The Sporting Year

This year, for what must be the first time in the history of the Gaelic Athletic Association, Dublin struck a blow for the little guy.

At the start of the summer the Championship looked like it would be played between The Big Three of Cork, Kerry and Tyrone, with the other counties supplying cannon fodder when required. As Kevin Egan has often pointed out, long shot winners do not generally win All-Irelands. Your correspondent has no figures to hand, but it’s a reasonable guess that Dublin were the longest price All-Ireland winners since Armagh in 2002.

Kerry left the game behind them of course, but Dublin still had to complete their part of the bargain and pick it up. Kerry have left games behind them before, but teams have not had the wherewithal – or the Kevin McMenamins – to take advantage. Sligo come to mind in 2006, as do Limerick in 2004. Good for Dublin, who are deserving champions.

Kerry do not wash linen in public, but it would be wonderful to know how they’re analysing this loss at home. How do they view Jack O’Connor in the Kingdom?

O’Connor has won three All-Irelands but those were won against teams – Cork and Mayo – whom Kerry expect to beat as a matter of course. In a county with so many wins, those will be taken for granted.

Against teams whom Kerry do take seriously, O’Connor’s record is played three, lost three – two against Tyrone, one against Dublin. There’s huge pressure on O’Connor and his aging team to make up for this next year.

From a parochial standpoint, Mayo had a superb season. James Horan was extremely lucky not to get sucker-punched against London but other than that he didn’t put a foot wrong during either League or Championship. Mayo are looking forward to another crack at it in 2012 – county board shenanigans permitting, of course.

In hurling, Kilkenny and Tipperary served another epic All-Ireland Final with Kilkenny proving there’s life in the old cat yet. The only pity was that the hurling Championship did go according to script, and there were no counties able to keep up with the standard set by Kilkenny and Tipperary.

Galway blew up – again, Cork’s civil war continues and the revolutionaries of the ‘nineties now struggle to keep their heads above water. Anthony Daly had another superb year with Dublin but it still seems somehow easier to see Galway beating Kilkenny twice than Dublin. And it’s more or less impossible to see Galway beating Kilkenny just the once.

The Rugby World Cup is struggling as a tournament. The balance is incorrect. There are ten top-flight rugby nations in the world – the Six Nations, the Tri Nations and Argentina. The other ten are making up the numbers – and are quickly put in their place if they dare to point that out, as Samoa’s unfortunate Eliota Sapolu discovered.

This means is that there are three weeks of group games at any Rugby World Cup that whittle ten teams down to eight. That’s not very effective. It also makes for extremely stilted rugby in the knockout stages, when the terror of losing dominates. The balance between the relatively carefree group games and the all-or-nothing knockout games is wrong.

The final itself is proof positive. New Zealand is the greatest rugby nation in the world and nobody with any feeling for the game could begrudge them, but 8-7 is a scoreline from the 1950s, not the 21st Century professional era. The only thing anyone will remember from this tournament is relief for the New Zealanders, and not much else.

Ireland’s win over Australia is bittersweet, looking back. Ireland had never won a quarter-final before the tournament, and they still haven’t. Irish rugby is at an extraordinary crossroads right now. If rugby can transition from the golden generation of BOD, ROG and POC, then it suddenly becomes reasonable to assume that rugby can overtake the GAA in popularity.

On that point – the chaps on Newstalk’s Off the Ball were floating an idea back in November that, if New Zealand could host a World Cup then so could Ireland, using GAA stadia for the games. They never quite explained why the GAA would want to sign its own death warrant by facilitating the tournament though.

Maybe they’re saving it for next year. An Spailpín will be listening closely, as ever – shirts don’t iron themselves, you know, and listening to Off the Ball remains the best way of dealing with the misery. Here’s to 2012.

Mayo on Top of the World After Nine Point Defeat

Kerry 1-20
Mayo 1-11

There’s only one way to win a game but it seems like there are a thousand and one ways to lose one. But as the shutter comes down on another Mayo summer, everyone with an interest should realise what a fantastic summer it’s been.

Even at the end. Nine points is a whacking, but it’s also a fair result. Mayo did nothing wrong, really, yesterday. They executed their game plan. The misfortunate thing about it was, so did Kerry.

Kerry found their feet after about twenty minutes and the longer the game went on the easier it became for them. They had an answer for everything Mayo threw at them, and Mayo threw them their all. It’s just that Mayo’s all wasn’t good enough.

Kerry is a great football county and they are currently blessed with exceptional players and an exceptional manager. People talk about weaknesses in the current team; we’ll see just how vulnerable they are come the third Sunday. Kerry will start favourites in An Spailpín’s book.

So where does the defeat leave Mayo? It leaves Mayo on top of the world.

Under the current Championship setup, a good Championship for Mayo is one where Mayo win their quarter-final. Not making a quarter-final is the only bad year for Mayo. Everything that happens besides winning that quarter-final is a bonus. Staying in Division 1 – presuming there still is a Division 1 – is a bonus. Winning Connacht is a bonus.

Mayo achieved their primary goal of winning a quarter-final this year, and the bonus goals of staying in Division 1, winning Connacht and inflicting a terrible, searing defeat on Cork, the All-Ireland Champions. That makes for a hell of a year in the ledger. Any other judgment is nonsense.

And not only that. This year has been marvellous for reminding the supporters of Mayo football – which means everyone in the county – of what matters. That getting beaten early is not in fact better than losing in the Final. That what counts is surviving for as long as you can, with still being alive at five o’clock on the third Sunday the greatest achievement of all.

And this year has been marvellous for reminding the supporters of Mayo football that we are legion, we are proud and we are not junk bond status.

Willie Joe, Mayo football’s Baptist and the man who runs the superlative Mayo GAA Blog, called his people to Bowe’s on Fleet Street on Saturday night. Reader, they came in their droves.

People that had never met before, from the north, south, east and west of the third largest county in Ireland, came together to celebrate the unique colours and heroic feats of Mayo football, looking back through the years and forward into the 21st Century. It was an extraordinary night, and one that will be remembered for years by those that were there.

Because that night spoke about Mayo, who we are and why we are. Mayo people turned up in droves on Saturday night because we’re not fools; we knew the likelihood of a big night in September was unlikely. But we wanted to celebrate the team and the people and the county in the here and now, because it is a team worth celebrating, we are a people worth celebrating and Mayo a county worth celebrating.

Naysayers will sneer about nine point hammerings and poor Mayo and all this other old blather but the fools, the fools, the fools – even last night, as the remains of another Championship returned across the Shannon the undertakers will have heard signs of life from the back of the hearse. Signs of life that will have grown louder and louder as they went deeper and deeper in the West until, returned among the yew trees and the true-hearted boys, in the gloaming and the heather, Mayo football sloughs off the defeat, rises once more from its bier and turn its head towards the FBD League and the 2012 Campaign.

There will always be a Mayo. Now and forever. Up Mayo.

Seventy Summer Minutes

If a week is a long time in politics, seventy minutes is a long time in the All-Ireland Championship.

Because the Championship is a knockout and not a league competition, it’s a mistake to assess form the way you can assess form a league. In a knockout Championship, there is no form. There really isn’t.

Everybody knows now that Tyrone have got old. But very few knew it before the ball was thrown in on Sunday. Darragh Ó Sé told us in the Irish Times how he knew that Tyrone were shot because Kerry beat Roscommon in a challenge game. He didn’t tell us before the game though, when it might have been some use.

Mayo have been written off all season, but there is no basis for that, other than history and piseoga. To correctly analyse Mayo’s form, to find hints of what was happening, would take deeper study than a national journalist has time for. And he or she could still miss it.

At half-time in the Galway game the signs weren’t good. They weren’t. And then Mayo beat Galway and then Mayo beat Roscommon and by golly, Mayo went and beat Cork. But that’s not a smooth line of progression. That’s a series of evolutionary jumps.

Have Mayo jumped higher than their actual ability, and are now in for a fall? Or have Kerry flattered to deceive, just Tyrone did? Reader, your Spailpín doesn’t know. But I am eager to find out.

There are no teams named at time of writing, but it doesn’t take too much insight to see the battle ground. Midfield and breaks for both teams. Advantage Kerry upfront, advantage Mayo – maybe – in the backs.

There is no reason for Mayo to quake before the green and gold. Footballers are like mayflies – their lives are brief. 2006 is five years ago. It might as well be a lifetime.

There is a theory abroad that Mayo have nothing to lose in this game. It’s certainly true that all the pressure to deliver is on the Kingdom. If Mayo get beat, what harm? It’s been a better summer than any Mayo person could have hoped for when it looked like Tommy Lyons was going to be given the keys to the car back in October.

But Kerry. Kerry can’t lose a semi-final to Mayo. Jack O’Connor, genius that he is, has patched and minded and cajoled and coaxed his team but he has to wonder, as they all have to wonder, if time will claim them just as it claimed Tyrone.

Mayo are young and hungry with nothing to fear. Kerry are old and battle-hardened and have the best forwards in the country, but sometimes it’s Waterloo. It just can’t go on forever.

Does anyone remember Francie Bellew’s last game in Croke Park? Bellew was the full back of his generation. He was feared, which is what you want from someone back there. He was never fast, but he was able to, ahem, compensate.

And then Armagh played Wexford when Mattie Forde was in his pomp. Bellew called on his powers, but they didn’t answer. He was gone, and Forde buried him. It was a sad end, but then, all endings are sad. Very few ride away into the sunset, as Darragh Ó Sé himself did.

Darragh remarked in the Times last week that the presence of young lads in the team made him stay longer than he wanted to, because he wanted to pick up a few more medals and knew the young lads could carry him. Does the fact he has retired now mean his medal appetite is sated? Or is there something else he’d like to tell us next week, when it’s all over?

Seventy minutes isn’t very long, but it’s a short time to grow old in this current wet summer.

Down Goes O'Leary: How Aidan O'Shea Won the Day for the County Mayo

When he was learning about the great game of Gaelic football at his father’s knee, a friend of the blog was regularly asked what was the turning point. It was his father’s way of getting the gasúr to think about the game, and to realise that small events can have momentous consequences. Gaelic football’s butterfly effect, if you like.

Not every game has a turning point, of course. But yesterday there was a huge one, when an emperor was dethroned and a foundation stone set for a new world order.

Mayo were offered at 18/1 in running early in the first half of the game on Sunday. Cork had been gifted a sweet start, the last thing Mayo could afford them, and they were humming. Mayo were 1-4 to 0-1 down and in big trouble.

Noel O’Leary, a player whose praises your faithful correspondent will always sing, was in possession under the Cusack Stand around the 45 metre line and was thinking about where to launch it when he got a shock. The sort of shock you get when six feet five of Breaffy bone and muscle comes barreling into you when you’re not expecting it.

Aidan O’Shea, for it was he, put O’Leary on the deck. As tough an hombre as has pulled on a jersey found himself stretched, whacked, done.

O’Shea got a yellow card for the challenge, which may have been harsh, and may not have been. It’s hard to believe O’Leary considered the challenge anything other than fair; God knows he’s delivered plenty of them himself.

But the game was never the same again. O’Shea putting down O’Leary was the turning point.

O’Shea’s challenge on O’Leary was a primal act of defiance. You may beat us but you will not defeat us. We are not here to be bullied. We are not here to make up numbers. We shall fight you ball for ball and if we lose, we lose on our feet, not on our knees.

There’s more to it than that of course. A lot of things happen in a game of Gaelic football. But An Spailpín will believe until the day he’s called that Aidan O’Shea’s challenge on Noel O’Leary changed the All-Ireland quarter-final.

Of course, Cork were hampered by their injuries. No team can lose so many of its front-line players and still perform at its optimum. They were worthy Champions and Conor Counihan was gracious in defeat, which can’t have been easy. This defeat is very, very painful for Cork football and, with the bizarre way the inter-county calendar is currently fixed, it will be a long time until they can assemble again to deal with their pain.

While for Mayo, and perhaps for the entire football base of Connacht, it was a moment of justification. Not least in light of what passes for football analysis currently.

Whatever happens now, Mayo are playing with house money. Kerry are the best team in Ireland, and Jack O’Connor doesn’t miss much on the line. Cork were complacent on Sunday, but Kerry know the breed of the O’Shea boys, and they will be ready. It’s also to be hoped that Darran O’Sullivan can play in three weeks – his presence will make Mayo’s task all the harder, but his talents grace the game, and the game is bigger than any or all of us. Can’t wait.

Project CIG: How Mayo Can Beat Cork on Sunday

Paddy Power is quoting Mayo as a 9/2 longshot against Cork on Sunday. That means if Mayo were to play Cork eleven times Mayo would win two and Cork would win the other nine. That price is probably a bit mean – it’s hard to see Mayo beating Cork at all, to say nothing of beating them twice.

But Paddy can’t go true price 9/1 or 10/1, because then you realise the difference between bookie odds and true probability. Why, even Pat Spillane himself would take Mayo at 10/1 if he were offered it. Yerra, just in case, like.

And that’s what Mayo must focus on this week. When the back room team sits down to analyse the game against Cork this Sunday they have to realise that not only have Mayo a puncher’s chance, the confluence of events means that one chance in ten may very well have arrived this weekend. For three reasons.

1: Complacency
It’s extremely difficult for any Cork team to take Mayo seriously at the best of times. Why would they? It’s very difficult for Cork to take anyone seriously, other than Tipperary in hurling and Kerry in football, but there’s no way they think anything other than shaking the jersey will be required against Mayo.

Connacht football is a national laughing stock – junk bond status, in Pat Spillane’s nice phrase – and Cork themselves have only to think back to the havoc they wreaked on Mayo in Croke Park in April ’10, fifteen months ago to realise what a stroll in the park it’ll be.

Sure the Mayo manager, whoever he is, probably has to cut the players’ dinners for them of an evening, as they can’t be trusted to work cutlery themselves without stabbing each other or lopping off a digit or a limb. Conor Counihan will rant all he wants but come on. Mayo? All those boys will be thinking about another crack at Kerry, and making up for the Munster Final.

Just like the Mayo players themselves couldn’t take London seriously, and were licking their lips at the prospect of a crack at Galway. Pretty much the same thing.

2: Injuries
Cork are cursed with injuries. There’s a lot of talk in modern Gaelic football about systems and training and thirty man panels and the divil knows what but while An Spailpín pays science due respect I can’t get it out of my head that if you don’t have the players your system won’t save you in the white heat of the Championship.

Cork have more strength in depth than any other team. We saw it in the League final earlier this year, when it seemed like each sub that came on was better than the man who went off. But a lot of that was illusory, as Cork’s growth coincided with Dublin’s falling away.

This Sunday, Goulding is gone. Sheehan is gone. Colm O’Neill is gone. Joe Brolly might be onto something about Canty. That’s a lot of holes.

Cork are still thick with superstars of course – the O’Connors, Paddy Kelly, and An Spailpín’s own favourite, the immortal Noel O’Leary, the pride of Cill na Martra. But Cork will miss Goulding and the rest. Nobody can lose that many first line players without Fate coming to collect at some stage. If Conor Counihan isn’t worried about his injury list, he ought to be.

3: Goals
For years Mayo have used the inside line as a source of third midfielders, or a place to send starting midfielders for a breather because those same starting midfielders were on the tiles the night before and are burning diesel badly.

Not this year. For the first time since the brief career of the unlucky John Casey, Mayo are dangerous inside. None of the three young men along the full-forward line are nationally known. No-one ever heard of Pavarotti either until he started to sing. O’Connor, Freeman and Jason Doherty can do damage if they get ball into them, not least as Cork’s full back line isn’t the rebels’ strongest unit.

The Cork half-backs are, to An Spailpín’s eye, the heart of the team. Kissane, Miskella and O’Leary. Warriors all. Bizarrely, however, the current Mayo half-forwards are an interesting match for them. The Mayo half-forwards have become quite the ground hogs this summer and if they can scrounge a few breaks and deliver it lively inside – rather than ponce off into a corner, soloing thoughtfully, say – well, who knows?

It’s a big ask of course, and the reward for victory over Cork is almost certain butchery at the hands of the Kingdom. But I wouldn’t mind that. I would even accept it as a price worth paying.

Mayo are a very young team and still a few piece short of the puzzle. But a beating from Kerry would help season them, and know what the highest level is like.

And through the winter as the team show their scars and talk about what it’s like to face the best, they could take comfort in the thought of Cork, crying by the Lee all through the winter as the Israelites wept by the rivers of Babylon. The thought of those tears should be reward aplenty, irrespective of what else the Championship has in store. Maigh Eo abú.

The West Wind - Mayo win the Connacht Final

Just how bad was the weather at the Connacht Final yesterday? Take a look at this picture of the graveyard end goal ten minutes into the second half.

The net behind the goal is billowing like the sails of the Santa Maria as she sped Columbus to America. And it’s a net – it’s full of holes for the wind to pass through. That’s how windy it was all during the game in Hyde Park yesterday, without respite, and that’s not even mentioning the rain, relentless and unforgiving, arriving in great sheets sweeping in from the west.

But someone had to win and that someone was Mayo. It would be unwise to read too much into the victory, or attempt to analyse a football game where so very little football was played. On a day like yesterday’s, victory is a bar of soap, grasped more by luck than by skill.

Gay Sheerin was harsh in his criticism of Roscommon on MWR afterwards, but that could be because his great heart was breaking, and that’s understandable. It seemed like it was more than a football game to Roscommon, and that’s a heavy burden. Fergal O’Donnell’s best policy may be to focus on the many positives from the game, put it behind them and get ready for the next day. There is no better man to do that than O’Donnell.

He could do worse than borrow a page from Wexford’s book in 1996, and have the squad assemble next weekend to watch Tyrone play Armagh for the right to play Roscommon and go on to Croke Park. Put a blackboard next to the screen and anytime any Roscommon panel member sees a reason why Roscommon can beat Armagh or Tyrone, up he goes and writes it on the board. After seventy minutes, Roscommon will be ready for action again.

As for James Horan, yesterday was vindication. His appointment came about in peculiar circumstances – to the say the least – but a Nestor Cup in your first year as manager of a team that contains youths so callow that they must follow Cúchulainn in smearing their chins with blackberries so the men of Erin will think them men, not boys; well, that’s pretty good.

And of course it’s not over yet. The quarter-final awaits, and whomever Mayo will play will find it hard to take Mayo seriously. That suits Mayo just fine. If Mayo win the quarter-final, there will be another reason to do down Mayo and that will continue until Mayo win an All-Ireland.

Maintaining perspective is one of the hardest things to do in life. This blather about Mayo’s sixty-year wait is just that; blather. John Maughan made football in August commonplace for Mayo support. Before that, there was only silence and the Galway hurlers.

The past twenty years have been the best years to support Mayo since the 1950s, and the county’s inability to give itself credit for those great years is one of the reasons why the final step was never taken. But it is by no means as far away as people would have you believe.

It may happen this year; if you’re good enough you’re old enough, and stranger things have happened in the history of the Association.

It may happen next year; Horan’s is a young team and there are fault lines in it that may be exposed later, even among those who don’t need the blackberried chins to be taken for men.

Or it may take longer than that, in which case; what’s another year, after all? All that matters is that Mayo are playing to the level of their ability and things look bright for the next couple of years. Everyone in Mayo can live with that. Maigh Eo abú.

The Connacht Final. Kind of a Big Deal

Sunday’s Connacht Final is a big deal and a sideshow all at the same time. Whoever goes home with the Nestor Cup on the front dash of the bus will be licking their chops at the prospect of a trip to Headquarters. Who loses will either run up a white flag or else realise that they can be right back to where the Connacht Champions are in seventy short minutes. But it’s not a given that shoe will drop and it’s fairly certain that nobody will want to take the chance if they can help it.

Fergal O’Donnell cannot be praised enough for all he’s done with Roscommon. To develop minors is a challenge. To integrate those into a shell of a team that’s been destroyed by various events over the past decade is a challenge.

But to do both those things, win a Connacht Final and now be in a position to dominate Connacht and challenge for national honours – because that’s what we’re talking about here – is nothing short of breath-taking. The man can’t be praised enough for what he’s done in his county’s hour of need.

Roscommon can win if they can shut down the O’Sheas, not let Mayo score heartbreaking goals and deliver ball to the boys that can use it – Shine, Kilbride and the rest. If that happens Roscommon return to Croke Park one year wiser from their loss to Cork and, of the teams left in the qualifiers, it’s only Cork they should fear. If they can go one step further, Roscommon are seventy minutes away from the All-Ireland final. That makes for one hell of a summer, and one that doesn’t have to end there either.

Mayo can win by doing the opposite of course – the O’Sheas dominating midfield, starving the Roscommon frontline while serving up the sort of ball that can make the Mayo inside lin the toast of the heather county.

Everything after that is a bonus for Mayo. Winning a quarter-final would be wonderful – and, like Roscommon, Cork are the only team in the qualifiers whom Mayo should fear – but age is against them. It’s a steep learning curve for manager and players. Of course, there is still that voice ag cúl an chinn that whispers: good enough, old enough. It’s no harm to listen to that voice every now again. What use a summer where dreaming is banned?

While the blood will course through the winners’ veins, the losers should allow themselves one night’s sulking, and no more. On Monday, they are only one game away from being in exactly the same position that the Connacht Champions are in, and they must get that truth into their heads quickly.

Everything that went wrong in the Connacht Final can be righted by one game, and then you’ve exactly the same chance as the Connacht Champions. It would not be great to draw the Munster Champions in the quarters, just as it would not be great to draw the Munster losers, but there you go. The odds are on your side either way and, if it’s a matter of a semi-final, Goliath might just wonder for a moment when he sees David marching from the West, thoughtfully swinging his slingshot and eying up the big man.

FOCAL SCOIR: Nobody really knows what’s going to happen over Roscommon Hospital and any protests to do with it at the Connacht Final. The people of Roscommon have clearly been led up the garden path on the matter and are right to be annoyed – more so because of the lies than the closure of the hospital itself, even. Everybody understands the country is broke but being lied to is hard to take. For all that, it would be a crying shame if the game were disrupted or fans were delayed or anything bad were to happen. I hope Mayo and Roscommon and the Galway minors can celebrate the west on Sunday, and it won’t be the last day out for any of us.

Mayo's Dogs of War - First Class Display from Second Class Citizens

It’s funny being a second class citizen. As Vincent Vega remarked about Europe, it’s not that like it's totally alien. It’s just the little differences.

If Meath, say, dog out a win on a day so miserable that it could have come right out of one of the more gloomy episodes of Peig Sayers’ life, then Meath are a team with mental strength, team that are never bet, a great bunch of bucks. If Mayo do it, it’s a further indication of the decline of Connacht football.

If Kildare, for instance, shoot nine first half wides then Kildare are a total football team and a credit to Kieran McGeeney and his lovely hair. If Mayo do it, it’s Mayo God help us all over again.

If Tyrone hold an opponent to one point in the second half it’s testimony to how organized and professional an outfit they are. If Mayo do it, it’s because Galway are but a shadow of past glories and hey, Connacht football is only for gimps anyway.

Mayo people, if they are wise, will ignore all this and take a huge amount of positives from the game yesterday in Castlebar. A friend of An Spailpín likes to quote Seán Boylan’s remark that football isn’t won in the head or the heart but in the belly.

Mayo showed some serious fight in the second half to hammer Galway like a nail and they should draw considerable strength from that as they look ahead to the rest of the summer.

Football is in a process of evolution. The conventional midfielder doesn’t exist anymore. There are goalkeepers, full backs and full forwards, and then there is the maelstrom of the middle third where only the strong survive.

In An Spailpín’s ideal world Willie Joe soars for the high ball under the clear blue skies before horsing it inside for Jimmy Burke or Noel Durkin. But in the real world, where you have manky weather and big question marks hanging over you, you fight for your very life.

And that’s exactly what Mayo did against Galway. They didn’t play in the Mayo style. They couldn’t – the TV really didn’t show what it was like to be out there in the teeming rain and into the teeth of a gale. Mayo fought like savages, and they came out on top.

Mayo were Kings of the Dirty Ball yesterday. Inspired by the O’Shea brothers, Mayo fought like junkyard dogs for every ball between the 45 metre lines and that’s why they won.

This is tremendous and heartening news for Mayo. John O’Mahony talked a lot about rebuilding, when he was actually destroying a team that got to two All-Ireland finals in three years, an achievement was never recognized, celebrated or built on for what it was.

The rebuilding has only started under Horan, and it’s on these young men that Horan has brought in that the future of Mayo will be built.

Mayo are a flawed team. I personally can live with that. I’ve seen lots of Mayo teams that were the best team in Ireland in June and long forgotten in September. I prefer this way. There’s plenty for James Horan to work on – he may need to consider buying a bicycle for Robert Hennelly to get up and down the pitch if Hennelly’s going to be taking many more frees, for instance – but yesterday was a heartening win for Mayo.

The country outside Connacht will hold its nose at the prospect of the Connacht Final, and that’s fine. Maybe the media will insist that all Connacht players be belled for the rest of the Championship, and have continuity announcers warn innocents that a particular afternoon’s football may contain scenes of a Connacht nature. And that’s fine too. We all have to live our lives according to our different lights.

Right now, in a lonesome Dublin exile, there is one happy Mayoman after seeing his team show a little bit of bite. It’ll be fun to see if anybody needs a rabies shot this summer after seventy minutes muzzle to muzzle Mayo’s Dogs of War.

FOCAL SCOIR: Big thumbs up to the beautiful and wonderful Vintage Irish Book Covers blog, from which I’ve sourced the photo. Wonderful site. Beautiful books.

There's Nothing a Mayoman Loves More than Losing to Galway

Mayo is luckier than other counties. Not only do we enjoy natural beauty of mountain, beach and oilfield – conveniently minded for us by our multinational friends in return for a box of beads and one mirror, slightly cracked – but we are also blessed by being able to get beaten by Galway every second year in the Championship.

There’s nothing we in Mayo enjoy more than getting up early on Sunday morning, ating the breakfast that’s been cooking on the hob since last night, into the match gear and then off to Galway or Castlebar to have an apple stuffed in the gob, a skewer shoved where the sun seldom shines and get roasted and served up with mashed potatoes and green beans by P Joyce, J Fallon or M McDonagh as appropriate.

It’s a relationship that the media understand well. They know that there’s only one team in Connacht really. Sligo, Roscommon and Leitrim are grand for holiday homes. Mayo are just depressing, seeing them huffing and puffing and doing their best to almost, nearly, kinda win an All-Ireland, only to find some other way to munson it up before collapsing in crying, wailing heaps on high stools up and down Dorset Street, Dublins 1 and 7.

But Galway. Now there’s a team you can look up to. See, Galway don’t munson it up in Croker. Galway turn up like the aristocrats they are. Pointy shoes and expensive trainers peep out from under their flared jeans, as opposed to the plain black brogues of the unreconstructed bogger.

Galwaymen know how to lay a table and don’t drink their tay from the saucer. They have women like the Seoige sisters on their arms, with their irresistible “is that a copy of the Christian Brothers Irish Grammar in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?” appeal. And when Galway do lose, hey, it’s no biggie. They go racing or ating oysters or watching plays or mime artists or the Lord God knows what. As opposed to sitting there sobbing one minute and being in murderous fury the next at the horrific, scalding injustice of it all.

It’s one of the pleasures of my life to have witnessed Galway’s resurrection in the ‘nineties, from the days when you had about a dozen turning up for training as they worked through the horrors of their 1983 choke-job.

There isn’t a Mayo man or woman whose heart didn’t sing with joy when Galway cancelled Mayo’s summer in May 25th, 1998. Oh happy day, we all said to each other leaving the ground, good old Galway will be able to build on the Maughan revolution to pox an All-Ireland against Carlow or Waterford or Kildare or someplace like that. It was such a weight off our minds.

And that’s why we’re looking forward to Sunday so much. Having seen off the appalling Tommy Lyons vista and dodged a series of bullets in London, nothing could be more wonderful this weekend for Mayo than for Galway, under yet another visiting manager, to magically weave the callow Under 21s and the wily veterans, none wilier than An Seoigeach himself, into yet another team that will storm their way to glory. Boy oh boy. I’m really looking forward to it. I can’t bloody wait.

Well Done The Sunday Game, the Most Important Program in Ireland

Des Cahill’s Sunday Game goes from strength to strength. Cahill’s tenure in the most important job in Irish television got off to a wonderful start last year when his effortlessly amiable manner put GAA men at ease, as opposed to the Defcon 1 necessary for a chat with Cahill’s immediate predecessor, Pat Spillane.

The standard of analysis on The Sunday Game is so much better than it was too. Rather than ape what’s emerging as the RTÉ Sport house style of forming panels along the Contrarian/Someone with a clue model, Cahill allows his panelists to share what they know from lifetimes in the game. Not all the panelists are great of course, but still. It’s a start.

Last night Cahill rose to another challenge, and he deserves credit for it. Sligo v Leitrim was never likely to be a feature game when Kerry, Cork and Kildare are all playing. The fact that people expect their TV sports presented in a certain way makes it hard on Irish broadcasters too, because the GAA, to its glory, is not a professional sport.

It exists in a different sort of reality and the Irish media hasn’t really come to grips with finding the correct voice for that, a voice that finds the balance between the journalist’s duty to report facts, and common decency’s duty not to hammer a guy who did his best and has to go to work in the morning. It’s very hard to strike a balance between the marquee needs of television and the pride of village needs of the ordinary GAA person.

But last night The Sunday Game came up trumps. They can’t have been expecting the story of the day to happen in Markiewicz Park on Sunday morning but it did and The Sunday Game were able to change their schedules to accommodate it.

Again, it doesn’t seem like much, featuring Leitrim’s triumphant win over Sligo first in the show rather than down the order, but it was something that was beyond the Sunday Game’s newsroom colleagues at six and at nine o’clock.

Is this because RTÉ have upped their game in the light of Newstalk’s challenge on the radio? It’s possible, but it doesn’t matter. All that does matter is that there is a rising standard in the way the games are covered. Each can make the other better by forcing excellence, instead of settling for the mediocrity that comes from monopoly.

Your correspondent was contacted on Twitter during the weekend over some robust criticism of a GAA piece on The Journal on Friday night, since taken down. My friend told me, in not so many words, that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and, as such, perhaps I shouldn’t have gone so medieval in my remarks.

And I take that on board. Few things are as hateful as bullies. But it’s also important to have standards and if we don’t excoriate the mediocre we can never identify the good. So hail, then, The Sunday Game, for not going through the motions and giving Leitrim their due.

GAA isn’t like other sports. There is nothing more local than the GAA and it’s from this local rivalry that the organisation derives its great strength. The GAA doesn’t exist in the same world of glamour as English soccer or European rugby. But for the people of Roscommon and Letrim in the joyous three weeks of anticipation ahead of them, it’s Heaven descended unto the Earth.

The GAA means nothing in the world of Eurovision or X-Factor or Glenda and Rosanna. It exists somewhere else; in shops where people get messages, marts where farmers look and don’t buy, bars that sell pints of special and locals keep money for funeral pints in jars. It’s outside church gates and chip shops and petrol stations and all the places where people meet to talk and ask well; how do you think they’ll do on Sunday? It’s a magical place, really. I think they call it “Ireland.”

Mayo Championship Preview 2011

The fifteenth of August is the day of the fair in the great town of Belmullet, sentinel between the sweet county Mayo and the wild and wasteful ocean. They will talk about football in the bars in Belmullet on the 15th of August, because they must. What else is there?

What determines whether or not James Horan’s first year in charge of Mayo has been a success or a failure will depend on whether or not that football talk in Belmullet is looking back at a quarter-final loss or looking forward to a semi-final. That’s the measuring stick.

So far James Horan has been a complete success since he was appointed manager. Horan has been a success because he was appointed in the first place, showing that the Board put football ahead of money. They may have needed a twitch on the bridle along the way but no harm, no foul.

The second success of James Horan has been a perfect League campaign. Mayo did not get relegated, and Horan looked at as many players in as many positions as he could.

People have chosen to see Mayo’s scutching against Dublin as a sign that Mayo are in trouble. It’s the opposite. Horan never cared about the result. If he did, he wouldn’t have waited until the second half to make his first substitution. Horan had bigger fish to fry.

Horan got the name of Mr Mix-’Em-Up in his team selections. The smallest number of changes he made between one game and the next was six, but he made eleven changes once and ten three times. Horan was determined to look at everybody and give everybody a chance.

What’s particularly fascinating is when you chart out his teams over the League, you see a very clear method to his madness. Changes appeared random, but there are clearly patterns to be seen. (And we have to take a moment to once again salute the great Willie Joe of the Mayo GAA Blog, without whom these stats would have been more or less impossible to track down).

Three players started all the League games – Ger Cafferkey, Kevin McLoughlin and Andy Moran. Only Cafferkey always started in the same position. McLoughlin was either seven or twelve. Andy Moran was 10 once, twice 11, twice 12, and twice 14.

As the games went on, a clear evolution in Horan’s thinking became clearer. He knows whom he wants where. He’s given players chances – Tom Parsons started three games out of seven for Horan before being dropped from the panel.

Horan has problem positions, of course, but who doesn’t? His biggest problem may be where to play Aiden O’Shea – O’Shea’s been most effective at midfield, but that then leaves the question of whom to play at 13. Who takes the frees is another question. Or who goes where in the full back line.

But it’s always been the Mayo way to look at what’s not there rather than what is. It’s a loser mentality that’s held the county back for so long. So let’s treat ourselves for once and see what’s there rather than what isn’t – the thrilling prospect of a summer lit up by the deep and terrible threat that the inside line possesses.

Mayo haven’t had an inside line that’s been feared in years and years. But suddenly Jason Doherty, Horan’s great find of the year, and Alan Freeman, the one thing to come from last year’s disaster in Sligo, have claimed the 15 and 14 jerseys. They’re both young and unseasoned, but that has as many benefits as it has dangers. If Mayo can get ball to those men, they can do damage.

Defence continues to be a work in progress but it does seem that the players are there. Tom Cuniffee, the Feeneys, Cathal Hallinan, Keith Higgins, James Burke, Kevin McLoughlin, Cafferkey – the men are there. It’s just a question of where to slot them.

The shot in the arm that the Under-21 success has provided Galway is a headache that Horan didn’t need, but no matter. Even if Galway do win in June or if there’s a disaster in the Connacht Final, the odds are against Mayo getting a disastrous draw in the qualifiers. Mayo have the men and the manager to make the last eight. After that, it’s all to play for. James Horan has given the people of Mayo reason to hope once more. Maigh Eo abú.

Football 2011 Preview: The Either/Or Championship?

Will 2011 be the Either/Or Championship? A glance at the odds before the slow fuse is lit this weekend in Ballybofey suggests that the Championship will be won by either Cork or Kerry and everyone else is just making up the numbers.

Cork are 5/2 best price, Kerry threes, Dublin fours, Tyrone eights and then it’s a remarkable 14/1 the field. It’s hard to remember a year when the Championship seemed so striated between haves and have-nots.

Are the oddsmakers wrong? It’s hard to make that case. Cork are clearly the best team in country now, as their victory against Dublin in the League final proved. This current Cork team haven’t an iconic player like Corkery or Tompkins or JBM in his day – although An Spailpín must confess a huge regard for Noel O’Leary, without whose shutting down of Martin Clarke Cork wouldn’t have won last September – but they enjoy a depth of talent that cannot be matched by any other county. Michael Collins’ question of who’ll take his place if they take him away is regularly answered by the men who sit on the bench for the Rebel County.

Kerry are Cork’s biggest threat, for two reasons. Firstly, because they are everybody’s biggest threat, being Kerry, and secondly because they can get under Cork’s skin and into Cork’s heads like no other team can. When doubt whispers in Cork ears at times of crisis, he speaks in a Kerry accent and prefaces his remarks with “yerra.”

Against Kerry’s return is the fact that the team is aging and young players are not coming through. Which doesn’t mean they won’t of course. God only knows what’s springing down from a mountain somewhere down there now, with a kitbag slung over the shoulder and the rich tradition flowing in his veins. It would be a fool of astonishing proportions to underestimate Kerry at any time.

Dublin’s loss against Cork in that League final might be the best thing to happen to them. If it hasn’t killed them it will make them stronger; this is the nature of things. Dublin have some very talented players currently with Bernard Brogan being as good as there is in the country right now, but the mental frailties remain and there are some players who may crumble midst shot and shell in high summer. But again, it’s looking like a thin year and someone has to win it – Dublin have strong reasons to hope.

After that, the deluge. Tyrone are in an impossible position, and we can only hope that they find some sort of resolution in getting on with their lives, playing football and doing what they’ve always done in the light of another tragedy that’s descended on them. God be good to them as they do their best for home and hearth.

Down and Donegal remain as enigmatic as ever. Donegal have Michael Murphy, and they will live and die by him. There are worse men to pin your hopes on. Down aren’t as reliant on Martin Clarke, or at least they shouldn’t be. Maybe if that penny drops, that Clarke can’t do it all on his own, they’ll be stronger. It’s always hard to know how Down will go in any given year. I suspect they seldom know themselves.

Leinster is a province in trouble. Dara Ó Cinnéide wrote some years ago that Meath is the bellweather county for the GAA’s future – a rural county that’s quickly becoming urbanised. Ó Cinnéide thought that if the GAA could capture that urban youth then the Association’s future in 21st Century Ireland is secure. So far, the signs aren’t promising.

It’s hard to know what to make of Kildare and Laois, who have been worse and better than expected so far this year. The sad conclusion is that it’s unlikely either are up to much. Things are grim in Leinster.

In the blessed West, Sligo don’t seem to have got over last year’s Connacht Final while Roscommon have successfully restored their tradition. Leitrim will be hoping the return of Emlyn Mulligan will extend their summer while Galway have seen a winter of discontent made potentially glorious summer by their remarkable and kind of frightening Under-21 All-Ireland Champions. Galway have been saying for years that they don’t have players. They’re waiting in the long grass, just the way they like it.

Mayo? Mayo preview tomorrow.

Mayo Aren't That Far Away

There is an air of grimly facing the inevitable about Cork’s trip to Castlebar on Sunday. Cork were sweetly obliging the last time Mayo played them in the League regular season, rolling over to have their tummies tickled by the banks of the Lee. They then turned around in a week to have a loud last laugh by carpet-bombing Mayo in the League Final and setting up the further Mayo humiliations to come.

Cork are now the best football team in the country. There is no disputing that fact. Having finally won that All-Ireland last year, their option now is to win a few more, and claim definitive greatness. If they leave it only at one, you can rest assured their witty neighbours to the north won’t be long reminding them that, yerra, 2010 was a soft one.

And for all that, An Spailpín isn’t despairing about summer prospects for Mayo. If anything, the summer looks rather good.

Of all the bizarre events of that hammering from Dublin last Sunday week at Croke Park, An Spailpín was struck by the fact that James Horan made no substitutions until the second half. How many times will teams go down 4-4 to 0-2 after fifteen minutes in any grade without at least one of the backs getting the curly finger?

So either Horan didn’t notice that Mayo were getting a complete scutching, or else he didn’t care. An Spailpín has no idea, but I’d guess that Horan knew it was happening alright, but whatever was on his mind was more important than two league points against Dublin.

If not, why wouldn’t he have hauled poor Chris Barrett out of there, and sent Ger Cafferkey back? If Mayo have as bad a start as that in the Championship, you can rest assured Horan will do something. But for the League; no. Results aren’t what interest him just yet.

Which doesn’t mean Mayo are playing to lose, of course, or that relegation doesn’t bother them. It’s just a question of relativity, just as we all now realise in the modern world that, while getting a pay cut stinks, it’s still better than losing your job.

Relegation wouldn’t be that bad if, for all his tweaking, Horan can hit on a winning formula in the summer. Connacht isn’t as weak as has been made out, and if Galway can do something against the rising Ross in the Under-21 Connacht Final in Salthill this weekend, that might do their senior team no harm either.

Nor are Mayo necessarily doomed to the trapdoor either. How bothered are Cork about a spin to Castlebar? The League is all about judgement. Cork know from Mayo last year that League wins aren’t worth a damn. It’s only about your last game in the League, and how that sets you up for the summer. Stronger or weaker? Better to suffer now than later.

Issues remain with Mayo, and there are issues with nearly every line of the team. But this Mayo. That will always be the way. It’s too early for weeping by the lovely sweet banks of the Mayo. Wait until the summer, and see what the good God brings.

Beware, Beware the Ross on the Rise

Michael Foley of the Sunday Times is one of today’s best GAA journalists, but he was wrong to write a fortnight ago that this year’s Connacht Championship would not be a good one. It may prove one of the all-time greats.

It seems an article of faith in the national media that Connacht is a two horse race, just as Munster is. Foley went a step further, by suggesting that Galway’s current and undeniable decline is a reflection of a fuller provincial malaise.

Michael Foley is wrong. Galway are in decline, certainly, and it’s hard to see how they’ll turn it around by the summer. They’re bunched. But Connacht is bigger than Galway alone.

Leitrim welcome the return of Emlyn Mulligan and with him around they are always a threat if they don’t get scutched at the back. No team has more to prove than Sligo after calving in Connacht Final last year. Mayo aren’t too bad but Roscommon is the team that An Spailpín is keeping a close eye on this year. The primrose and blue have a lean and hungry look, and it’s not just coming from spending too much time at one of Luke Flanagan’s clinics.

The two horse race analogy was never correct in the first place. Roscommon teams are not the strangers to September that analogy would have you believe. Roscommon have not as many Nestor Cups as Mayo or Galway, but they have more provincial football titles than the four Munster counties who aren’t Cork or Kerry combined.

The backdoor works against Roscommon, and it’s possible that their missing decade was due to psychological damage after being the first real victims of the back door. Being managed by Tommy “Tom” Carr didn’t help either, of course.

But that was then and this is now. A veteran St Brigid’s team will face Crossmaglen in the All-Ireland Club Final on St Patrick’s Day, hoping to go one better than the Clann na Gael teams of the early ‘nineties. An unrated Roscommon Under-21 team dogged out a win over a very highly rated Mayo Under-21 team in Castlebar on Saturday. And the Roscommon golden generation that won the minor All-Ireland title in 2006 is being skilfully woven into the senior side by Fergal O’Donnell, who managed them to that win in 2006.

Roscommon are playing Division 4 football now, of course, and can’t afford a slip-up as they fight for promotion. They haven’t slipped so far, and An Spailpín Fánach can’t get it out of his head that winning against Fermanagh and Longford in the League can’t be all bad – not least in comparison to losing against Mayo, Kerry and whoever else shows up as Galway are currently doing.

The national media may not be aware of the sound of drums along the shores of Lough Ree, but Connacht is. Not least in Mayo. People talk about border rivalries in football – Mayo has the greatest border rivalry of all, as the Ballaghderreen club isn’t even on the border. It’s six miles behind enemy lines.

Heart is mentioned in the Roscommon county motto – the constant heart of Ireland. An Spailpín Fánach knows of no prouder county, and can only imagine how O’Donnell and the rest of the Roscommon brains trust are mixing the scalding hurt of the past ten years with the still-bright memories of the great Roscommon teams of the past to make a very potent football potion.

Mayo will not run scared of Roscommon. There are garments being rendered at the prospect of relegation after defeats to Kerry and Armagh currently of course, but there is no life outside the high summer in the GAA now. Mayo have had some good under-age teams too.

But while Mayo will not run scared of Roscommon, they certainly won’t be thinking they only have to show up to beat them. Not least in Ballaghderreen, where the smoking altars to their strange and pagan Roscommon gods, Kee-gahn, J’gerr, Muh-ree and the rest remind the Mayo faithful that Roscommon are on the rise again.