On the face of it, Mayo’s year so far has gone pretty much how they would have hoped.
They got exactly what they wanted out of the league, a Goldilocks combination of being well clear of relegation without much attendant danger of accidentally making the final.
After 2023, not playing in a league decider was high on the list of priorities and ticking that box without ever having to worry about going down was a good spring’s work.
They’ve played five championship matches so far and won four. If you throw an average of around five minutes of stoppage-time on to each one, that adds up to somewhere in the region of 375 minutes of football. Of those, they have been behind for just 23.
The game in which they were behind for the longest was the last day against Roscommon, a match in which they trailed four times for a total of 18 minutes but ultimately saw out in reasonable comfort.
Regardless of what happens against Dublin this Sunday, Mayo’s worst case scenario from here on out is a home preliminary quarter-final next weekend. Their only defeat so far has come in the Connacht final against Galway, a game they led for long stretches right up and into stoppage-time. They were behind four times in that game – never for more than two minutes and never by more than a point.
It can be argued, therefore, that Mayo are in okay shape. Not amazing, not in the realm of Dublin or Kerry just yet. But going as well as can be expected. They have beaten the teams they were supposed to beat and were no more than a couple of decent kick-outs away from taking down Galway in Salthill.
The injury to Paddy Durcan is a big blow but everyone has their injury crosses to bear by this stage of the season so they’re hardly unique in that. They will play Dublin in the Hyde where they have a terrific record – although, as Lee Keegan has puckishly pointed out, it helps that they always play Roscommon there.
All in all, you’d have to imagine the vibes would be pretty good, no? Hmmm. Not quite.
“I think if you were to rank it in terms of who thinks Mayo are any good, it would go like this,” says Rob Murphy of the Mayo Football podcast.
“One, opposition management and players – you can’t tell me Pádraic Joyce celebrated like that after the Connacht final because he thought Mayo were useless. Two, the Mayo camp itself, who do seem like they are quite happy with where they’re at. Three, the Mayo supporters, who are probably less sure. And four, the pundits, who do think we’re useless.
“I definitely don’t think Mayo are anywhere near as off the pace as the outside view would have it. I was in the Hyde before the Roscommon game, just at the time when Cork were beating Donegal. I was talking to one of the stewards and I said something like it could be a day for shocks. And he went, ‘Oh, so Roscommon beating Mayo would be a shock, would it?’
“And I was going, ‘Well, ye haven’t beaten us here for 23 years . . .’ But even putting that aside, picture Davy Burke at the final whistle if the Rossies won. And compare that to Kevin McStay when Mayo did win. You’re talking about two completely different sets of expectations. Just different realities.”
For what it’s worth, Mayo are currently sixth in the betting for Sam Maguire, with Dublin, Kerry, Galway, Armagh and Donegal ahead of them. If the most likely scenario is Dublin and Kerry separating themselves to finish a couple of laps clear of the rest in July, Mayo would surely fancy themselves against any of the others in a quarter-final.
Donegal haven’t made the last four since Jim McGuinness was in his first go-around as manager; the last time Armagh got there, Kieran McGeeney was still playing.
There is plenty left in the season for Mayo, is the point. And yet, you wouldn’t know it by the levels of optimism around the place. Despite it being the ostensible glamour tie of the round, there’s no shortage of tickets available for the Dublin game this weekend. The two biggest fanbases in the sport and there’s no sign of the 18,000-capacity venue in Roscommon selling out. So, what gives?
Occam’s Razor is one explanation. Mayo aren’t doomed – certainly in comparison to most of the other 15 teams who still have a pulse this weekend – but neither are they particularly exciting. They still have some key flaws that are obvious to everyone.
For one, they haven’t fixed their vulnerability on their own kick-out. Losing the Connacht final to Galway was no disgrace. Losing it because they failed to ferry possession from three successive kick-outs past their own midfield with the game on the line is unconscionable. Particularly since it was that same problem that allowed Dublin to mince them in the second half of last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final.
“We are not good enough at it yet,” McStay said in his press conference after that defeat.
“We are not up with the top teams in terms of our kick-out yet. But we will be, I have no doubt we will. We have great lads around it that will think it through and figure it out. And we’ll get more experience. That’s my own view and we’ll be better for this.”
Well, here we are, 11½ months later and Dublin are pawing at the dirt. Colm Reape is going to find himself with the ball on the tee several times in the Hyde on Sunday, looking out at anything up to a dozen Dubs pushed up into the Mayo half. Using the end of the Galway game as a guide, it’s hard to imagine him surviving the experience intact. Which would presumably mean disaster for Mayo.
They have other problems too, long-standing flaws that haven’t been ironed out. McStay joins a lengthening list of Mayo managers who haven’t been able to figure out what to do with Aidan O’Shea. While Cillian O’Connor’s endurance as a starting forward well into his 14th season is admirable, it’s quite a damning indictment that the younger guns who have been around since the start of the 2020s haven’t passed him out yet. Ryan O’Donoghue is the only reliable X-factor.
Mayo are more controlled now. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing isn’t really clear yet but it looks like a deliberate policy from McStay and Stephen Rochford to make possession nine-tenths of the law and to take the sting out of games as much as possible.
If that worldview is aimed at any fixture, it’s surely this one – so many times over the years, Mayo have lost Dublin games that got wild and crazy and out of control. It’s maybe a little dull, sure. But maybe that’s what they need.
One way or another, this feels like a hinge game for their season. While a defeat won’t be critical, a win would spread-eagle the summer for everyone.
Nobody would think they were useless then.
