Ballina’s Lee finds a new home by the Shannon

GAA: AIB Munster Club Junior Football Championship Semi-Final Preview

BALLINA v MOUNT SION

Borrisoleigh

Saturday 18th December

Throw-in @ 1.30pm (E.T.)

Referee: Cormac Dineen (Cork)

By Thomas Conway

Located 26 kilometres north of Galway city, Headford is a relatively small west of Ireland town, not far from the eastern shore of Lough Corrib. Tom Lee is a native of the area, a man who honed his football skills during his formative years with Headford GAA club, but for almost a decade now, Lee has been playing ball Shannonside.

This time however, it’s slightly different. After several seasons spent in the middle with the Limerick senior footballers, the 6-foot 2-inch secondary school teacher is now a vital component of another Shannonside outfit - the Ballina Junior footballers.

Having joined the staff in Nenagh CBS straight after college in 2006, Lee moved into the Ballina area about a year ago, and a move to the Tipperary club logically followed. Some years previously, an impressive first season with Limerick side Ballylanders had opened the door to an unexpected inter-county career, as the present-day centre-back explains.

“I’ve been touring around,” he laughed.

“I played with Headford since I was about five or six, then ended up going to college in UL, so I was travelling up and down to Galway. That just became too difficult, so I decided to move club to Ballylanders, then played with them for five or six years, ended up winning a county with them (in 2014), and got called into the Limerick squad.

“I wasn’t expecting anything like that to happen - I’m a decent footballer, but it was a big surprise. It happened after my first year with Ballylanders, so yeah, it was a huge surprise.”

Lee's humility is unquestionable. He talks himself down, but also makes some interesting points regarding the barriers to inter-county selection in his native Galway. In his view, senior club football is almost a mandatory requirement for promotion to the Galway seniors, leading to the exclusion of talented players from junior and intermediate clubs such as Headford.

In North Tipperary, you could argue that the problem is slightly more nuanced, with players lacking the opportunity to play competitive inter-club football on a consistent basis. Lee acknowledges the fact that hurling remains the predominant code in the region, but as he explains, that appetite for the big ball gradually increased as the club's hurling fortunes faded. Numbers then started to soar, with 41 players listed for the Munster quarter-final against Mountcollins.

“Obviously hurling is probably number one with Ballina, but at the start of the year we had a handful of football lads training,” he recalls.

“And then it kind of got a bit of momentum, and next thing, the hurling finished up. Throughout the summer before that, we had about ten or twelve lads training, but the hurling lads would usually come over after their own training to do a bit with us. Then suddenly we had twenty lads, and then twenty-five, but to have over forty lads togged is incredible.”

Mount Sion are an established force in Waterford club hurling, running Ballygunner to within two points in this year’s county semi-final. Lee expects the Waterford side to transpose many of their hurling qualities onto the football field, including an abrasive physicality and strong winning mentality. It will be a battle, influenced heavily by conditions, as is the reality at this time of year.

Looking beyond the next game is always a precarious business, so if you’re a Ballina reader maybe avoid these last few lines. Should the Tipp champions overcome Mount Sion this weekend, awaiting them is a Munster Final showdown against either Boherbue of Cork, or Kerry’s Gneeveguilla. The latter battled their way to an extra-time county final victory over Skellig Rangers, while Boherbue captured an historic first Cork Junior ‘A’ Football title when they beat Ballinhassig. Neither have any notable inter-county stars within their ranks, but neither should be underestimated. Anyway, that’s a story for another day in mid-January, but if it is to be a story at all, then Ballina will have to negotiate the challenge of Mount Sion next weekend.