GARY Mohan jokes that “brute force and ignorance” can take you a long way but there’s much more to the Truagh Gaels full-forward than his obvious physicality.
Six feet-plus and built like a brick outhouse, Mohan also has the skills and finishing ability to carve out a successful career as a full-forward at inter-county level if he puts the hard work into developing them.
After featuring briefly for Monaghan during Malachy O’Rourke’s time as Farney county manager, he recovered from a succession of injuries to spearhead Truagh’s run to last year’s county final.
His performances in club colours didn’t go unnoticed by the current Monaghan management and Seamus McEnaney recalled him for the successful Dr McKenna Cup campaign. Since then, Mohan has started against Tyrone and, last Sunday, Mayo.
He scored two first half points against James Horan’s westerners but they weren’t enough to hold off a determined Mayo at Clones and ultimately Monaghan lost a game that went right to the wire. Monaghan have missed late chances in both Division One outings so, instead of sitting alongside Armagh on four points at the top of the table, they find themselves in the bottom half.
“That last ball in – we could have got a goal out of it. Darren (Hughes) jumped and went to flick it in and the ball hit off their ’keeper and Ryan (McAnespie) went to pull on it but it was stopped on the line unfortunately,” said a disappointed Mohan after Sunday’s loss at Clones.
“We had a tough game against Tyrone in Omagh and we said we were going to give it to Mayo here at home. We did in the first half but they came out stronger than we did after half-time and we can do nothing but just progress on to the next game. Division One is always going to be tight and we were expecting Mayo to come out and give us it all, as they do every time, and they did.
“There were a lot of good moves from us but obviously there are things we need to work on – if there wasn’t, we would have won – so we’ll learn from our mistakes and push on.”
Jack McCarron, Mohan’s partner in the full-forward line, finished the game with 1-3 but the Monaghan attack wasn’t able to get into the game after half-time at Clones. Mayo cut off the supply line in the second half and Jason Doherty’s goal was the turning point in the game.
“Myself and Jack are working well in training and there are a lot of other boys helping us up front too,” said Mohan, who was up against the vastly-experienced Aidan O’Shea for a spell in the second half. O’Shea was one of the All-Ireland final veterans Mayo were able to bring in during the second half and they had a considerable impact on a game Monaghan led on six occasions.
“Aidan O’Shea is an experienced player and he’s going to bring a lot to their team but we have experience as well - we have Darren there and we brought on Conor McManus who has the same amount of experience as Aidan O’Shea,” said Mohan.
“We bring on youth and we bring on experience and put them both together and hopefully keep progressing.”
