McKeever focused on tough challenge ahead

They might be the reigning champions, the undoubted kings of the castle but there is no chance Padraig McKeever will become blasé anytime soon about the fact that Simonstown Gaels are appearing in another Senior Football Championship county final. 

The 26-year-old Simonstown Gaels captain has tasted too many bitter defeats, too many setbacks on big championship occasions, not to appreciate the fact that when the big days come around they should be savoured. 
Since he was 17 McKeever has being involved in the Simonstown Gaels senior set-up and over the last nine years he has gone through the full gamut of emotions, as the team's fortunes have fluctuated.  
"In my time in the senior set up we really experienced the highs and lows of senior football. We went from relegation play-offs to the high of winning the Keegan Cup of last year, we've been through it all," he said. 
That relegation showdown was against St Ultan's in 2010 and McKeever, who was then a youngster at the foothills of his career, might have been forgiven for thinking that he and the Gaels would be consigned to a relentless battle to stay in the top grade. 
However, teams and fortunes change and Simonstown Gaels reached the Promised Land last year, something McKeever says has eased the pressure on him and his colleagues rather than created any suffocating sense of expectation. 
"I know we won it last year, but there really isn't much pressure on us, we've got the monkey off our backs, we've got that first title. Nobody really expected us to get back to the final again, but the lads have shown the same hunger as they did last year." 
That appetite for another crown was most clearly illustrated in the way the Gaels came back from an 11-point deficit in the quarter-final against Dunboyne to book a place in Sunday's showdown; the comeback fuelled by two goals apiece from Mark McCabe and McKeever. In the semi-final win over Wolfe Tones McKeever again found the net. 
"We knew that if we could get a goal or two we had a chance. The first-half of that Dunboyne test was probably our worst performance of the year, while the second-half was probably our best."
McKeever, adds that while it is Simonstown's way to look closely at the opposition before games, ultimately it's about getting their own house in order.
"We can't be naive enough not to look at the opposition, you have to look at the kind of danger they pose, but you also have to focus on ourselves. Mainly we'd focus on our own game and what we need to do," said the Simonstown Gaels captain.
There was a chance that as a youngster McKeever might have ended up playing in the colours of Navan Rugby Club rather than the light blue of Simonstown Gaels. His family is closely associated with the oval-ball game as his father Declan is an ex-Navan player and in recent years he filled in as President of the club while his brother Bryan is club captain. 
"I played for Navan at under-age but it was always Gaelic football that was the primary sport really. Maybe it was the fact that most of my friends play for Simonstown Gaels and I went to St Pat's (St Patrick's, CS Navan) where there was an emphasis on football rather than rugby."
Double-chasing Simonstown are glad he did.