READ JOHN O’MAHONY ON WHY MAYO WILL HAVE MORE THAN A FEW REGRETS AFTER LATEST LOSS —
IT IS a tremendous achievement in the modern era for a side to win three All-Ireland titles in a row. It copper-fastens the greatness of this Dublin team, but this is yet another heartbreaking, gut-wrenching defeat for Mayo. To come up just short one more time is simply agonising.
You can find all sorts of reasons why Mayo could have won this game. And maybe should have won this game. In the end, though, Jim Gavin had the ammunition on the bench to change the course of this final.
The big task for Gavin yesterday was to introduce players at the right time. And he certainly did that by bringing Diarmuid Connolly and Kevin McManamon on at the start of the second half.
They were the defining substitutions of the game as they changed the whole momentum of the match. Connolly didn’t do anything magical with the ball, but rather it was the calmness and composure that he exerted on the field, and the way he attracted attention of Mayo players and freed up space for his team-mates, which was key. McManamon made the more meaningful contribution. His direct running and strength in going past defenders was vital for Dublin early in the second half. Indeed, had Dublin lost, it might have been argued that Connolly looked a little rusty but now it will be seen as a master move by Gavin, keeping him in cold storage until the second half.
Ultimately, Dublin won this game because they didn’t panic. They had to deal with a few unexpected things, like the early injury to Jack McCaffrey, and overcame any difficulty. No matter what happened, the Dublin players remained calm, cool and collected, epitomised by Dean Rock nailing that last free.
There will be lots of regrets in Mayo this week, though. They were dominant in the first half, yet they didn’t transfer that dominance onto the scoreboard. They should have been more than a point ahead at the break and at half-time, I was concerned that some of those missed chances would come back to haunt Mayo.
Donal Vaughan’s dismissal will be another source of regret. He made it easy for referee Joe McQuillan to send off a player from each side, by running in to get involved with John Small. For Mayo too, Small was sent from the fray a year too late, as everyone recalls the black card offence missed in last year’s replay.
But when a game comes down to a single kick, the smallest of things dictate who will come out on top. When Cillian O’Connor’s last-minute free came off the upright, I counted three Dublin players around Stephen Cluxton for any rebound and there wasn’t a single Mayo player.
Had Rock’s free come off the upright a moment later, you can be sure that there would have been a few Dublin forwards around David Clarke’s goal, ready for the ricochet. That comes back to coolness at crunch times.
I was puzzled by the decision to withdraw Andy Moran, unless he had an injury. If he hadn’t an issue, then it was a surprising decision. His influence faded after the break, but that was more to do with the quality of the supply. Certainly by taking him off, Mayo lost their main point of attack.
Of course, Conor Loftus was involved immediately after coming on and, if Mayo had scored from that play, it might have been a different story. But Mayo still missed the calmness that Moran exudes in the final few moments but his performance yesterday only enhanced Moran’s legacy to Mayo football.
It’s true that Stephen Rochford didn’t have the ammunition on the bench that Gavin did, but some of Mayo’s substitutions were strange. Colm Boyle was replaced quite early, again, while Jason Doherty was also hooked, although he did have a poor miss at the start of each half, although he did nail two very good points.
Lee Keegan’s main duty yesterday was to quell the influence of Ciaran Kilkenny, who wasn’t as effective as he had been all year. But Keegan still showed his ability to do something special on the big days when he scored that magnificent goal.
There were some other big performances from Mayo. Chris Barrett would rightly be in the frame for man of the match. But perhaps the physical toll of the long summer, and the 10 matches they had to play, told.
Keith Higgins noticeably cramped up towards the end, and a few other Mayo players looked out on their feet in the final few minutes.
It was a patchy performance from McQuillan. There were quite a few 50-50 calls that could have gone one way or the other, but McQuillan didn’t lose this game for Mayo. It was lost because Dublin were just calmer in the crunch moments.
Even the cynicism that Dublin showed in the final few moments to break the momentum of the play was clever — if Mayo had done something similar when they were two points up, someone taking a black card like Kilkenny did, it might have been a different story.
It will be another winter of soulsearching in Mayo and they will need to fast-track some of the talent from the Under 21s into the senior team. Ten years ago, this would have been considered a great performance by the team. But the county has long gone past the point of moral victories.
History won’t record that this wasn’t the perfect performance from Dublin and there won’t be much talk of splitting them in two after yesterday.
But faced with their first genuine test of the summer, they came up with all the answers. That is why they are a great team.