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.

The Mayo Fan's Metaphysical Dilemma - What Does All This Really Mean?

Do people from other counties agonise over metaphysics the way Mayo people do? When they won their respective finals or quarter-finals, did the four counties lining up the for the next two weekends’ hurling semi-finals spend sleepless hours wondering what those wins meant, or were they just glad to be still be in the show, and have their summer extended by a few more weeks?

Maybe Limerick. Limerick and Mayo followed parallel paths of misery in the mid-nineties, losing two All-Ireland finals, at least one of which was entirely winnable. The jubilant scenes in the Gaelic Grounds when they won the Munster title would suggest that, in terms of dementia, Limerick could give Mayo a game of it.

Clare’s success of the 1990s is still warm in the memory. Maybe the Bannermen are enjoying a feeling of belonging as they prepare for the Treaty County the weekend after next. As for this weekend’s semi-final, there are very few Corkmen or Dubliners who could be described as quiet and unassuming. They don’t get dazzled in the limelight. If anything, they’re inclined to wilt without it.

Not so, historically, for the County Mayo. Times are changing, certainly. Since John Maughan took over a team that languished in Division 3 of the National Football League in 1995 these have been glory years for Mayo. Mayo played in Croke Park just three times between 1951 and 1981 and, naturally, bit the bullet each time. Now, the place is as familiar as Moylette’s corner is to a Ballinaman – and they used to be very familiar indeed on Moylette’s corner, back in the day.

But can we enjoy it? Can the people of Mayo, like the man in the song, take the day for what it’s worth and do the best we can? Or will that longing for September redemption hang over everything we do?

Justly or no, Mayo are the All-Ireland favourites as you read this piece. This may be due to a quirk of bookmaking – because Kerry and Dublin are playing each other in the semis, they tend to cancel each other out, pricewise – but the fact is that national favoritism is not a place to which Mayo are accustomed. There is too much water under the bridge not to feel a frisson on uncertainty when thinking of what’s ahead.

Is this justified? Isn’t this the best Mayo team we’ve seen since the 1950s? Strong on every line, with depth on the bench, a messianic manager and a back-room staff who leave nothing to chance? They even have a team psychologist, to make sure the marbles are all correctly accounted for and the lazy media cliché about Mayo’s “mental toughness” is suitably addressed.

Well. We’ve seen this before, and we don’t have to go back to the 1950s to find it. There’s a new steel in Mayo, say the pundits. How is the current steel different to the steel of Horan’s team when he was a player, when the team were – allegedly – banned from the Valley of Diamonds in Enniscrone because the ferocity of their training was eroding the beach? Or the team of 2004, who went 1-3 to 0-0 down against Galway, only to come back and win? Wasn’t there steel there?

The Mayo forwards are different to what they were. So too in 2004, when Ciarán McDonald was in his full pomp at centre-half forward, his favourite position, pinging in passes to the Mortimers on the full-forward line. Conor Mortimer had his best season in 2004, in this writer’s opinion, probably due to the fact that his brother beside him and McDonald behind him effectively fenced in his more impish tendencies and forced him to concentrate on the job in hand.

The Mayo celebrations shook the Big Tree the night after Mayo beat the reigning All-Ireland Champions, Tyrone, in 2004. It all fell apart then. A stutter against Fermanagh, rumours of trouble in the camp and some difficult to understand selection decisions saw Mayo suffer the same fate as the frog before the harrow in the 2004 All-Ireland final. So it goes.

Mayo are unlikely to see this year’s campaign collapse as 2004 collapsed. These are different men, in different times. But then, fans are inclined to judge losses on when they occurred, rather than why. The 1998 team got a Mayfly summer of one match, when they were unlucky to lose to a Galway team that went on to justify their win by returning Sam to the West for the first time in thirty-two years. But could that ’98 team have been The One, if it survived past May?

The 1998 Championship was far from vintage, and Mayo ’98 were better than ’97. Or how about 1999, when Mayo ended the Tuam hoodoo on a hot day when St Jarlath’s Park was so full that a spectator could have lifted his or her feet from the ground and still not fall over? John Maughan was chaired off the ground that day; how long ago it seems. Ifs, buts, and maybes – these are what we build our summers from in the County Mayo.

Maybe this team will win the All-Ireland and join the immortals. Maybe it won’t. Maybe their destiny is in their hands. Maybe it’s not. Maybe Dublin or Kerry or Tyrone are better. Maybe someone else will get injured, as Andy Moran got injured last year or John Casey in 1999.

What would be nice would be if Mayo fans could live in the now, and drink the sweet taste of victory and vengeance from the weekend. The All-Ireland will hang over every Mayo team until that wanted is sated but in the meantime, the Green and Red still flies high as summer moves towards Autumn. That’s a feeling of deep, deep satisfaction and should be enjoyed fully while it’s here.

Bury Street Blues - Mayo Struggle for Every Score

Mayo 0-9
Dublin 0-9

The slightly baffled expression on the face of Mayo’s captain, Ronan McGarrity, to your left is one that will have been replicated on the faces of many of the Mayo faithful as they trooped out of the Stephenites’ pitch in Ballina after a desperately disappointing draw with Dublin yesterday.

In terms of disappointment, it was like taking the lodestar of one’s life to some classy joint like Ballina's own Ice House Restaurant for a feed of pan seared turbot, mussels Provençale, any amount of confit new praties and black olive tapenade crus, only to be served Tesco fish fingers and chips instead, washed down with warm TK red lemonade. Not quite the way to set you up for the evening.

Even more distressingly, Mayo were lucky not to be wiped off the face of the Earth by the extraordinary levels of dominance that Dublin achieved in the first half. Dublin did not take advantage of this, for reasons best known to themselves, but against a team with rather more lethal assassins up front (Meehan! Conroy! Joyce!) the results could be appalling.

As this is only the League such trimmings are something that the faithful could take on board, on the basis that you must break the eggs to make the omlette. However, the way that the Mayo formbook has lurched so violently this year, from implosion against Derry to fighting comeback against Donegal to clinical dispatch of Westmeath to a fighting performance in Tralee and now back to abjectness on the team’s return to Ballina is a source of great concern.

So what’s going wrong? Well, a number of things. Mayo are not bossing midfield, they can get overrun in defence but, most critically of all, Mayo struggle so very desperately to score. A Mayo score this year is like that Watchmen movie. It takes ages to arrive and when it does, you wonder what all the fuss was about.

Mayo have struggled to score in the past, and greybeards of the heather country often amuse themselves by chanting lists of the great shockers they have seen (the Connacht Finals of 1994 and 1995 are always to the fore there. Some All-Ireland finals get a mention too).

But the consequences of struggling to score are exacerbated this year because of the novel decision taken at the start of the year to enforce the rules of the game and protect the flair players. Scoring is on the up this year, and that’s why you see Kerry and Galway thriving the way they are. They have the boys that can stick it over the black spot.

Mayo share the second lowest scoring average in Division 1 of the National Football League with Donegal. Only doomed Westmeath are worse, and Mayo’s matching of Westmeath’s struggles before the posts makes Mayo favorites to join the Lakelanders in Division 2. The emphasis hasn’t been as strong on scoring in football in years, and a team that struggles to score in this new era is going to struggle to win.

Gaelic football forwards have to act as a unit. They must operate in rhythm with each other, not like some boys who are just meeting each other for the first time for the stag weekend of a mutual friend. The best way to achieve this unity of forward progress is to play a centre-forward who can direct operations with accurate foot-passing. Alan Dillon was heroic today, but a centre-forward he isn’t. Neither is Trevor Mortimer. Tom Parsons could be, and it would be nice to see him get a run there before the team goes to New York. After that might be a bit too late.

Aidan O’Shea is clearly the hot prospect, but my goodness gracious it’s a remarkable level of responsibility to put on a man who will be sitting the Leaving Cert in three months time.

If only there were someone who could do a job while O’Shea seasons. A veteran, a man with a lot of experience, who’d have the vision see what others cannot, to hit them high to Barry Moran or low to Conor, and maybe even take a crack at a 45 every now and again. But where would John O’Mahony find a man like that? If there were such a being, you’d think he’d be noticeable. Not least because of the hair, the boots and the tattoos...





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, culture, GAA, football, Ciarán McDonald, Mayo, Dublin

An Spailpín in the Mayo News

Yesterday's piece on the pressure mounting on John O'Mahony is in this week's Mayo News, the paper that provides the the best football coverage of the Mayo papers. You can check it out here.

The Walking Shadow: McDonald Dispute Brings Johnno's D-Day One Year Early

There will be one TD on the Yes side of the house who will be serenely indifferent to this week’s recriminations and repercussions over last week’s ambush of the Lisbon referendum. John O’Mahony, Fine Gael TD for the County Mayo, knows that the people of Mayo can look on the ebb and flow of the geopolitical tide with a steady eye, but losing to Sligo can get a man run out of town on a rail.

When John O’Mahony returned as Mayo manager two years ago, he said that one of his objectives was to calm down the annual early summer frenzy of ambition and excitement that builds from Belmullet to Ballaghaderreen and all points in between as Championship approaches. In this at least, John O’Mahony has been an outstanding success, as there has seldom been a greater air of foreboding and unease on the eve of Mayo’s first game of the Championship.

A cloak of invisibility, similar to that favoured by Fionn Mac Cumhaill himself, has enveloped the county team since their final league appearance, against Tyrone in Omagh. The exchanges then were gentle, as the sides waltzed each other around Healy Park, each with eyes firmly fixed on other partners. Since then even the rumours have dried up and no word at all, good, bad or indifferent, has emerged from the camp to get the people talking outside Mass of a Sunday, or during occasions of venial sin on the preceding Saturday night.

The situation reached its nadir when Mayo played Offaly in a challenge in Doctor Hyde Park some weeks ago, a challenge about which nobody seems to know or have seen anything. Mayo turned up like a flying column, played a game that nobody seemed to know was on twenty-four before, and then disappeared back into the mist, like they were Brigadoon Sarsfields instead of one of the top eight inter-county teams in the country.

As such, it is perhaps less than surprising that the weight of pre-match discussion centres around a man who isn’t on the panel at all. Part of the reputation that John O’Mahony enjoys has to do with his image as a conciliator, a man who can pour oil on troubled waters. This year, that oil caught fire like a chip pan and left O’Mahony badly burned, as Ciarán McDonald gave an out of character interview to an national newspaper saying that he valued nothing more than wearing the green above the red, and was bitterly disappointed not to have the chance to do so this summer. It was sufficiently explosive to have John O’Mahony do an early morning interview on local radio on the day of that paper’s publication saying that nothing was set in stone and the summer is long and all the rest of it, but the damage had already been done.

Now, while news of the county team remains strictly under wraps, McDonald has been like Banquo’s ghost during his appearances with Crossmolina, dispatching Ballaghaderreen and Knockmore with some aplomb in recent times. It hasn’t got to the stage where they play Simple Minds’ Don’t You Forget About Me on the PA at the Crossmolina home games, but that step can’t be far away now.

Looking back through the years, it seems impossible to be a hero in Mayo football without being dropped or forgotten or overlooked. And the constant turning of the world means that if Mayo do catch fire this summer, and if the coming men arrive this year, then history will very quickly swallow Ciarán McDonald, just as it has McHale and Padden and Corcoran and all the rest. But in the meantime, John O’Mahony has left himself a considerable hostage to fortune is this upsetting public falling out with Mayo’s most charismatic player since Willie Joe.

When John O’Mahony was doing a radio show during John Maughan’s final year in charge it was fascinating to hear the reverence in which he was held by many of the callers. It was like he was perceived as the football equivalent of the Biblical Joseph, exiled by his own tribe only to win two All-Irelands in the land of the Pharaoh.

The spurned figure of McDonald has now blown away that mystical aura, and John O’Mahony will address his team on Sunday as a man who knows D-Day has come one year sooner than he would have liked. Eamon O’Hara and co are waiting, eager to show that their Connacht title was no fluke. It’s only the first game of the Championship, but even Johnno’s legendary political skills will be in extremis should the Yeats county men storm Mayo, and cause a terrible beauty to be born.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, culture, GAA, football, John O'Mahony, Ciarán McDonald, Mayo