Déjà Vu All Over Again

Meath 2-15
Mayo 1-15

Mayo sleepwalked their way into the whirring blades of a Royal combine harvester today in Croke Park. As Jack O’Connor has remarked, the last thing that a team who are warm favourites in a game can do is give the opposition a chance to find their feet. Mayo didn’t do that against Roscommon, but they did against Meath today, and paid the price.

Mayo started better than Meath but they did not make that superiority count. Then, as the game wore on, belief grew in Meath while it withered proportionally in Mayo, as Mayo’s leaders failed to lead.

After a poor start, Meath led by a point at half-time and Mayo were in deep trouble. The substitution of Conor Mortimer for Tom Parsons exposed just how limited Mayo’s tactical options were, and every substitute that Mayo brought on underlined it more and more, as the hole got deeper and deeper. By the last ten minutes, Mayo were playing with their heads down, while Meath were cracking the glory points into the Canal End, smiling sheepishly to the crowd as another one whizzed over the bar.

There was no Plan B for Mayo today. When Tom Parsons was failing to win aerial ball in the first twenty minutes Mayo did not send it in low, or run with it. They just hoped that things would go right.

You can’t hope. Hope is no good. You have to make things happen if you want to win. Winning is about knowing, not hoping.

Liam O’Malley coming on for Donal Vaughan, who was suffering in the corner, is another example of hoping, rather than knowing. If Liam O’Malley wasn’t good enough to start ahead of Donal Vaughan in the first place, why bring him on?

The only reason to do so is because you’re hoping for the best, and you can’t do that. If O’Malley isn’t good enough and Vaughan is suffering, you have to look further down the bench, and not second guess yourself about O’Malley. James Nallen was the obvious replacement for Vaughan, because of his vast experience. Why wasn’t he brought on? How much worse can it have gotten? And if Nallen isn’t good enough, why is he on the panel? It doesn’t add up.

The talk in the media about a “new” Mayo, working for each other and coming back from adversity as they have not done before, is just soft chat. Mayo did not get to four All-Ireland finals in the past thirteen years without working for each other or coming back from adversity.

The notion of Mayo teams not working for each other was a sideways crack at a notion that Mayo had players in the past who played for themselves and not the team. That theory is not supported by the facts. Those teams got to All-Ireland finals. They can't have been that bad. But when outsiders say Mayo overachieved, Mayo tug their forelocks, instead of saying the All-Ireland final is exactly where Mayo deserved to be in those years. And just how good being in the All-Ireland final is is underlined by every year Mayo are not.

The point is that the 2004 and 2006 teams, and 1996 and 1997 teams, were better than they have been given credit for. Losing those All-Irelands hurt, but what bliss to have got that far. Two games further than this year or last year, three further than 2007, four further than 2006.

Your correspondent suggested in this space that anything after the Connacht title this year would be jam, and there is now no more jam this year for Mayo. The Nestor Cup is all Mayo 2009 are worth, as conclusively proved by events today at Croke Park. This does not mean the Mayo team didn’t try their best – of course they did. They're just not good enough.

It’s hard to see how James Nallen and David Heaney will have the stomach for any more of this and if that’s the case then that’s two more Mayo giants who will finish their careers without celtic crosses. How sad. How bitterly, bitterly sad.

There was an opinion abroad that this semi-final didn’t matter, that whoever won it was a lamb to a Kerry slaughter anyway. But An Spailpín isn’t so sure. This win will stand to Meath, and they could derive a lot from it. Because this has happened before, one week less than seventeen years ago.

On August 16th, 1992, another red-above-the-green Mayo team played another team in yellow in Croke Park. Donegal had never won in Croke Park before that, and were like lambs in headlights at the start of that All-Ireland semi-final. But as the game wore on Donegal’s confidence grew as Mayo’s wilted, just as we saw again today.

That Mayo team was shot through with men who had played in an All-Ireland final too – Peter Ford, Seán Maher, TJ Kilgallon, Liam McHale, Anthony Finnerty – and beating them gave Donegal the belief that they could make something happen in the final against Dublin. Meath were just as tentative against Mayo in the first half today as Donegal were sixteen years and fifty-one weeks ago, but Meath will be bulling for a crack at Kerry tonight after their win. Chest-thumping, bring-them-on-until-we-have-a-crack-at-them bulling.

This is Mayo’s gift – a win over Mayo can be the making of a team. Even when the colours don’t match as exactly as they did today.

Dinny Allen has spoken about how losing the 1989 final would have broken Cork, but they were able to beat Mayo and then go on win again in 1990. Seán Óg de Paor and Kevin Walsh have both gone on the record as saying that the win over Mayo in Castlebar in 1998 was the making of Galway. And that's a very bitter reality for the heather county. What a terrible pity that Mayo can’t deal with their immense psychological issues by playing that one team against whom a victory can make a team that can win All-Irelands. Themselves.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, football, GAA, Championship 2009, Mayo, Meath

By Royal Command: A Football Lesson in Meath

Mayo’s quarter-final encounter with Meath this weekend brings back all sorts of bittersweet memories of times gone by. But An Spailpín’s abiding insight into Meath football when the Royals were at their pomp wasn’t in 1996 but one year after, when Mayo’s current run of misery against Kerry began.

Four of us were travelling home to Galway on that grey evening after the All-Ireland Final of 1997 – three broken-hearted Mayomen, and one half-Kerryman who, as Maurice Fitzgerald’s greatest fan, then and now, was in a state of bliss that would last well into the winter.

By eight o’clock, it was becoming obvious that there was no way we were going to be back in time to see the Sunday Game and, as noted in this space before, you have to see the Sunday Game on All-Ireland Sunday night to make the experience complete.

1997 was before the current era of road-building and your correspondent was taking the common shortcut at that time, through Summerhill and Ballivor to emerge somewhere between Kinnegad and Mullingar. As we reached nine o’clock and counting, it became obvious that we would have to stop and catch the highlights on Royal ground.

We got a warm welcome in whatever bar it was we were in, and appeased the local gods by buying tickets for the local club lotto. We watched in teary misery as Maurice Fitzgerald popped up over again and again on the Sunday Game, much to the amusement of the locals.

“Maurice Fitzgerald wouldn’t have scored that against us,” they liked to remark after every point Mossie stroked over. Nobody cracked their knuckles, but we knew full well what they meant. Martin O’Connell had taken his famous stand on Brian Dooher only thirteen months before, and it tended to stay in the memory.

But what intrigues An Spailpín now, on the eve of this weekend’s renewed hostilities, is that four years on from that night in Ballivor Padraic Joyce did to Meath exactly what Maurice Fitzgerald had done to Mayo. Joyce beat them on his own. Ten points he scored that day, and Meath have never recovered. No Leinster titles since, no All-Ireland glory. Classy looking forwards but a bit on the beefy side. No John McDermott in midfield, and no backs as flat-out dangerous as were those bad, bad men of the ‘eighties – Harnan, Foley, Lyons.

The big question in Mayo concerns who’ll replace full-forward Barry Moran, whom Kevin McStay said on the Sunday Game would definitely not start due to injury. The temptation must be to play Aiden O’Shea at full-forward and start Conor Mortimer in the corner, but that changes the shape of the team and limits the type of ball that can be sent in. Starting Tom Parsons is a daring option and would be An Spailpín Fánach’s second choice. Hard to believe a use can’t be found for a player of such class.

An Spailpín’s first choice would be Ciarán McDonald in the inside line, of course. Mike McCarthy’s recent performances for Kerry would suggest that maybe being two years away from the county scene doesn’t really dull the edge all that much, and An Spailpín Fánach just cannot believe that McDonald has nothing left to contribute. But we shall see, of course.

Finally, either county would be foolish indeed to believe Colm O’Rourke’s proposition on TV at the end of the Dublin v Kerry game that neither Meath nor Mayo could beat Kerry. Colm didn't think Kerry would beat Dublin either, and we all saw how that worked out. Both Mayo and Meath should embrace the chance of taking on Kerry at the end of the month.

It’s a question of if you want to live your life on your feet or on your knees. It’s not about being able to take the heat – it’s about wanting the heat, so that you can finally see who you really are. Whichever team has the most players who licked their lips in anticipation at the prospect of facing Kerry will win on Sunday. Simple as that.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, football, GAA, Championship 2009, Mayo, Meath

Kerry Still the Banker on Monday

The mood seems to exist among the cognoscenti that Dublin have evolved and Kerry have devolved as potential All-Ireland winners during the course of the summer, and that Monday’s eagerly anticipated All-Ireland quarter-final will be confirmation of this fact. An Spailpín Fánach isn’t quite convinced, and will be making his way to Ladbrokes this week to snaffle up that rarest of opportunities, Kerry at an odds-against price.

It’s hard to make too many predictions without seeing the teams – it’s hard to predict the future anyway, as a general rule – but it seems entirely reasonable to assume that Bryan Cullen will start at centre-back for Dublin. Ger Brennan got the line against Kildare, and Cullen had something of a stormer when he came on.

However, An Spailpín’s abiding memory of Cullen is the 2006 semi-final against Mayo, a game Bryan Cullen started as favourite to win the All-Star at centre-back, and finished as a trophy on Ger Brady’s wall. Is Cullen improved from that? He’s a fine footballer certainly, but is he capable of fulfilling a back’s primary function, which is to defend? And if he is – how come he hasn’t been first choice to start for Dublin all summer?

The narrative of the new and improved Dublin is one that we hear every year, but it’s hard to know just how much scrutiny it bears in this wet summer of 2009. Certainly, Dublin’s Championships have ended disastrously for the past thirteen years, if not winning the All-Ireland is considered a disaster. And if Mayo can be said to be deeply psychologically scarred by getting turned over in the All-Ireland final, surely it’s worse if that happens in a quarter-final, as happened Dublin against Tyrone last year?

Dublin’s Leinster Final win against Kildare has been identified as a turning point for this year’s team, but were Kildare all that good? Dublin won the day by springing the old guard – Cullen, Whelan, Ryan, Quinn – from the bench, men who’s benching in the first place was hailed as Brave New World material. In what way are Dublin better?

Bernard Brogan is having a cracking season at full-forward certainly, but what will happen when he meets a full-back of the old school? Is it Brogan’s destiny to be another Ray Cosgrove?

All these questions surround Dublin, even though they are not being asked. While only one question concerns Kerry, really, and that is: Have they got it in the belly anymore?

Jack O’Connor said, after Kerry crushed Mayo in 2006, that Kerry’s one year of hurt counted for more than Mayo’s fifty-five, and bitter pill though it was for Mayo, it was God’s own truth. Kerry were playing at a level of intensity that day that Mayo couldn’t dream of, and Mayo were left shattered in Kerry’s wake.

If Kerry can summon that same pitch of intensity, Dublin are in for a game of it. If Kerry can’t, if they really are old and tired and all banged up, then Dublin will certainly beat Kerry for the first time in 32 years, when the Brogan brothers’ father scored a famous goal in what remains one of the most epic games ever seen at Jones’ Road.

If, however, Kerry can get back on track then Dublin may find themselves reaping the whirlwind. One of An Spailpín’s abiding memories of that 2006 final is of the first ten minutes, when Kerry tore right up the middle of the Mayo defence and administered the coup de grace within the first ten minutes of the game. Bryan Cullen and Denis Bastick are the men charged with shoring up the middle of the Dublin defence – are they up for it? How will the Dublin forwards fare if they are not afforded the amount of time of space that Meath, Westmeath and Kildare provided?

Dublin have an advantage in midfield, where they can loose Ciarán Whelan and Shane Ryan from the bench when their starting pair begin to tire. (To start Whelan and Ryan would be an act of folly on Pat Gilroy’s part – if they do start, it’s advantage Kerry, because Dublin then have less cards to play in the final quarter). But that said, An Spailpín still can’t get over how fat Darragh Ó Sé was when he came on against Cork, and can’t get it out of his mind that Kerry have been playing a long game all summer. Just like cute Kerrymen do.

The impact – choice word! – of Paul Galvin is not to be underestimated either. Galvin plugs into a remarkable fury when he plays football, but the events of last year seem to have had their impact, and he is currently channelling that fury to its most productive level. Galvin is an outstanding player, and could be a difference-maker on Monday.

The point has been made in this space before that the Dublin v Kerry rivalry exists more in legend than in fact but the game on Monday does capture the imagination. It’s marvellous to see real bullets being fired after the phoney war of the first three months of Championship, and there is a real edge to the prospect of seeing a great Kerry side being taken out at last.

But just because Dublin have their best chance of a green and gold scalp since Liam Cosgrove was Taoiseach does not mean that they will take it. The notion that Kerry “have a performance in them” is not true – it’s just something journalists like to write as insurance against looking stupid – but your correspondent expects Kerry to have too much firepower for a Dublin team that might not have quite got there yet.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, football, GAA, Championship 2009, Dublin, Kerry

Mayo Win the Nestor Cup: All Else is Jam

Concerns that Championship 2009 "hasn’t sparked" may be safely put to bed. The dross has been boiled off the qualifiers leaving an intriguing final round of marquee matches in prospect, while the four provincial champions wait on their quarter-final opponents in regal splendour, looking more potent and complete as a set than provincial champions have done since the wretched qualifier system was introduced eight years ago.

For the first time in a long time all four provincial champions look favourites to win their respective quarter finals. They are not nailed on, of course; would Pat Gilroy or Mickey Harte be able to suppress the tiniest shudder of dread should Kerry get by Antrim and be drawn to face either of their charges, bearing in mind the special fury the Kingdom reserves for Dublin and Tyrone? But accidents aside, right now the most likely semi-final line-ups are Cork v Tyrone and Mayo v Dublin.

One of the many delicious prospects that guaranteed football in August brings is that one may look at the game’s princes straight in the eye, as equals rather than subjects. Tyrone are the best of the four provincial champions of course. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn’t been paying attention. However, against the grain of popular current opinion, your correspondent would fear Cork much more than Dublin.

An Spailpín rather fancies either of Galway or Mayo’s chances against the Leinster Champions. But Cork are big and strong and have survived tougher tests over the past few years than Dublin. Cork are worthy of having eyes kept on them.

Of the nine qualifiers left in the Championship, An Spailpín Fánach views Kerry and Galway as easily the most dangerous. Kildare received a lot of plaudits for their display against Dublin but there seems a very clear gulf between the team that played in the first half of the Leinster Final and the team that were present for the second. Kerry may be wobbling but not until we hear taps sounded over the descending casket can the thirty-five time Champions be counted out.

An Spailpín has heard it said that Galway were between poor and shocking on Sunday in sunny Salthill. Not from where I was looking. Galway broke even in midfield where they were expected to get cleaned like the herrings for which they are known, and were within one kick of forcing a replay after being behind for the entire game. A lot of teams would like to be that shocking.

The real questions over Galway concern tactics, and the wisdom of withdrawing Seán Armstrong so far from the front line. Because, as has been noted here before, Galway have some stone killers upfront, men who can pop them over all the live-long day and anybody who’s licking their lips at the prospect of facing Galway for the rest of the summer may end up dining on ashes by the time the referee blows that all-too-final whistle.

All of which reflects well on Mayo, of course, who were just terrific. After the disappointments of the past two years Mayo are Connacht Champions and the summer now stretches into August and possibly beyond. If Mayo had lost, platters would have been sent to the County Board with demands for John O’Mahony’s head by return of post. When he wins a Connacht Championship he deserves praise of the highest.

From here on in for the volatile and hopelessly passionate Mayo fans, everything else is jam. The people of Mayo have tortured themselves in the past over not winning All-Irelands, rather than celebrating still playing football in the height of summer, and having football to talk about while drinking the bottle of cold tea in the meadows. It’s very hard to buy a doughnut that doesn’t have a hole in the County Mayo. Time to deal with that, and move on.

There are issues with the Mayo team, of course. Some players didn’t seize the day the way others did. What harm? They still won, and now they have something to chat about at training while they wait for the quarters. Win-win. While the fans enjoy the taste of jam, the players know the object of a knockout competition is to take each contest as it comes, and last as long as you can. If you’re the last men standing, well, so much the better.

FOCAL SCOIR: There has been some press coverage of Conor Mortimer’s t-shirt tribute to the late Michael Jackson, or Micheál, as Conor styled him. It’s all my hat. Conor Mortimer is an amateur player playing football by the seaside. If he can’t have a laugh while he’s doing it, then we should all chuck it in and retire to the monasteries and convents. The really funny thing about Conor’s mischievous message is that Conor is a GPA man, and we know how much the GPA membership equate playing football in high summer with suffering and pain. But then Conor was never what you’d consistent, I suppose.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, culture, football, GAA, Mayo, Galway, Championship 2009

Rosserini Fight the Good Fight

Roscommon is a fine county, and it’s always a highlight of the summer when Mayo play the sheepstealers.

Roscommon and Offaly - midlanders both - are two of An Spailpín Fánach’s favourite GAA counties. They lack the population of Dublin, Cork, Galway or Mayo but what pride and heart they bring to the occasion. You may win against them but you will never defeat them. For them, the road goes ever on.

Mayo supporters are spoiled with success. Certainly the summers of 1996, 1997, 2004 and 2006 did not end as the Mayo support would have hoped, but until the throw in on those fateful September Sundays, didn’t we have days? Didn’t we? Rich memories to call back in emptier times – the first Mayo supporters to walk up the hill as winners in Tuam since 1951. Defeating Kerry in 1996. Beating Galway after conceding 1-3 in the first ten minutes. Beating Tyrone. Beating Dublin.

Roscommon have existed on the other side of the football world in the past twenty years, as the magical era of Earley, O'Connor, Keegan and Lindsay fades to sepia. Living on scraps. Suffering a cruel and hideous fate in the first year of the qualifier system. Going through managers the way the HSE goes through money – that is to say, like a devouring flame, leaving a scorched and barren earth behind them.

That may change on Sunday. It may not. Hard to say without seeing a team, of course. But from what we can read from the runes of the year so far, many things will have to go wrong for Mayo and right for Roscommon for the Ross to claim their first win in McHale Park since – can it be? – 1986.

Mayo’s boy-king Aidan O’Shea is the cornerstone. He will almost certainly start at full-forward and if he goes well in there the Rossies might be heading for the gates by half-time. If, however, John Nolan or David Casey can keep him under control, then it gets interesting.

If Barry Moran starts beside O’Shea he can give the Rossies more of the same and something, surely, has to give. If it’s Andy Moran, however, shutting down Aidan O’Shea and stopping Conor from hitting the deck for those soft frees may reduce the Mayo scoring rate entirely. Dillon will cut away from distance and Pat Harte always threatens a goal-rampage, but Mayo are reliant on the Shea-on-the-square strategy for 2009. If it’s not happening for O’Shea, Mayo will have cause for concern.

But even then it’s still an uphill task for Roscommon. Michael Finneran in midfield is a Rossie of the old school but Mayo have a choice from McGarrity, Parsons and Harte to take him on and the Roscommon midfield may be living on scraps. The forwards have to maximise those scraps then against a Mayo rearguard that are certainly improved from last year, and the Rosserini have to do it without Cathal Cregg and for whom Senan Kilbride may not be functioning at one hundred per cent either.

Ladbrokes have made Mayo five point favourites for the game on Saturday, with Roscommon 4/1 longshots for the upset on the outright. Antrim were 9/2 last week against Donegal, and John O’Mahony will be able to use that to cut out any complacency from creeping in. It looks like another bleak day at the office for the constant hearts but, in the light of all they have suffered and their inviolate pride and immense appetite for the fray, it will be hard begrudge Roscommon should they have a famous night in Castlebar.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, culture, GAA, football, Mayo, Roscommon, Championship 09

Kerry Haven't Gone Away, You Know

“That’s not Darragh Sé,” remarked An Spailpín Fánach to his houseguests when Kerry made their first substitution in the drawn game against Cork last Sunday week. “That’s the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.”

The fact that Kerry would allow their talismanic midfielder, the man who has epitomised football in the Kingdom since he helped end the famine in 1997, to winter not wisely but too well is eloquent testimony to just how bothered they really are about the Munster Championship, and just how much the qualifier system has destroyed the Championship as we knew it.

We speak of the qualifier system like it was only introduced last year. This is the eighth year of the system. That’s the guts of two football generations. The backdoor is the tradition now.

And nobody adapts like Kerry. That’s one of the many reasons that they’ve won thirty-five All-Irelands and aren’t sated yet. Kerry whined about Down not playing catch-and-kick against them in the ‘sixties, but were quite happy themselves to win eight All-Irelands in the ‘seventies and ‘eighties playing what often looked like Olympic handball. They whined about puke football in 2003 but have since learned how to duke it out with the best of them, thanks very much.

But the chief penny that’s dropped for Kerry is that the Championship doesn’t now start until August, because it’s not until then that you face live ammunition. Until then, it’s just another challenge game really.

Cork and Kerry played a marvellous game by the banks of the Lee on Saturday but wasn’t it hard not to get the nagging feeling that maybe Kerry weren’t really bursting themselves? Sure they would have liked to win, the same way teams like to win the League, but it’s not life or death, which is the way Kerry play after the pilgrims have descended from the Reek. When it counts.

Peter Canavan said it on the TV. Cork looked magnificent, but we’ve seen this from Cork before. Often and all as they’ve beaten Kerry in Munster, any time Cork and Kerry have met when it counts Cork have taken the pipe.

A pained expression flitted across Anthony Lynch’s face when the TV3 man asked him what this win was worth after the game. Lynch came up with some platitude but he must know as well as anybody that this win isn’t worth two balls of roasted snow because Kerry haven’t gone anywhere.

All this talk about shark infested waters in the qualifiers is a lot of old blather. There will be one great big shark if a surprise happens in Ulster this weekend, and An Spailpín reckons that Jack O’Connor will be much more disappointed than Mickey Harte should Tyrone get up-ended. Kerry would much rather face Tyrone once their training has peaked in August and beyond. But Harte may have chosen the direct route this year – who can ever tell with that most inscrutable of men?

For what it’s worth, An Spailpín thinks a death knell may sound for the qualifiers when the boys in Croke Park sit down to do their sums in October. Qualifier attendance has declined over the years as the novelty wore off and people realised that there’s seldom a point in postponing the inevitable. Now the recession is here, and Kildare v Wexford in the Leinster Championship managed only eight thousand souls in Doctor Cullen Park on a beautiful summer Saturday evening, the qualifiers may be on borrowed time.

And small loss after them if they are. As previously argued in this space, the old winner-take-it-all Championship had its great beauties that have been ignored in the rush to cash in with the extra games. The weaker counties’ chances of winning All-Irelands have not increased in the Qualifier era, but at least under the old system you could stop your neighbour doing it. Seldom has bitter fruit tasted so sweet.

And how sweet would the Murphy’s be Leeside over the weekend if they knew that whoever will win Sam this year, Kerry won’t? Instead they know that Mars bars are banned from now on within a five mile radius of Darragh Ó Sé, and the big man will be spending merry summer evenings running up mountains, working off that beef and dreaming of seeing red once more.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, culture, GAA, football, Cork, Kerry, Championship 09

Mayo Championship Preview 2009

Whack, whack, whack, hammer, hammer, hammer, bang, bang, bang. It’s John O’Mahony’s third year in charge of the Mayo senior football team and the rebuilding process continues apace. But O’Mahony knows more than anyone that the Mayo supporters are fickle jades, and the pressure is mounting to do more in the Championship than beat Sligo and Cavan.

Trying to figure out when this rebuilding is over and there’s a team to compete for glory, An Spailpín was struck recently by an analogy Frank O’Connor uses in His Father’s Son, about a monkey eating his own tail. Subjectively, the monkey is eating, which is a good thing. Objectively, the monkey is being eaten, which is a very bad thing.

Subjectively, Mayo rebuilding is a good thing after the trauma of 2004 and 2006. Objectively, the Mayo senior football team is in a state of chassis, and that is not good at all.

Much has been made, here and elsewhere, about John O’Mahony’s tremendous power as a positive thinker and motivator of men. Seán Óg de Paor makes great play of it in his marvellous autobiography, Lá an Phaoraigh. But your correspondent can’t help but wonder if O’Mahony hasn’t missed a trick in that rebuilding process; if Mayo weren’t that broken in the first place, and the perpetual forelock-tugging that is the Mayo birthright blinds us to the fact that the Mayo teams that contested those All-Irelands were much better than they’re given credit for.

You’ll note the use of the word “trauma” to describe 2004 and 2006. But that’s not strictly accurate. September 26th, 2004 and September 17th, 2006, were wretched certainly, but everything else about those summers was magical. Beating Galway in Castlebar after gifting them a 1-3 start in the first ten minutes in 2004 was magical. Beating Tyrone in Croke Park in 2004 was magical. Throwing down a gauntlet to the Hill in 2006 and then backing it up by winning the game was magical. And the All-Ireland defeats do not mean that those other games didn’t happen. All the Mayo people who said that the All-Ireland defeats of 2004 and 2006 made them wish they’d never got out of Connacht are now getting their wish. Do they feel better?

But Mayo people are always too quick to tug the forelock, bow the head and get into to the gutter to make way for our betters. Colm O’Rourke opined on television before the Dublin v Tyrone game last year that there were four big teams of the current decade, Kerry, Tyrone, Armagh and Dublin, but Dublin were the only ones that hadn’t won an All-Ireland. The facts are that Dublin haven’t even won a semi-final while Mayo have won two. But anything Mayo do is dismissed, on the basis that Mayo were “punching above their weight.”

It’s so much a matter of perspective. The Mayo fullback gets scorched by Kieran Donaghy in the All-Ireland final in 2006, and people shake their heads and say the craythurs, sure Mayo never should have been there at all. One year later the Cork fullback gets burned every bit as badly, and he wins an All-Star. What is the difference?

Implicit in the notion that Mayo were punching above their weight is the notion that the Kerry wins in 2004 and 2006 were inevitable. That Kerry beating Mayo was as inevitable as night following day. Well no it damn well wasn’t.

Here’s when Kerry are impossible to beat. When they are in the All-Ireland final, because they always peak in September. When their talismanic captain is back in the colours. When they have not one Kieran Donaghy, but two. And when the opposition are trying to manage with the their greatest ever player having retired. With their chief scoring forward in dispute with the management. With their pivotal forward lucky to still be able to see, to say nothing of play football. With no midfield and big issues in the fullback line.

It was as hard, if not harder, for Tyrone to beat Kerry last year than for Mayo to beat Kerry in 2004, because Kerry were much more vulnerable in 2004 than they were last year. And Mickey Harte himself has acknowledged just how slim the margins are.

Mickey Harte did an interview with the great Keith Duggan of the Irish Times on the 31st of January this year where Harte summed up exactly what the difference is between winning and losing:

“This is the problem, I think, with the assessments of teams who lose. Retrospectively, you can give them six or eight good reasons why they lost and yet if they won, those same reasons are regarded as dead-on.

“I know what would have been wrong with us if we had lost: ‘bringing Stephen O’Neill back was crazy’. ‘Why did we wait so long to bring Kevin Hughes into the middle of the field?’ ‘Why did Owen Mulligan not come in sooner?’ ‘Why was Brian McGuigan not starting?’ ‘Why did you take Joe McMahon out of half forward to corner back?’ – crazy decision if we lost. But because we won, nobody bothers with them.”

That’s the margin. That’s the difference between a hero and a bum. And instead of appreciating glory days not seen since John A Costello was Taoiseach, the Mayo County Board threw John Maughan to the wolves in 2005, Mickey Moran and John Morrison after him in 2006 and even though the Mayo Board gave him another two years on his contract, Johnno will be feeling the heat if Mayo don’t claim some sort of coup this year.

How far away are they? Well, Mayo currently struggle even more than usual to put scores on the board, and Congress’ craven rejection of rules reform doesn’t help the cause. The absence of Ciarán McDonald baffles on a number of levels, and the success of the Irish’s rugby team’s golden generation in finally sealing the deal before they were too old puts the perils of Mayo’s golden generation in depressing perspective, not least with Brady, O’Neill and others having already hung up their boots for the last time.

And meanwhile, in his workshop, John O’Mahony continues to rebuild. Whack, whack, whack. Hammer, hammer, hammer. Bang, bang, bang.






Technorati Tags: Ireland, culture, sport, GAA, football, Championship 2009, Mayo

Championship Preview 2009

The Championship begins on May 10th when the ball is thrown in between Mayo and New York, and it can’t come soon enough. In these grim times the GAA is about last thing we have to remind the Irish of what’s best about ourselves.

Naturally, it being our one shining star, we do our best to crush the best things about it at every opportunity, just as the panda rolls over her young. She doesn’t really mean it, but they’re dead just the same.

The latest manifestation of this urge to self-destruction is the deeply depressing defeat of the new rules – which weren’t new at all, of course – at Congress at Easter. Séamus Mallon once described the Good Friday Agreement as “Sunningdale for slow learners,” and it’s hard not to echo that great man’s frustration at the lazy and indolent resistance to cleaning up the game.

The so-called new rules were a watered down version of the sin-bin that was introduced in 2005 League. The sin-bin was a perfect solution to persistent, niggly fouling, and much more effective than what was introduced this year. So naturally the managers whined at every opportunity, saying that this man didn’t deserve a yellow, or that man didn’t deserve a yellow.

Well, yes they did, because the new rule said that the bin was what you got for being an unrepentant sleeveen. An Spailpín has often mournfully wondered if the sin-bin could have been successfully introduced if they had concurrently introduced a blue card, say, thus depriving the managers of that shield that their man “didn’t deserve a yellow.”

Too late now, of course. The bin failed and the sending-off with substitution failed, and the reason why is this: too many people like the system they way it is. They don’t think the game is about protecting flair players. They see it as a game where the only thing that matters is winning, and if that means raining punches into a man’s kidneys and then protesting that you were only playing the ball ref, feck’s sake, you were only playing the ball, then so be it. Congress has sown the wind in voting down the rule reform – let’s hope they don’t reap the whirlwind come high summer.

Jack O’Connor was one of those who opposed the rule reform. Jack is some ticket. This is the same Jack O’Connor who wrote in his essential memoir that before Kerry could face the 2006 Championship he himself had to “actually learn how to coach the tackle. Genuinely I don’t know how to do that. Tacking is something that was never heard of in Kerry, beyond telling a fella to go out there and not foul the man.” (Keys to the Kingdom, p 7, Penguin Books, 2008).

An Spailpín Fánach is happy to report that while St Patrick never did make it to the Kingdom the tackle most certainly has, and the re-appointment of O’Connor is an indication that Kerry mean business this year, aching as they do to finally put down Tyrone once and for all.

Tyrone are more than willing to face Kerry again, of course, and the prospect of the counties meeting again on All-Ireland day is one to savour and dread in equal measure. Savour, because it’s the defining rivalry of football this decade; dread, because there is a lot of bitterness between the teams, and that can lead to things getting ugly. Ugly has no role in Gaelic games. However, your hopelessly romantic Spailpín has alternative matchup that I contend would be just as good.

To An Spailpín’s mind the best game of the year last year was the operatic contest in monsoon conditions in Croke Park between Galway and Kerry, and a rematch of that would grace any All-Ireland final. Kerry need no build up, but Galway deserve to be hailed as the purists’ choice for football right now, and they have a man who could be the best footballer in Ireland, Michael Meehan, coming right into his pomp. A Galway-Kerry final would be a game to savour.

Unfortunately, neither Galway nor Kerry are that attractively priced for those who enjoy a little punt on football. Kerry will almost certainly win the All-Ireland again, as talent, will and tradition combine to tremendous effect in the green and gold, but their price is not encouraging and you would need a few more points with Galway to make up for the midfield issues unresolved there since Kevin Walsh and Seán Ó Domhnaill retired, waters who weren’t missed until the well ran dry.

Cork are a popular fancy and always produce teams of big, strong footballers, but Kerry have the Indian sign on them and it’s hard to discount that. Advocates of Cork will point to the Munster wins but it’s hard indeed not to believe that Kerry only start taking things seriously when the pilgrims have descended from the Reek.

Anybody seeking riches from outside the Big Three of Kerry, Tyrone and Galway must look to Ulster to find value. Kevin Egan, that Faithful Gael, made the point recently that Championship winners who come from nowhere are rare in recent times, and doubly so since the introduction of the Qualifiers further comforted the strong and afflicted the weak.

But if you must insist on finding such a team, you need to find one that is sufficiently under the radar to have a nice fat price, and sufficiently big time not to freeze on the great stage. And then you consider the Under-21 Final being played later this week, the rich lessons of history, and the penny drops as you sweep down to the sea to put a sneaky shilling each way on Down at 66/1. 66/1 to go all the way is real value here, for those who cannot in conscience back short-priced Kerry.

Mayo? This time tomorrow An Spailpín hopes to discuss in this space what their prospects are like in Year III of the Second Coming. See you then.





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