It wasn’t meant to go like that.
It wasn’t Lee Keegan’s name that was meant to be called out at the All-Star awards it was meant to be Brian Fenton’s.
That was the common consensus anyway, Fenton had a great year.
‘Fix’ ‘Snub’ ‘Disgrace’ were the initial reactions and then the dust settled. As time went on people started to come round on the fact Keegan was the best player in the country last year because he was.
And Keegan showed in abundance why he deserved that award by having another stellar year for Mayo.
The drawn game against Roscommon showed it all when nothing was going Mayo’s way Keegan led by example.
And Sunday was no different, with Connolly benched the Westport man was tasked with marking the man who was nominated alongside Keegan and Fenton for Player of the Year in Ciaran Kilkenny.
Dublin’s attack usually goes through the Castleknock man, not on Sunday as Lee Keegan put him in his proverbial pocket. Kilkenny was barely anywhere to be seen whereas Keegan came away with a goal to his name and his job done, it still wasn’t enough to win though.
Speaking on the Sunday game about Keegan, Joe Brolly made it very clear he was a fan:
“The man who really stood up for them was Lee Keegan. In the drawn game against Roscommon when they got nobody he dragged them up,” Brolly said.
“And again today I though Lee Keegan was superb, he took Ciaran Kilkenny out of the game.
“He had 66 possessions in the semi-final against Tyrone, he had eight today.”
Think about that, the link up player and all round unreal footballer that is Ciaran Kilkenny went from 66 possessions to eight, that is 58 fewer possessions.
Keegan took him out of the game, he did the same thing to Enda Smith against Roscommon and will very rarely lose his battle, Kilkenny is usually the go to guy to get things going but he certainly wasn’t when Keegan was marking him.
