All-Ireland Football Championship 2019 Preview

Dublin are odds-on favourites to win their fifth title in a row, an achievement that would make them the greatest GAA team of all time, football or hurling. They would be the only team to achieve that feat, and that therefore makes them the best. Of course it does.

Of course, they would not be a sensible investment. An odd-on price is never a sensible bet in multi-horse field, even if there are fewer horses running in the race than you might prefer.

Your correspondent is inclined to take League form with a pinch of salt, but what was interesting about Dublin in the League wasn’t so much the results as the sudden loss of appetite. Dublin in their pomp revelled in burying teams. This new, steady-as-she-goes approach ill-suits them. Seeing them like this is like calling into the local and seeing the local Champion Pintman not only drinking tay, but drinking it out of a cup and saucer. Has the world changed, or is he only doing the dog?

There is an opinion abroad that Dublin could get broadsided in Leinster. Delicious though this prospect would be, it’s impossible to make a case for any other Leinster team doing anything other than falling valiantly. In recent years, it’s only Westmeath that have really put it up to the Dubs, but they’ve never had the sort of playing resources that Meath or Kildare or even Offaly once enjoyed. The pick of the three wouldn’t keep it kicked out to Dublin now.

A shrewd eye should be kept on Kerry. There was much made of how immature Kerry looked against Mayo in the League final, but you can grow faster in football years than you can in actual years. Seán O’Shea will only be a few months older come the summer than he was in that League final, but he’ll be carrying scar tissue that will stand to him in bigger battles to come.

How long it takes him and others to toughen up will determine how quickly it takes Kerry to win their next All-Ireland. It is not impossible it may happen sooner than we would have thought when the final whistle blew in that League Final.

The hardest challenge to the Dublin imperium will come from the North, as usual. The Ulster Championship is easily the most competitive, and perhaps it’s because of this that a dumping into the qualifiers seems to knock Ulster teams less out of their stride than others.

The leading hounds of Ulster are Monaghan, Tyrone and Donegal. Monaghan had a stinker of a league, and did well not to get relegated in the end. This, after beating Dublin in the first game and being hailed by some critics as the second best team in Ireland.

The reason why Monaghan had such a poor League isn’t obvious. But it’s difficult to believe that so valiant a team as we’ve known Monaghan to be in recent years have just suddenly thrown in the towel. The suspicion here is that it would be unwise to dismiss the Farney challenge without further intelligence.

Donegal and Tyrone have been praised for their league performances, and praise has been grudgingly given to those counties in recent years. It’s interesting that the praise heaped on the counties is at odds with the rumours drifting from the camps, about players not happy about playing for their particular managers and other stories of internal strife and woe.

Try though I might, I can’t force myself to believe that Tyrone have found a Philosopher’s Stone to take them one further than last year’s All-Ireland Final loss where, in truth, they never really competed. You have the players or you don’t, and Tyrone, for all Mickey Harte’s in-game tactical ability, seem one or two players short.

Donegal are blessed with the best player in the country, Michael Murphy, and will always be a threat while that man can pull on a jersey and answer Tír Chonnail’s dread war cry. The more help he has the greater Donegal’s chance becomes.

Galway were the darlings of the League last year, only to again disappoint in Dublin in the summertime. That Galway reign as kings of Connacht is beyond dispute and, should they face Mayo in a Connacht semi-final as many expect, they will enjoy home advantage at the butt of the broad Atlantic, also known as Stáid an Phiarsaigh, Bóthar na Trá. Kevin Comer’s absence continues, which has to be a source of worry.

Again, the word on the wind is that Comer is one of these players who is more than just another member of the team – he is seen, subconsciously at least, as the avatar of the Galway football tradition, and as such he cannot be replaced.

For all that, Galway are spoiled with talent, and learning all the time. Last year there were rumours of difficulty in integrating the Corofin players into the county team. That was noted, and the two teams have been bonding since the start of the year. Almost violently so if rumours of a January challenge match are to be believed, but then, people do like to tell stories.

Your correspondent’s friends insist to him that being afraid of Galway is like being afraid of the dark – an immature, childish terror, not borne out by scientific evidence. Right. Tell that to me again when we’re stuck in traffic for two hours on the Grattan Road after Galway pox a seventy-eighth minute winner over Mayo and we’re all thinking things can’t get any worse, only to see great Cthulhu himself rise up out of Galway Bay, release an eldritch roar, and make a beeline for the Róisín Dubh, foul tentacles thrashing the sea into foam around him. I’ll remember to laugh.

You may notice that there is one contender that remains unnamed. The reality is that Mayo have bounced back so high from taking the road from Newbridge to Nowhere last year that any attempt at rational thought on the part of any Mayo man, woman or child in the matter of football is now quite out of the question.

In her beautiful sonnet, Love is Not All, poet Edna St Vincent Millay remarks that, in a difficult hour, she may be tempted to sell your love for peace, or the memory of this night for food. Your correspondent would sell a damn sight more than that to see Diarmuid O’Connor lift Sam in the Hogan Stand on the first of September, and is unable to sensibly contemplate even the notion of it without either fainting or going insane.

For that reason then, I predict that not only will Dublin not win five-in-a-row, they won’t even reach the final. The final will be a repeat of the 2000 final, a draw between Kerry and Galway, and I’m danged if I know who’ll win the replay.

If anybody’s in Castlebar on the night of September 2nd, by the way, I’ll either be in Byrne’s, McHale’s, or above in a tree somewhere, looing. Up Mayo.

Mayo v Galway: The Lonesome Road to Salthill

Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turn'd round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

The Mayo fan has no fear of frightful fiends. Why would he or she? What chills the Mayo soul in the lead-up to Mayo’s trip to face Galway in Salthill are entirely more rational and comprehensible than the slimy things in the slimy sea that so bothered the Ancient Mariner.

Billy Joe Padden, in a typically excellent preview of events in the Mayo News, outlined how Mayo can beat Galway. Billy would like to see a sweeper, ideally Kevin McLoughlin; he’d like Aidan O’Shea to start, ideally somewhere in the middle of the field; he’d like Andy Moran to finish the game, rather than start it, meaning Andy must come on as a sub, and above all Billy would like to see Mayo attack in numbers from the middle third.

Your correspondent sees the merit in every one of these arguments. My own personal contribution to Mayo’s Heroic Path to Immortality would be to play Aidan O’Shea at full-forward, rather than in midfield, but it’s not something I’d fall out with people over, least of all someone who knows so much more about these things than me, as Billy Joe does.

However. What does make me wonder just whether or not a frightful fiend doth close behind me tread is that we have seen no evidence at all of Mayo playing in the way Billy suggests all year, and there’s no reason to expect them to change their ways now.

There is a growing trend in GAA discussion that suggests anyone outside the team and its back-room team – henceforth referred to as “The Group” – has no business questioning any decisions made by The Group. Such questioning is, in fact, as near to treason as makes no difference.

Your correspondent takes an opposite view. Your correspondent thinks that the Mayo edifice – players, trainers, even the Board – have a duty to keep the fans reasonably informed of what’s going on with the county team. That does not seem unreasonable. It’s so reasonable, in fact, that Darragh Ó Sé made a case for it in yesterday’s Irish Times:

Supporters need to be led. They need to be given something to believe in. They need big players and big personalities showing them the way. Not giving them a reason to shrug their shoulders and decide that this is just how things are.

Where are the Mayo supporters being led right now? Your correspondent is more than eager to hear something, anything, from The Group in response to the following questions that have been rattling around my noggin:

• Why has Kevin McLoughlin spent the entire league at corner-forward if he’s going to play sweeper in the Championship?
• If McLoughin isn’t going to play sweeper, who is? Will Mayo play with a sweeper at all? And if not, why not?
• Why start Andy Moran when you need him most in the final twenty minutes?
• Why didn’t Robbie Hennelly start one home game in League? We all know David Clarke is the Number One choice but Robbie is still No 2 to a keeper who isn’t getting any younger and who has a history of knocks. Hennelly is going to catch Hell from the fans whenever he starts, so why not start him in the bleak midwinter and get it over with.

These aren’t the only questions that need asking, but they’ll do for now. If they’re not being asked aloud, people are certainly thinking them – by the time these things dawn on your correspondent they will have long ago dawned on better football people. And, like anything that’s supressed, the reaction will be greater the longer it has to stay underground.

If, God forbid, Galway should win in Salthill you can expect these questions to come bursting forth. You may say that’s unfair, but fair has nothing to do with it. The price of playing at the great height at which Mayo have played for the past six or seven years is that the fall is steeper.

And there is the awful truth that, for all the long and wonderful summers, Sam did not come home. Sam’s not coming home is more than a detail; Sam’s not coming home is why the depths of Mayo’s fear and trembling are so much greater than Galway because, even though Sam hasn’t been in Galway for sixteen years, that’s as the snapping of the fingers compared to sixty-six years, and counting.

Kildare never really came close to Galway in the Division 2 Final, but Kildare, with all due respect to them, weren’t really that great. Equally, Galway laid an egg the size of the Rock of Gibraltar in losing to Tipperary, something for which they did not get anywhere like the roasting a Mayo team would have got. Of if they did, they kept it quiet.

A seasoned Mayo team on the top of its game has nothing to fear from Galway. But a malfunctioning Mayo team, whose identity is slipping away for whatever reasons, will always walk in fear and dread. Let’s hope that walk to nowhere doesn’t start on Sunday. Up Mayo.

2017 Football Championship Preview

To consider this year’s football Championship is to long for the open competition of the Big Four era four or five years ago. The truth of the 2017 Championship is that there is Dublin, and there is the rest.

The Champions reign far above anybody else in the firmament and no circumstance can be imagined in which any path to glory can bypass them.

Kerry’s recent win over Dublin in the National League Final suggests that Dublin’s great historical rival may be on the way back, but being on the way and having arrived are two different things.

Kerry are the aristocrats of football – how could they not be? – and that made the artisanal nature of their game against Dublin so strange. One does not expect to see royalty with the shirt off, down in a hole, digging, but that’s exactly what Kerry did to do something, anything, to keep up with Dublin.

And more luck to them. Kerry people love to talk about beautiful football but that’s just blather for the tourists on the jaunting cars around Killarney. Kerry know that the only beauty is in winning, and whether that winning is done with the rapier or the broadsword is very much a secondary detail.

If Kerry and Dublin win Munster and Leinster – and goodness, what a shock it would be if they didn’t – they are not due to meet until the final and such a final would be a game everybody in the country could look forward to. But the chances of Kerry putting another one over on Dublin are slim.

A rare sight in contemporary football was to be seen in the League Final as Dublin’s Cian O’Sullivan, emperor of the Dublin defence, was utterly unable to figure out just what was going on. Kerry had found a way to get past him and for once O’Sullivan had little impact on a game. But what will Kerry do the next time, now O’Sullivan and Dublin are forewarned?

Jim Gavin gets insufficient credit for his tactical nous – Dublin have so many players the idea exists that all a manager has to do is roll them a ball and let them get on with it. But Gavin proved his worth in the All-Ireland replay. Gavin made three tactical changes for the replay, all of which worked. His opposite number made only one, and that blew up in Stephen Rochford’s face. Game, set and match, Gavin.

While Kerry are not in Dublin’s league, is anyone else in Kerry’s? It’s a hard case to make. For a time, it looked like Mickey Harte was about to do what only Seán Boylan has done, and build All-Ireland teams from two different generations. Tyrone faced Kerry in the 2015 semi-final and it is a fact that the Kerrymen were scared of a Tyrone returned to their opening-years-of-the-century glory – you could sense the fear in the players before the game, and the sheer relief afterwards among the Kerry support.

But the new model Tyrone lack the score-taking ability of their forebears and you can’t win games of Gaelic football if you can’t take your scores.

Donegal are still a threat, but that threat is lessening. There are hints of trouble in the camp and, while Michael Murphy is the best pound-for-pound footballer in Ireland, we are reminded of the remarks of Doctor Henry “Indiana” Jones, Junior, to Marian Ravenwood in their desperate flight from Egypt aboard the good ship Batu Wind – it ain’t the years, honey, it’s the mileage.

Galway were impressive in their win over Kildare in the National League Division 2 Final. They have forwards with that little bit of cut about them, and the day when Galway were too posh to press in defence are long gone. It’s been a long, long time since anyone outside the top flight won the All-Ireland however, and it’s hard to see Galway doing it this year for that reason. Seasoning counts in modern football.

For those who enjoy a longshot bet, I would consider Monaghan at 40/1. Galway are a shorter price even though Monaghan are now veterans of Division 1 and Galway haven’t played in the top league in years – this is the benefit of being glamorous, which Monaghan never have been. But if Sam is to go further than Dublin – and it’d be a really big surprise if he does – Monaghan at 40/1 looks the value bet to me.

Mayo? Tomorrow, friends, tomorrow. What’s one more day in a sixty-six year wait?

Galway Shock Mayo in Castlebar

There are two ways of looking at Galway’s shock defeat of Mayo at McHale Park on Saturday. We can take the broad view, or we can take a closer look at the game in and of itself. Let’s try both, and see what we can learn.

The media spent the final weeks of the National League bemoaning that those league games were the last interesting things scribes would have to write about until August. This is because that same media, possibly dazzled by propaganda from the GPA, considers the Championship a fossilized entity, a killing field in which “lesser” teams cannot possibly gain by being exposed to the mighty guns of the Division 1 Super Powers.

Up to a point, Lord Copper. Last week, Tipperary of Division 3 unhorsed mighty Cork of Division 1. On Saturday, Galway of Division 2 unhorsed Mayo of Division 1, not only in Mayo itself but with fifty-two of Galway’s best and brightest missing from the muster-roll.

These things should not be happening. Sports science and the great god of the age, money, tell us that a commoner may never gaze on a crown in the Championship any more.

So what happened on Saturday? Is it possible that the peculiar magic of this fossilized Championship, no longer fit for the modern athlete and fan, somehow conjured dream into reality once more? Could it be that helpless Galway, with their missing players and dressed only their lowly Division 2 motley, somehow raised themselves at the sight of the green and red and channeled the spirits of their forbears to make themselves, for that one crowded hour, bigger than they thought they could be?

Could it be that there is something inherent in the very Championship itself, in the warp and weft of its history and tradition, that means Galway can raise themselves against Mayo in a Connacht semi-final in a way that is impossible to imagine them doing against Monaghan, say, in a round 3 Champions League style tournament so much more fitting to modernity?

Who knows? But it does seem legitimate to at least raise the question.

And what of Mayo themselves? This isn’t Mayo’s first time getting ambushed by Galway in Castlebar. May 24th, 1998 is a date that still lives in infamy in the County Mayo. Did Mayo think that sports science and money and TV ads would protect them from piseog, éigse and oidhreacht peile? What can a millionaire American basketball coach writing a motivational book know of the feeling in a Galwayman’s gut when he sees the green and red banners flying so proudly and arrogantly high?

The day was Galway’s and rightly so. While they and Roscommon prepare for Connacht’s banner day, Mayo have to ask themselves what exactly happened. Did they have a bad day at the office, and will they now scorch a path of devastation through the qualifiers in the hurt and fury of their response?

Oisin McConville suggested in the Examiner on Saturday that it was time for mutinous Mayo players to put their money where their extraordinarily big mouths are and, as sure as night follows day, there will be more than one why-oh-why column in the Irish Independent this coming week roasting the Mayo panel for what they did to the previous management.

Yes. And yet, no.

The mutiny is misunderstood by the national media. The mutiny was not a cause; it was a symptom. The mutiny was the inevitable result of the Mayo County Board’s failure to deal with the end of James Horan’s time as manager, a failure that, based on Saturday’s evidence, has yet to be fixed.

The situation at the moment appears to be that the Board wants Pat and Noel but wants no truck with James. Pat and Noel are unacceptable to the players but there is no way between Hell and Bethlehem the Board want Horan back. The only thing either party seems to agree about is that neither of them wanted anything at all to do Kevin McStay and Liam McHale.

Hence, Stephen Rochford. Rochford has no small job to do in the coming two weeks to reassemble the green and red Humpty Dumpty. Mayo were red-rotten on Saturday and, as the man in charge, Rochford has to fix them. Rochford will be forgiven any step he takes, no matter how drastic, so long as Mayo win the All-Ireland as a result. Anything short of that and he’ll be tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail, of course. Galway have their tradition, and we have ours. Up Mayo.

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.

Football Championship Preview 2013

As the counties stand like greyhounds in the slips on the eve of another All-Ireland Championship, the 2011 Champions find themselves in an unusual position. It’s not that their being favourites to lift Sam is all that unusual, of course, but it is odd that this time there is no inflation in Dublin’s price. And what is positively eerie isn’t the absence of inflation but that it would be impossible for anyone but the most ardent of anti-metropolitans to begrudge them.

We have seen hyped Dublin teams in the past but for whatever reason – and it’s almost certain a combination of reasons, some planned, some happy happenstance – the current Dublin team are on the verge of forging a dynasty. They have quality in every line, radiating from captain Cluxton in goal all the way up to the full-forward line where Dublin have as many options as a Kardashian has shoes.

Opponents of Dublin’s chances talk of peaking too soon or being spoilt for choice or complacency or hype but it’s all clutching at straws. It’s hard to see anyone keeping the ball kicked out to Dublin in Leinster and after that it’s the luck of the draw whether they have sacrificial lamb for dinner on the August Bank Holiday weekend or they meet someone who can give them a game of it.

Who that someone might be is hard to pin down. The odds for the Championship make the past four All-Ireland Champions the favourites for this year, but it’s 10/1 on Mayo or Tyrone after that and then it’s an astonishing 20/1 the field.

If those prices are reflective of the counties’ relative standings, this could be one of the most unequal Championships in over a generation. What’s more, there are big question marks hanging over the other three top contenders, starting with the Champions.

Clare’s genius, Jamesie O’Connor is quoted in Denis Walsh’s excellent Hurling: The Revolution Years as saying that things fell apart from Clare because what it takes for a particular team to win its first All-Ireland is not at all like what it takes to win their second. Donegal are discovering that now. Like Loughnane’s Clare, Donegal were not so much men as a force of nature last year – will they be able to harness that again? The Bitegate business is a distraction that they didn’t need, and the other thing they didn’t need was to start their Championship against Tyrone. There are no easy games in Ulster, but some games are harder than others. If Donegal win, the adventure begins again, but it’s unlikely the Qualifiers would suit them.

There are many easy games in Munster, of course, and the same two teams will be present in the last eight, irrespective of which of them wins the Munster Championship. After that though, it gets a bit murky.

Neither county will ever suffer from a talent shortfall, but both Cork and Kerry have old panels, nearing the end of their days. Cork must be aware that their talent level of the past five or seven years deserved more than the one title they won, while Kerry are Kerry. The Kingdom are never satisfied, never to be written off, and always in the mix. Kerry are disregarded at your absolute peril and, if there is such a thing as a “soft” All-Ireland, it’s generally Kerry that wins it. It’s what they do.

Tyrone, Kerry’s bêtes noirs of the 21st Century, are looking good in Ulster. Seán Boylan is the only manager of the modern era to have won All-Irelands with two different teams. It would be fitting, and a feat begrudged by nobody, were that good man Mickey Harte to equal Boylan’s achievement. That said, anybody with a scintilla of romance or a feel for the history of the game will have noted Cavan’s stirrings at the Under-21 level and dreams of the day when Breifne rises again. Cavan take their bow this weekend against Armagh; best of luck to them.

In the lonesome west, Roscommon are ideally positioned. All westerners dream of relaxing in the long grass, the better to mount an ambush as the hay ripens into June and July. That’s where Roscommon are now, silently waiting on the winners of this weekend’s game in Salthill.

The penny is dropping for the nation that it’s been a long time since Galway were good. A man who studies football closely remarked to your correspondent a few weeks ago that Mayo would stroll Connacht, on the basis that Galway haven’t brought their Under-21s through. “But bejabbers,” says I, “what if this is the year?”

The danger is always lurking. If Galway do beat Mayo it means that Galway are back, and there is suddenly another contender to keep the ball kicked out to Dublin. Whether that will be enough to stop what looks like a skyblue and navy procession through the summer of 2013 is something we’ll have to wait and see.

As for Mayo – we’ll take a closer look at their chances later this week.

By the Numbers - the Hurling All-Stars

Three hundred and fifty of the six hundred and thirty All-Stars awarded over the forty-two years of the institution have gone to the Big Three counties. Kilkenny have 163, Cork 103 and Tipperary have 82. Galway’s six for this year sees them bring their total to 79 all-time, three short of Tipperary but well clear of the rest of the field.

Offaly and Limerick, joined forever in the memory by the incredible 1994 final, are joined on the All-Star roll of honour too. The Faithful and the Shannonsiders have 44 each. Clare have 42, Wexford 30, Waterford – the only county in double digits on the list who haven’t won an All-Ireland since the All-Stars began – have 29 and then list falls away to Antrim and Dublin with five each and Down and Westmeath with one each.

Down’s sole winner was Gerard McGrattan, who lined out at right half-forward on the 1992 team, the year he made his inter-county debut. Down won Ulster that year and gave a good account of themselves against Cork in semi-final. Westmeath’s sole All-Star was David Kilcoyne, who lined out at right corner-forward on the 1986 All-Star team. David was one of five Kilcoynes to wear the maroon and white in the 1980s.

Looking at the graph of All-Stars over the years for Kilkenny, Cork, Tipperary and Galway, we can see that All-Stars come in spurts. Kilkenny have led always but it’s only in the Cody era that they’ve really torn away from the chasing pack.

Part of the reason behind that the separation can be put down to Cork’s decline. Cork have won two All-Stars since their most recent strike. There may be something in that. There may not.

It’s interesting also to note that Tipperary were not forgotten during the famine that lasted from 1971 to 1987 – the kept winning the odd All-Star here and there. Bobby Ryan and Tommy Butler won one each during the famine, Francis Loughnane, Pat McLoughney and Tadhg O’Connor won two and Nicky English won three in a row before Richie Stakelum made his famous declaration of Premiership über alles in Killarney in the magical summer of 1987.

The All-Star era also saw the rise of Galway after they were released from Munster. They are now neck and neck with Tipperary in the All-Star Roll of Honour, twinned around each other like some sort of perpetual Keady Affair.

Comparing hurling with football, it’s interesting to note that spread of awards around the counties is much the same in hurling as in football – a ratio of 6:3:6 between the All-Ireland winners, the All-Ireland runners-up and the rest. This is despite the fact that that only thirteen counties have won hurling All-Stars, while 27 football counties have been so honoured. So, even though Kerry dominate the football All-Stars just as Kilkenny dominate the Kerry, it’s easier to win an odd award in football than in hurling.

Of the 630 football All-Stars, 236 have won just one All-Star. There are just 151 once-off hurling All-Star winners – all the others are multiple winners. In hurling, once you’re in, you’re in.

As regards the years themselves, the worst years for the winners were 1971 and 1979, when Tipperary and Kilkenny got only four each. 1983, 2000 and 2008 were the best years, when Kilkenny scooped nine each time. 2000 and 2008 were also the worst years for the runners-up, with only one gong to bring home after getting stomped in the final.

The best years for the runners-up were 1973 and this year, when the runners-up seven and six All-Stars outstripped the winners’ tally of five. Limerick got six All-Stars as runners-up in 1994 too, but it’s highly unlikely that made them feel any better. All Mayo wept in silent empathy and brotherhood with the Shannonsiders in 1994 and 1996, having known what it was to fall short ourselves. Still though; there’s always next year.

The Championship - Magnificent, in Spite of its Flaws

Francie Grehan surrounded by Tommy Joyce, Padraic Joyce, Alan Kerins and Ja Fallon. St Jarlath's Park, Tuam, 2001.

One of the quirks of the current football Championship structure is that, even though it takes twenty weeks to run the thing off, fully half the counties in Ireland are zapped over just two weekends.

Eight counties will rattle the dustbin on that weekend when June melts into July, and eight more bid glory a sweet adieu for another year fourteen days later. There are eleven games scheduled for that weekend of June 30^th/July 1^st – the eight Round 1 Qualifiers on Saturday, and then the second Ulster semi-final and both Leinster semis on Sunday. The Connacht Final is the grace note after the second Qualifier cull in the middle of July.

Having to keep tabs on eleven games in one weekend and nine in another is a Herculean ask of any football analyst. Thank goodness the RTÉ ones generally couldn’t bother their bottoms analysing anything. They and will merrily wing it, just like always. I believe Paddy McPlayer is playing very well for his club – isn’t that right Joe?

Of course, in between those rolling rocks of qualifier slaughter there is only one game. This year’s Munster Final sits in splendid isolation on Sunday July 8^th, even though Kerry and Cork are on the one side of the draw this year. Can most ardent of Déise, Treaty or Banner patriots, each more excellent than the last, expect anything other than one-way traffic in that one?

Nobody on any of the provincial councils has a phone number for anyone on any of the other councils, or for Croke Park. Every year they try to get the schedule right, and every year they can’t quite seem to manage it.

It was ever thus. The qualifiers are a joke, the scheduling is bockety, and the national broadcaster makes a very middling effort to give Gaelic football the serious analysis it deserves.

And despite all this, the glory of the Championship itself, for all its flaws, still shines incandescent through the summer. It captivates, infuriates enthralls and enraptures us, summer after summer, year after year.

This time last year the Championship looked like a two-horse race between Cork and Kerry. But the rebels got cold-cocked in the quarter-finals when Mayo forgot their place behind the door and Kevin McMenamon did what so few have been able to do in over one hundred years of All-Ireland finals – deliver Kerry a knock-out blow.

One year on, and Dublin have blazed a trail for the rest. Cork and Kerry remain favourites of course, but where Dublin lead other can follow. Dublin can even follow themselves – they enjoy home advantage all through the Championship, and have the boost that winning the title brings.

Mickey Harte is trying to do what only Seán Boylan has done before in the modern era, and build two different Championship winning teams. Kildare’s knocking on the door is getting louder and louder. Derry remain a mystery and Mayo – well, Mayo are a question for another day.

Sligo and New York fired the first shots of the Championship the week before last, and there are five games this weekend to keep things rolling. Of those five, Galway’s trip to Roscommon and Donegal’s trip to Cavan are the most appealing to people outside the counties involved.

The RTÉ panelists will hold their noses after the games. Somebody will dutifully patronise the players, while emphasising that none of this matter a whizz outside of June 10^th in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

Which is exactly the attitude of people who can’t tell Jedward from Beethoven. To see the Championship as only being about the contenders is too see the great Pyramids at Giza and think they’re nice, alright, but wouldn’t they be even nicer with a nice bit of decking out the back?

The very existence of either the Championship or the Pyramids is a miracle in the 21^st Century, and something we should make the most of while either or both are still here.

Somebody will win the Championship this year, but that’s not the Championship is about. The Championship is about all these fantastic local rivalries, the myriad border words that are its heart, its soul and its splendor.

Besides, it’s a knockout Championship. Anyone can win the thing if their sails catch the wind and the ball hops right. Reader, think on the Hyde on Sunday and the great summers ahead, and drink deeply of the fine and tawny wine of its glory.

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.

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

The Connacht Final Will Observe the Immutable Laws of Physics

Neutrals who are interested in adding that certain spice to their enjoyment of this weekend’s Connacht Final could do worse than invest a thoughtful tenner on the draw at the tempting price of 15/2. Every way you attempt to make a case for one team or the other, a corollary more or less instantly presents itself. It’s like a perfect GAA representation of Newtonian classical physics, where every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Mayo’s midfield advantage versus Galway’s more economical use of possession. The promise of Mayo youth against the All-Ireland winning experience of Galway. The Mayo backs, the Galway forwards. One steps out, one steps in again. If Croke Park are already distressed with Roscommon and Wexford drawing and screwing up their schedules, you can imagine how they’ll feel if they hear the Connacht Final is to replay in Caisleán a’Bharraigh on Saturday week.

The talking point in Mayo coming up to the game has been the possible absence of Ronan McGarrity through injury after sinister work in a club game. A bitter pill indeed for McGarrity if the worst-case scenario proves true, and it would be hard to blame him for noting the irony that he is never so popular as when not actually togged.

Ronan McGarrity has been a fixture on the Mayo team for five years when available for selection, but all you hear about him is grousing. Can’t kick, basketballer, townie, soft lad. And then when he’s missing, now because of a broken cheekbone or two years ago because of cancer, there’s suddenly a great big hole where that soft cosmopolitan basketballer with no feet used to be. The misfortunate McGarrity could be forgiven for ruefully reflecting that if only he could manage to get kidnapped by the Taliban or caught in an accident at a nuclear processing plant he might finally win an All-Star.

Mayo are still expected to edge midfield, as Galway have struggled there in recent times and Mayo have more options. But of course you can win midfield and still lose the game, as happened Kildare on Sunday. Down the years, Galway forwards have proved better at making the most of possession – that is to say, registering scores – than Mayo. As such, Galway not require the same level of midfield dominance that Mayo do.

Galway’s formline coming up to the Connacht Final has been difficult to understand. They looked magnificent in the monsoon against Kerry last year in Croke Park, the game where Michael Meehan came of age in a performance worthy of his natural genius. Galway started the league where they left off in the Championship and then suddenly their form dropped off, drawing with Derry and losing to Mayo in Tuam. A few weeks ago the nation was treated to the very unusual sight of Galway needing a last minute goal to finally see off Sligo. Aristocrats haven’t been under such pressure since Robespierre, Marat and Danton formed a rather devastating inside line for Paris Sarsfields.

The worrying thing from a Mayo point of view is that while form goes up and down, class and quality are constants. If scores are level on seventy minutes and P Joyce gets the ball within sight of the posts he can break Mayo hearts. He’s done it before. Cormac Bane destroyed Mayo on his own in Salthill two years ago. Armstrong, Meehan, Nicky Joyce, Conroy – there isn’t a glugger among them. And not all of those fellas are even guaranteed starts. The seams of forward gold run deep in the land of the heron choker.

It’s interesting that the games that John O’Mahony has lost against Galway have been down to Galwaymen seizing the day. Padraic Joyce in Castlebar last year, Bane in Salthill two years ago. Mayo travel to Salthill this year in the interesting position of having an inside line that can potentially match Galway for firepower. The opportunity is there for Aidan Kilcoyne or Aidan O’Shea or Barry Moran to seize the day and announce their presence in a way that no Mayo forward has since John Casey did in the almost-miracle year of 1996. And that’s a very heady prospect.

Optimism has risen in Mayo after Roscommon got such a terrible hiding in Castlebar, and suddenly your correspondent understands what people from other counties mean when they talk about Mayo fans getting carried away. Because potential doesn’t always pay off.

One of John O’Mahony’s pet phrases from his time in Galway in 1998 was that the opportunity of the lifetime only lasts for the lifetime of the opportunity. Aidan O’Shea looks like he could be wearing green above the red for the next decade, but life only exists in the now. Sometimes tomorrow never comes. You have to deliver today.

If Mayo win their first Connacht title since 2006 then the year will be a success and the pressure will be off John O’Mahony whatever happens in the rest of the summer. Should Mayo not win the All-Ireland – and it’s entirely possible that they won’t – there will be grousing, but a win in Salthill means that Mayo will have won something, and whoever does eventually beat them will have to be pretty hot stuff. The faithful can live with that.

But for Mayo to win Mayo’s young guns have to find their marks. Because Galway have a heady enough combination of stone killers, wily old foxes and out and out superstars to punish them if they don’t, men willing and capable of leaving Mayo beached once more by the seaside wondering about what might have been.






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

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.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, GAA, football, Connacht Final, Mayo, Galway

Path to Nestor Runs Through Midfield: Connacht Final 2008

An Spailpín Fánach is flattered once more to be in the pages of the Mayo News, the paper with the best sports coverage in Mayo, as the Connacht Final looms.

I’m writing about the rivalry between Galway and Mayo, and how surprisingly gentle it is. It’s played for keeps of course, and there have been some crunching hits going in (last year’s hit on Ciarán McDonald springing instantly to mind), but it certainly has never descended into anything particularly ugly. Some handbags between Gary Fahy and either Ray Dempsey or John Casey before the throw-in in Tuam eleven years ago is about the only belting that particularly comes to mind, but then Ray was always something of a mischievous sprite, please him. Please God he’ll fill the minors from the same bottle.

Football will more than likely be the winner this weekend too, with the match being decided by three factors: midfield domination, the ability to score goals, and the ability to stop goals.

It looks like advantage Mayo in midfield, not only because Tom Parsons has that marvellous to-the-manner-born air about him, but because Pat Harte is likely to wear 11. This means that if the moving rocks of Coleman and Cullinane threaten Parsons and McGarrity just as the moving rocks of the Hellespont threatened Jason and the Argonauts, then Pat Harte can be the man that comes to their rescue. Classicists will recall it was a dove that showed the way to Jason; An Spailpín is hoping that Pat can take after a doughtier class of a bird – Lizzie Borden, perhaps.

Harte’s presence at eleven may ease some of the pressure that seems to have been burdening Alan Dillon in recent years, and restore him to the wing, where he’s played his best football for Mayo. That, certainly, would be the earnest hope of the county. Ahead of them again, the management have picked the same full-forward line at every opportunity and if midfield can claim possession it’s up to them to convert that into scores. Now, now is the hour.

Not least as Galway are so incandescent with talent at the other end. Galway stand or fall on the strength of their forwards and if they slip the leash they will punish you. Cormac Bane scored two highlight reel goals against Mayo last year, and he’s been struggling to make the team this year. That says something.

Padraic Joyce is rejuvenated since he’s moved out to eleven, a man in whom all football should glory. Sad is the heart that didn’t lift to see the great man signing autographs for the faithful after the Leitrim game, smiling with the kids. Joyce without the ball is just another helpless spectator, of course, but with it, he is the destroyer of worlds. A classic in prospect.

FOCAL SCOIR: On the eve of such a sporting treat, it's good to keep perspective and remember those who might have more on their mind than who'll win the midfield breaks. As such, spare a thought on Saturday for Marie Carolan of Glencastle, who's not having a good time right now and whose uncle, Michael Carolan, will be hitting the road on Saturday in the Addidas Five Mile Race in the Phoenix Park, Dublin. You can see details on how to stump up here. Best of luck to them all.





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

Long Day for Short Grass County As Mayo Look to Galway

Mayo 2-14
Kildare 2-8

The more we learn, the less we know. Mayo ate Kildare without salt this afternoon in Newbridge. Kildare went 1-3 to no score up after eight minutes, and it was all Mayo for the following sixty-two. Kildare have seen better days, and the good GAA people of the short grass county, who filled St Conleth’s Park, deserved better than they got. On the basis of today’s game, Kildare will almost certainly be relegated with Laois, and Kieran McGeeney’s management learning curve remains resolutely uphill.

It seems odd to carp about a Mayo team that won by six having been down by six, but it was a strange day, watching the flour bags being cut open. An Spailpín was pleased to note names like Brian Benson and Aiden Campbell listed in the programme on the subs’ bench, and felt sure that they would get a run in the second half, Mayo having taken command by 2-9 to 1-6 after thirty-five minutes. But it was not to be; the game simply petered out to its conclusion, like it was – horrors! – soccer, or something. At first I thought it might have been because nobody deserves to have their noses rubbed in it that more scoring options weren’t considered, but John O’Mahony’s expressed disquiet on the radio afterwards, concerning scoring differences as a league-survival metric, put paid to that theory. It was up to Johnno to let slip Benson et al; the fact that he didn’t is puzzling, to say the least.

The great thing about the league so far, of course, is that Mayo are so very much a work in progress. This safeguards the hopelessly romantic Mayo support from our perpetual temptation to see things as being better than they are. David Clarke is a leader of men in the goals; Kieran Conroy is tightening his grip on the fullback shirt and, in front of him, the half-backs look like Mayo’s best line. The Triple-H of Heaney, Howley and Higgins are as good as any in the country, bar possibly Kerry. Kerry’s half-backs aren’t bad either.

Ronan McGarrity and Tom Parsons are two very stylish footballers, but An Spailpín likes a drop of red diesel in his midfield partnerships; when Pat Harte returned to the lists after Trevor Mortimer picked up an injury twenty minutes into the game, he reminded the travelling support of what the county team had been missing while he was on Stephenite duty.

As noted here before however, upfront remains a problem. It sounds odd to write it about a team that just scored 2-14, but you have to question just how many of the Mayo forwards are what could be termed natural predators, a la Stephen McDonnell, a la Paddy Bradley, a la lots of boys. This afternoon would have been a good time to see if anyone fancied shooting the lights out, as Seanie Johnson did so gloriously last night for Cavan against Cork. But it didn’t happen.

But the road goes ever on; two league points are in the bag, and relegation is staved off further. With that in mind, how wonderful it is to savour the prospect of Galway at Castlebar next Sunday. An Spailpín is expecting it to be played for keeps.

The Galway revival of the past ten years came at Mayo’s expense, but it’s very hard to begrudge it to them at the same time. They will have great players wearing the maroon and white on Sunday and it’s always a bittersweet joy to see them operating at their full potential. Michael Meehan, for instance, has never been outstanding against Mayo and if he catches fire on Sunday it will nevertheless be a treat to see it, even if the fact that it’s Mayo getting the hiding adds a certain pathos.

One of the many wonderful features of GAA life is respect for other teams, and it’s an important matter of GAA etiquette that, on meeting other counties, one is able to praise the stars of the other side. On the pitch, readers will remember Dermot Earley being chaired around the Hyde by Willie Joe Padden and Eugene Lavin on the last day of Earley’s twenty-year career, or the impossible heroism of Offaly four years later when, with hearts shattered beyond despair, they pulled themselves together to give Antrim a guard of honour in 1989.

So much of what we do in following teams is a privilege. For your correspondent, it was a privilege to see Kildare’s John Doyle today, just as it was a privilege to see Cavan’s immortal Dermot McCabe last summer at Castlebar. Recent events sometimes cloud our perspectives on these matters. I hugely look forward to Galway’s visit on Sunday.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, GAA, football, Mayo, Kidare, Galway,

Days of Wind and Timber - Mayo Blown Away in Salthill

This piece is, I believe, in the print edition of this morning's Mayo News. Sadly, it doesn't seem to have made the cut for the web edition, but this is a small matter to one with the power to cut and to paste.

Galway 2-10
Mayo 0-09

THE SEANFHOCAL TELLS US “ní hé lá na gaoithe lá na scolb”; the windy day is not the day for thatching. The deeply saddened Mayo contingent coming home from Sunday’s defeat in Galway could be forgiven for reflecting that this particular windy day wasn’t so terribly great for Mayo football either.

It was a ill wind indeed for Mayo. WB Yeats asks “what need have you to mind / The monstrous crying of the wind?” in his lovely little lyric for Maud Gonne’s daughter, To a Child Dancing in the Wind. Neither a child nor a poet had any business out in Páirc an Phiarsaigh on Sunday, dancing or otherwise. Galway came at Mayo with the ferocity of fifteen heron-choking hurricanes, and Mayo were blown away by half-time. In fact, such was the, ahem, commitment in the exchanges that a worried parent would have been forgiven for giving a gasúr a tenner’s worth of loose change and sending him or her up to the amusement arcades for a hour’s Tetris; the football was strictly over-eighteens fare.

Mayo can have no complaints. They gave as good as they got in the handbag exchanges, but it’s hard to claim seaside robbery when only three players score and you finish seven points in arrears on the only register that matters, the scoreboard. Peter Ford – on the business end of disgraceful mutterings in Galway over his management prior to the game, for reasons that are unfathomable from this, beaten, remove – planned his ambush perfectly, and when the time came, Mayo fell head over heels into the trap. Cormac Bane’s two expertly finished and clinically dispatched goals in the first half-hour put Mayo on the ropes; when nothing happened when O’Mahony played his aces from the bench, David Brady and Ciarán McDonald, and when both Conor Mortimer and Pat Harte were desperately unlucky with goal chances early in the second half, it was just a question then of shipping the final punch and the tumble into the oblivion of the qualifiers.

On the bright side for the county Mayo, there are seven weeks until the qualifier match, which is an aeon in football terms. It’s like a whole new Championship, really, and any hangover that may exist from Sunday’s disappointment will be long gone. On the less bright side, one of the reasons John O’Mahony was able to resurrect Galway in 2001 and take them from a comprehensive whacking from Roscommon in Tuam to their ninth All-Ireland in a single unprecedented and still unrepeated summer was the good fortune of drawing Wicklow in the first round of the qualifiers. With the Division 4 teams losing in the Championship before Provincial Final level now condemned to the Tommy Murphy Cup, Johnno may not be as lucky next time out. Donegal or Armagh, anyone?

But no matter. We shall take the poet Kipling’s advice, looking at triumph and disaster and treating both impostors the same. We are Mayo, after all; it’s not like we’ve not been here before. If we in Mayo have learnt anything as a football people in the past eighteen years, since the first coming of Johnno brought us to our first All-Ireland final since 1951, it’s how to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down, and start all over again.

There is, however, one small request that I would like to make, on behalf on the fans, like myself, who wouldn’t know that much about football really, but who are inclined to measure their lives in Championship summers. This is the second time in ten years that Galway have ended Mayo’s Championship before the schools have got their holidays, and both times have been under the stewardships of Mayo managers – Peter Ford this year, and Johnno himself in 1998. So the next time some Saoi or Wise One of Mayo football burns with the missionary spirit to bring the gospel outside the heather county, could he or she please be so good as to travel a bit further than Galway next time? Manchuria Mitchells could do with a good coach I’m sure, or Shangri-La Sarsfields, or Abu Dhabi Davitts. Anywhere, in fact, but Galway. They have forty-four Connacht titles and nine Sams, and they’re not finished yet. They don’t really need any more dig outs from us.





Technorati Tags: Sport, GAA, Mayo, Galway

A Game of Chess or Lannigan's Ball? Johnno Names the Team for Sunday

John O’Mahony’s team selected to play Galway on Sunday has been met with arched eyebrows, pursed lips, and requests to pull the other one, Johnno, it’s got bells on. A good friend of your humble correspondent assured An Spailpín Fánach via text message last night that if Mayo lined out as selected, specifically with Billy Joe Padden at fullback and James Nallen at centre-half back, he, the texter, would leap off the pier at Blackrock in Upper Salthill, and into the cold, cold briny below.

Let this column assure friends and detractors, assenters and dissenters that there will be no need for this sort of thing. Billy Joe Padden has played at fullback before, and played very well there – he went in fullback against Monaghan in the League last year after David Heaney got sent off, and performed very well there. Heaney was suspended for the following game and your faithful narrator expected Billy Joe to slot in there for the foreseeable, but Liam O’Malley played there the next day and Heaney returned to the last line of defence once he came out of purdah.

People have been suggesting all sorts of switching and shifting in formation to go on before the throw-in, but An Spailpín isn’t quite so sure. Having named this team it would make as much sense to start it, as opposed to working on bluffs and double-bluffs until we get to the stage where the coaches exit and the discrete mathematicians and quantum physics theorists take over. A man stepping in and a man stepping out again is all very well at Lannigan's Ball, but it might get confusing in a game of Gaelic Football. Besides, if P Joyce decides to go strolling and Ja comes in to the square to rest his venerable bones, then Mayo’s full and centre-half backs are changed anyway. It’s best to stay calm in this regard.

For An Spailpín, the most interesting confrontations are at midfield, where Mayo’s Harte and Heaney face Galway’s Bergin and Coleman, and in the corners, with very interesting tussles coming up between Michael Meehan and Keith Higgins, Cormac Bane and Liam O’Malley, and, perhaps most crucially of all, Galway’s Damien Burke against Conor Mortimer. How these battle pan out will tell a lot on the day. Mayo’s bench is in theory the stronger, and you can expect a cheer in Salthill the likes of which haven’t been heard in that area since Planxty played the Hanger in 1972 if or when David Brady or Ciarán McDonald are stripped and ready to enter the fray. The downside is that if the old warriors are sent for Mayo may be in trouble – in the All-Ireland Finals in which David Brady was introduced as a sub, the moving finger had long ago done its terrible work. All Mayo would face the horrendous battle to the notoriously inaccessible Pearse Stadium with a little more ease were Brady full fit and starting, but it’s hard to have it every way.

Galway are a more free-scoring team than Mayo – if Mayo dominate midfield, this will negate that, but if Galway win the centre then it’s double jeopardy, as Mayo’s difficulties in front of goal increase exponentially. If any one of the Galway inside line catches fire and gives his man a trimming, Mayo are in trouble. If two of them light up, Johnno is as well to start looking at the map, as his next game won’t be in Castlebar no more. And if all three of those desperados catch fire, well, Michelle Mulherin might see Dáil Éireann yet. On the bright side, that’s a lot of if’s. Mayo by 2 is the vote.

FOCAL SCOIR: If you're finding all this Gaelic Football a bit much as the Championship moves up through the gears, try how the other half lives - a fasncinating story on ESPN about the Russian Professional Women's Basketball League. Incredible stuff.





Technorati Tags: Sport, GAA, football, Galway, Mayo