Galway v Mayo: Never the Same Game Twice

One of the many knocks on the provincial system is that it’s always the same. People say this like it’s a bad thing. But it’s not. It’s a great thing, the very DNA of the Championship itself.

When Queensland play New South Wales in Rugby League’s shuddering State of Origin games, you don’t hear Queenslanders saying they were sick of playing NSW all the time, and why couldn’t they have a crack at Tasmania for a change. But in the football Championship, the almost-annual clashes are said to be, somehow, “boring.”

As another encounter between Mayo and Galway fast approaches at the end of this week it’s instructive to notice that, whatever else you may say about the rivalry, it has been anything but dull. In the modern era – the qualifier era – Mayo and Galway have played ten times, with five wins each.

Both teams have won twice away, and three times at home. There have been no draws and all ten games have been played in the province, never in the qualifiers a la Cork and Kerry.

But in looking back over those ten games, there is no real pattern. There is no story arc, rising and falling with the development arcs of the respective teams. Each game was played on its own merits, with no relation to form that year or the last time the teams met.

The first Mayo v Galway game of the modern era was in Castlebar in 2002, when Michael Moyles charged from midfield to rifle home a goal into the An Sportlann end in the first minute. Sadly for Mayo, that was as good as it got, as Galway slowly and surely reeled them back in a game memorable only for that goal and some very peculiar betting patterns when the Sunday Game decided to make Man of the Match open to a public vote.

Galway won again in 2003 in Salthill, the first seaside meeting between the teams in 1994, when the match swung on a missed Mayo penalty that was followed up by a goal from the subsequent kickout by Declan Meehan, if memory serves. A six-point swing is nearly always fatal.

In 2004, it looked as though Galway were going to bury Mayo where their bones would never be found as Galway went 1-3 to no-score ahead after ten minutes. Galway then had a penalty at the Albany end to nail the lid on the coffin before people had even finished their post-anthem ice-creams but Michael Donnellan – somehow – either pointed or missed the thing entirely. And then, over the course of the next hour, Mayo did what they weren’t, until that time, particularly noted for doing – they clawed their way all the way back for a win.

Galway had their revenge in 2005, when Peter Ford’s first term in charge saw Galway beat Mayo in the Connacht Final in a robust encounter in Salthill.

Ford’s style sat badly with the aristocracy, and two Connacht titles in three years were not enough to save him. In the light of how football has evolved since, would Galway have been better off had they stuck with Ford? Who knows?

2006 was the year of Mickey Moran and John Morrison, a year like no other in Mayo, with starburst formations in the full-forward line, Ger Brady at centre-half forward, negativity left in builders’ skips and all the rest of it. But the eternally level-headed Ford had Galway put it up to Mayo in the Connacht Final in Castlebar, when it took a last-gasp Conor Mortimer free to win the day.

Galway won two straight then, in 2007 thanks to brace of goals by Cormac Bane on a sweltering day in early, early summer in Salthill, and again in 2008 when a Padraic Joyce-inspired Galway won the Nestor Cup in Castlebar by one point.

Galway fell to Kerry in a quarter-final that year, in an epic game played in monsoon conditions – the rain was so heavy that Jones’ Road itself flooded for a while. There was no shame in it, but there was no silverware either, and that’s the bottom line.

Since then, though, it’s been all Mayo. Mayo beat Galway in the Salthill sunshine in 2009 before having their heads stoved in by another old rival in Croke Park, Meath. That win over Galway was the last Championship win for any team managed by John O’Mahony. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Sunday will be the third time Mayo will have played Galway under James Horan. The first was a nail-biting win on a squally wet day in Castlebar; the second a hammering of Galway by Mayo so comprehensive that it’s hard even now to believe that it happened, and we have to wait until the end of this week to see the third encounter’s charms.

That hammering last year served notice to the country that Galway’s line of credit for the All-Irelands of 1998 and 2001 had run out and Galway were now just another team. In Galway, much is made of their inability to win in Croke Park since they beat Meath for their ninth All-Ireland thirteen years ago.

But Galway have only got to Croke Park to lose there five times in the past twelve years. The other seven have seen them dumped out of the Championship in Sligo, Belfast, Navan and, most humiliatingly, twice on home soil. Galway were knocked out of the 2006 Championship when Westmeath beat them in Salthill in the fourth round of the qualifiers, and Wexford beat them in the second round of the qualifiers four years ago this week.

They say that the seeds of an empire’s doom are sown far earlier than its actual fall. Instead of those Croke Park failures, could Galway’s decline be traced back to that Connacht semi-final in 2004, in Castlebar, when Mayo came back from a six-point deficit?

For Mayo people, it would be nice to think so, not least in a week when the rivalry is to resume again. Every Mayo-Galway game is different from the one that went before, and Sunday’s will be different again. Will a new Galway imperium rise in Castlebar, just as it did in 1998? Or will the Mayo backs return Galway’s young tyros to the schoolyard, and her forwards finally click in time for another tilt at the citadel? We’ll have to wait and see.

London in the Connacht Final is a Cause for National Celebration

London’s remarkable achievement in reaching this year’s Connacht Final means that the game on July 21st is now bigger than football. It’s no longer a sporting contest – it’s a unique occasion for the nation to stop and take stock, to celebrate what we did, make reparation for what we failed to do, and to look proudly to the future.

These opportunities don’t come along often in Recession Ireland, and we should make the most of them.

Firstly, the Connacht Council should get on the phone to the London Board first thing this morning and find a stadium to host the Connacht Final. They have three weeks, which is loads of time to cut a deal with one of the twenty stadia in London that have capacities of more than 10,000.

The tennis courts at Wimbledon or Queen’s club could be a bit delicate for football and we’re in the wrong time of year for the 30,000 capacity Lord’s Cricket Ground or the 23,000 Surrey Oval. Wembley or Twickenham are a bit on the big side but a stadium like White Hart Lane (36,000), Upton Park (35,000), Selhurst Park (26,000) or maybe even Loftus Road (19,000) should be considered.

This wouldn’t be cheap, of course, but in this year of The Gathering it would be interesting to see if the Government is willing to put its money where its mouth is and underwrite the operation.

Why go to the trouble? Because we, the nation, owe the Irish in London. We owe them big-style down the years and now that a unique opportunity has arisen, where an English team is playing a high-profile match in the most Irish of entities, the All-Ireland Championship, that gives us an opportunity to celebrate, remember and look forward.

This is a chance for a second Polo Grounds, and if it’s not grabbed it will be gone. But it’ll be bigger than the Polo Grounds in its way, because the Irish were always welcome in America. They were not always welcome in England – no blacks, no Irishmen, no dogs, as the signs often said.

And what was it like to be an emigrant? Well, it wasn’t great. Dónall Mac Amhlaigh wrote a poignant memoir of his time as a navvy in England in the 1950s, Dialann Deoraí, and he records a hard life with a surprising and noble absence of bitterness. Some Irish got on well in England – no sign of the famine on Graham Norton, and more power to him – but some found it a struggle.

And why wouldn’t they? All through their time in school the Irish of that forgotten ‘fifties generation were told that all Ireland’s woes were the fault of the English, the godless, heathen English. To suddenly find themselves in that same godless place, in a cold room in a terraced house that was as alien to them as pitching a tent on the moon – what on earth were they to do?

A lot became insular, and drank to ease the pain, as it was the only thing they knew how to do. They didn’t mix, because mixing would be an occasion of sin and this was, after all, a godless country. And they loyally sent money home, money that in part helped build the GAA and that very few of them ever saw again.

The Irish are emigrating again as the recession stalks the land, but it’s not the same. The world has gotten smaller. We know what the world is like since we were children, because we’ve seen it on the television.

But that lost generation of the 1950s hadn’t a clue. In this era of victims and survivors and compensation, who ever thinks of the innocent Irish who were turned from their own country and had to find a living in one that they had been taught to always think of as the enemy?

The country had its arm twisted during the Queen’s visit to believe that we’ve all moved on. Well, now let’s see Ireland’s greatest cultural association do its bit for the maturity of the nation.

Let emissaries go to London and spread the word that Gaelic games are coming to the city of Charles Dickens and Samuel Johnson, of Christopher Wren and Issac Newton, of David Beckham and Bobby Moore. Proclaim it through the host that it is the Irish nation’s shame that the emigrants where were nearest to us were furthest away, but that we now make reparation, and celebrate our brothers and sisters in England just as we do those in the United States, in Canada, in Australia and elsewhere.

This is bigger than football. Colm O’Rourke and Pat Spillane were sniggering on the Sunday Game yesterday about the prospect of London being in the Connacht Final. They don’t get it. They never get it. The GAA was never just about sports. It is about Ireland first, and the celebration of Irishness, that one strange thing that makes all Irish people so very different from anywhere else.

If the Gathering is anything other than the shakedown or an exercise in Paddy-whackery, the 2013 Connacht Final is an opportunity, Heaven-sent, for Ireland to send a cultural message in the other direction, to make the Gathering a two-way street. For once, let’s try to see the big picture. Up Mayo.

1975 - Was It Really Mayo's Worst-Ever Defeat?

July, 1975. 10cc weren’t in love in the charts, Muhammad Ali warmed up for the Thrilla in Manilla by pounding Joe Bugner in Kuala Lumper, and Jaws was revolutionising the movie industry in the USA.

Across the broad Atlantic on the west coast of Ireland, the Mayo football team hit the nadir of their sixty-years and counting wait for a fourth All-Ireland senior football title. For some reason, the defeat to Sligo in 1975 is seen as Mayo’s Guernica – the greatest horror among a long catalog of horrors.

And at thirty-seven years’ remove and in a week when Mayo face Sligo in the Connacht Final once more, it’s reasonable to ask why. Why was that 1975 defeat so much worse than any of the other horrors that happened before or since?

Sligo were no bad team in 1975. Barnes Murphy, an All-Star winner in 1974, was coach and captain at centre-half back, and even in those amateur days Sligo went to the effort of bringing Brian McEniff down from Donegal to take some training sessions. Sligo had form, having dispatched Galway to get to the Connacht Final in the first place. And they had Mickey Kearins, Eamon O’Hara’s one challenger to the title of Greatest Ever Sligo Player. Kearins had a lot of miles on the clock by 1975 and looked it, but he was the one man Mayo feared.

Sligo certainly didn’t fear Mayo. In the week leading to the game, the Irish Press quoted a bullish Barnes Murphy on how glad he was that it was Mayo that Sligo faced in the final, a quote that places what Mayo football was like at the time in context: “You always have an inferiority complex if you come up against Galway while Roscommon are a bit of a hoodoo team for us. But we do not feel that way at all about Mayo. After all, in recent matches, we have beaten them as often as they have beaten us.”

The Connacht Final in Markiewicz Park on July 6, 1975, was a draw, 2-10 to 1-13 on a beautiful day for football. Sligo went into a six point lead which Mayo slowly clawed back in the second half. Each had their chances of winning of it in the last ten minutes, but didn’t take them. A replay was fixed for two weeks later in Castlebar. Sideline 50p, schoolboys 20p.

Which of them left it behind in the drawn game was a matter of perspective. The Western People felt that there was a “primary difference between the counties: Sligo’s self-doubt based on years of inferiority as against Mayo’s utter conviction that, when they put their minds down to it, there is no way Sligo can deny them.”

Barnes Murphy didn’t much care for them apples. On the Saturday before the replay, he provided Mayo with more dressing-room material, again courtesy of the Irish Press: “We know we have the beating of Mayo and indeed we had the winning of the drawn game. Remember we were on top in the opening stages and then that unlucky penalty knocked us out of our stride.”

While the drawn game was a fine game, the replay in Castlebar was just plain dirty. It was scrappy, with a lot of needle and no small amount of off-the-ball exchanges. Mayo’s best line was at half-back, but in midfield there were serious problems.

Mayo named Richie Bell and Frank Burns at midfield for the drawn game. Burns, who also played rugby for Connacht, was a veteran, while Bell was part of a Mayo Under-21 team that won the 1974 All-Ireland and came into the senior squad in the winter of ‘74. But Bell got injured before the drawn game, with his place taken by Charlestown’s Eamon Brett. Brett hurt his shoulder two minutes in the drawn game, and Des McGrath came on then.

Mayo makeshift midfield struggled badly in the drawn game, and had to haul Seán Kilbride back from full-forward to bail water. It was a bridge too far in the replay, where Sligo’s mustachioed hero Johnny Stenson bossed the skies and Mayo, even with Kilbride brought back to help out, couldn’t compete.

When you lose midfield your full-backs will be exposed to shot and shell. Mayo famously hauled John O’Mahony ashore after eleven minutes but the real damage was being done on Johnno’s left.

Mickey Kearins had been quiet in the drawn game but he wrecked havoc in the replay, smashing home a penalty and setting up the second Sligo goal. When the dust cleared, Sligo had won by a point, 2-10 to 0-15.

The Mayo News was phlegmatic in its analysis: “This is a young Mayo team. They have the winning of a number of Connacht titles and possibly an even bigger one. They have the spirit and another year will make a better team of them.”

The Western People was more robust: “A total indifference to warnings about the quality of the full-back line, being too smart by half with full-forward/midfield switches, and the employment of doubtful tactics which robbed the half-forward line of impact, finally culminated in disaster, just as emphatic, in fact, as in the league semi-final against Meath.”

Quite the rant, and there was more to come: “There is no use in selectors dodging the issue by asking where the replacements needed might have come from. It was their job to find them and they didn’t have to cast their net very far. For, and make no mistake about it, there are certainly better players around than at least eight of the men who were on duty or standby last Sunday.”

Unfortunately, the Western didn’t go so far as to name an alternative team, and it’s all in the realm of conjecture now. But on the face of it, it’s hard to understand why that game above all others was seen as such a low-water mark.

Sligo might be poor relations historically in Connacht, but that was a good team they had in the 1970s. They got destroyed by Kerry in the All-Ireland semi-final, but that Kerry team would munch up and spit out far prouder counties than the Yeatsmen. Cork, for instance. That Sligo team always had a Nestor Cup in them, and it was Mayo’s bad luck to meet them when destiny smiled.

It was also Mayo’s bad luck to suffer that bizarre series of injuries at midfield. Not that Bell playing would necessarily have changed things – he and Stenson both now field the dropping ball in Heavenly pastures, may God be good to both of them – but the makeshift third-string midfield can’t be dismissed as a factor in Mayo’s defeat. JP Kean reflects in Keith Duggan’s magnificent House of Pain that if his shot on goal in the first game had been three inches lower and avoided the crossbar the entire history of Mayo could be different. But of course, it didn’t, it’s not and life is very much like that.

Sometimes it’s not a curse. Sometimes the other guys are just better. Mayo lost to Sligo in 1975 because Sligo were better and wanted it more. Simple as that.

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.

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.

Two Gaelic Football Bets for the Weekend

Tradition is the funny man. The lazy notion that’s been prevalent in some media about the Connacht Championship being strictly an either/or affair between Mayo and Galway down the years is not true.

Roscommon have had a nightmare decade but they have a proud football tradition – not as successful as Mayo or Galway but considerably better than the other three Connacht teams combined. Roscommon have two All-Ireland titles, nineteen Nestor Cups and four All-Ireland runner up appearances, and every man, woman and child in Roscommon are fully aware of that as they fly under the radar to the Connacht Final in Castlebar on Sunday.

Roscommon were never as successful as Cavan in their pomp but Roscommon haven’t fallen as far as Cavan yet, although it looked very bleak for a while. Boxing Sligo’s ears for them would be something that would help remind the new generation of their responsibilities to those that wore the primrose and blue with such staggering pride in the past.

An Spailpín has seen the Rossie support at matches in recent years, their constant hearts breaking as humiliation heaped on humiliation. But still they came back. They never deserted the colours. The desolate stands at Salthill or as expected later today at Headquarters are hard to imagine replicated in the Hyde, and that fierce pride counts.

Counting against Roscommon is the fact that Sligo are the better team this year, any way you slice them. Sligo have better players and, while you can only dance with the girls in the hall, Sligo’s will and resolve will have been tempered by a path to the Final that went through Mayo and two games with Galway.

Historically, Sligo would have wilted in the replay after Galway reeled them back in Salthill, but this is a New Model Sligo. If the Yeats county do win on Sunday they are the unquestionably the greatest Sligo team ever and there’s no reason why they should set a horizon on their ambitions.

The media will set the provincial title as the limit of their ambition but if you look at the road to September and of whom Sligo should be afraid – well, it could be one Hell of a summer for them yet.

But first they must get past Roscommon. Sligo are no price at 2/7 and, while we wouldn’t be surprised if the Ross rose again, we wouldn’t expect it so much as to part with folding green in a recession economy.

However, there is a good bet available for the Connacht Final, and that is that there will be more than one goal scored between the two teams, currently quoted at 4/5 and rising on Betfair.

The Sligo fullback line is dodgy and Roscommon suffer from a lack point-scorers. This suggests that a few scuds into either Donie Shine or Karol Mannion on the edge of the square will be an avenue that Roscommon will be eager to explore.

Equally, the Sligo corner forwards have shown an assassin’s touch so far this summer and the mighty Cake is no longer between the sticks for the Ross. Over 1.5 goals in the Connacht Final is a good bet.

Only a madman would bet on Derry v Kildare or Offaly v Down, as not one of the four of them can be relied upon to play up or down to recent form, which is very much when the only way to make money is to keep it in the póca. Cork will almost certainly slaughter Wexford, but they’re no price at all and that’s no good to us.

However, Armagh are quoted at 13/8 against 6/4 on favourites Dublin at a deserted Croke Park later today and that is one price that An Spailpín cannot get his head around at all. The matchless Kevin Egan believes that Dublin can win pulling up but Dublin appear a team in disarray swirling down the crazy river to your regular correspondent.

Armagh have their problems since the glory days ended but my goodness gracious, 13/8? I am kurious, Oranj, but that’s a hearty bargain that doesn’t come along every day. A bag of groats, then, on the Orchard County this evening before looking to the blessed West tomorrow.

Mayo Remain Defiant After Galway's Sammon Leap

Galway 2-12
Mayo 1-14

One of the great feats of gaiscíocht, or acts of heroism, of the mythical Irish warriors was the salmon leap. The warrior had to be able to leap an opponent’s shield in order to hack off the opponent’s head from above, what modern marketing consultants would consider thinking outside the envelope.

Galway are doing some Sammon leaping themselves this year, as crowned by their Connacht Championship on Sunday. Manager Liam Sammon is in his first year in charge and does not enjoy the media profile of his Mayo opposite number, but that doesn’t make him the lesser man. In this age of special assistant to the isotonic water carrier, the craggy featured Sammon is refreshingly old school. He seems to believe in finding the best fifteen players in the county, showing them the jersey, throwing them a football and telling them to let rip. Works pretty good so far.

It’s fashionable to preface any comments about Galway’s potential with the remark by dismissing their All-Ireland winning prospects. If Galway aren’t All-Ireland contenders, then may I beg my masters’ pardon and ask who are? Lethal forwards, a midfield that can only get stronger when Joe Bergin returns, tigerish backs in Burke, Blake, Fitzgerald and Hanley, Bradshaw and Conroy bringing the bloom and beauty of youth and the ageless, iconic Padraic Joyce, a winner since his Hogan Cup days with Jarlath’s, invested by Sammon with the power to loose and to bind from the pivotal 11 position – what’s not to like?

As for Mayo, once the bitterness of a one point defeat dies away and the acrid taste is washed away by a week’s consoling porter, things will not appear as bleak as they may seem now. Galway are nearer Sam, certainly, but the Championship is more about cats on hot tins roofs than the one county that can be champion – the real purpose for most counties in the Championship, as with the tabby on the slates, is to survive for as long as you can.

Mayo finished the game stronger than they started, and are still in the Championship. They were still in the Championship last year after defeat to Galway, but that happened earlier in the year and they did not leave Salthill stronger after the seventy minutes. By contrast, there is much to build on this time out, especially in contrast to the desolation of last year.

Firstly, there is the return to form of Alan Dillon. Dillon has been played all year at centre-half forward and clearly hated it. Back on wing, he was popping them over happily, and the return of Pat Harte frees Dillon up to do just that. An Spailpín has full confidence in Ronan McGarrity and Tom Parsons in midfield, and once any team has a foothold in midfield it’s a contender.

Either side of midfield remains an issue. There’s nothing new there. Aidan Higgins was magnificent when he came on, because he set about doing what should be first on every defender’s list – making his man’s life a misery. The story was that Matthew Clancy did not emerge in the second half due to an ankle injury, but An Spailpín can’t stop himself from suspecting that Sammon didn’t want to lose Clancy to a second yellow, as Higgins’ playful banter was really getting on the moptop’s nerves.

An Spailpín would like to see Liam O’Malley’s return to the colours also, for the same reason. He has a gift for being a pain in the ass. The third man who impressed when he came on was Billy Padden. There is so much criticism directed at Padden it surprises An Spailpín why he bothers sometimes, but he’ll always have something to deliver for the Green and Red. An Spailpín would play him at full-forward or full-back, somewhere where he can get busy, get on the ball and make things happen. He’s that kind of a fella.

Leaving the ground, An Spailpín was asked by a friend from the great town of Ballaghaderreen if I was going to “have another go at the Ballagh man.” I thought it unfair, not least as I didn’t have a go at the Ballagh man first time out. We might as well clear the air on this issue.

John O’Mahony remains the only man for the Mayo manager’s job. Full stop. He’s certainly made mistakes, and clearly made them yesterday, but we all make mistakes in life. It’s how we respond to those mistakes that defines us. Yesterday, when Mayo were being cut open in the first half, Johnno make the switches and Mayo were unlucky in some ways not to pull it out of the fire. Now Johnno has a fortnight or three weeks to pick through the debris, and arise from the ashes. What though the field be lost? All is not lost; Mayo are one win away from being in the same position as Galway in the All-Ireland series. Mayo can’t match Galway for talent, but the race is not always to the swift, thank God.

What O’Mahony and Mayo do have to do, however, is to maximise their resources to deliver the best efforts they can. One of the reasons that An Spailpín believes Johnno the best man for the job is because he’s the only man for the job. There is no other contender with the same credentials. Not one. There is no point in replacing a man unless you have one better to take his place, as Sammon has proved by building his team around the aging Padraic Joyce, because there’s no-one in Galway that can match him. The biggest mistake Johnno made so far was in letting men go when he was not able to replace them, thereby leaving himself some hostages to fortune as remarked in this space previously, but in life it’s never too late to deal with mistakes and make amends. Mayo have three weeks to rise again – the green and red still flies proud over the sweeping fields of heather as Reek Sunday approaches.





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