in 1975, when Sligo won the Connacht Senior Football Championship, beating Mayo in the final after a replay. It was the only time in Kearins' long career that they managed to emerge from Connacht, and unfortunately for them, they came up against an emerging power in the All-Ireland semi-final - O'Dwyer's young Kerry team that would go on to dominate Gaelic football for the next decade.

"The Connacht campaign probably was ok but the semi-final was a disaster," said Kearins darkly. "Nobody knew how good Kerry were at the time but everybody knows now how good they were. That was the start of it for them."

He marked seven-time All-Ireland winner John O'Keeffe on the day, a daunting challenge for anybody, and he wasn't overly pleased with his performance. The memory of a missed penalty in the early stages of the game lingers.

"I missed a penalty on the day, early on. We were two points to nothing up and I missed a penalty. Now I'm not saying we'd have won but it would have lifted us." It's unlikely that it would have made much difference though, as Kerry ultimately blew Sligo away. John Egan and Pat Spillane weighed in with 3-3 between them as Kerry coasted to a 3-13 to 0-5 victory.

Unfortunately for Kearins, that semi-final appearance came too late in the day, as by then he was 32 and edging towards the end of his career. He feels that Sligo had a better team in the early 1970s, especially in 1971, when they reached the Connacht final and drew with Galway, before subsequently losing the replay to the Tribesmen by a point.

In the mid 1960s too, there were near misses. In 1964 and 1965, Sligo lost narrowly in both years to Galway, in the Connacht semi-final and final respectively. Galway went on to win All-Irelands in both those years, as part of their three-in-a-row team, and Kearins remembers those games clearly, and in particular his battles with John Donnellan, the iconic Dunmore MacHales and Galway defender.

He started out with the Sligo seniors over 50 years ago, fresh from the minor ranks. "Sligo were fairly mediocre at the time," he remembered. "A lot of old players and I only played maybe one or two years with maybe 10 of the team. Then a new bunch came in in 1968 or 1969. The minor team went to the All-Ireland that year (1968) and Cork beat them by a point.

"After that six or seven of that minor team came in and we were fairly good for a couple of years then. Galway beat us in the Connacht final in a replay by a point (1971) and they went to the All-Ireland and Offaly beat them. So for two or three seasons we were reasonably good then. But we were always short the two or three players more that would have made us a really good team."

While Kearins didn't enjoy any big wins with Sligo at Croke Park during his career, he did manage it with Connacht, with whom he won Railway Cup medals in 1967 (v Ulster) and 1969 (v Munster).

The Railway Cup was a famously prominent competition back then, with the finals held every St. Patrick's Day, often attracting huge crowds to Croke Park. In an era when only the biggest games were televised, and when only the absolute top counties played games in Croke Park, it was a chance for supporters to see top players from the less successful counties, such as Kearins.

"For the likes of myself, Gerry O'Malley, Dermot Earley (both Roscommon) and Packy McGarty (Leitrim), it was a great chance to play on the biggest stage. And it was a big deal, just as big as a provincial final today for example. Not much heed is paid to it now but in those years it was a big competition."

In Kearins' long career, he played with and against many great players. He names Galway's Seán Purcell as the greatest player he ever saw, although he never played against him. "Fantastic, you could play him anywhere," he remembers of the famously versatile Purcell, who was known as "the Master".

But what about the greatest player he ever played against? "The best player I ever played against was Brian McEniff of Donegal. He would never foul you but he was always able to play you. A great defender," he says of the Bundoran man, who grew up just a short spin from Kearins, a little further north from Dromard on the north west Atlantic coast.

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Michéal Kearins was recently inducted into the Hall of Fame at the GAA Museum. Click here to read more