‘This isn’t about the sending off. We just came second to the better team'
STEPHEN ROCHFORD was hoarse. Trying to communicate with players in the din created by 82,000 people on All-Ireland final day will do that to a voice.
But so will managing your county to consecutive finals – and losing both by a point.
And from his demeanour after this extraordinary game, it was obvious what was choking the voice of the Mayo manager. He was simply devastated.
A year ago, he was a study in dignity while his incorrect decision to replace goalkeepers between the drawn final and the replay prompted some wicked criticism.
He didn’t put a foot wrong in the 2017 edition of the Dublin-Mayo feud. Mayo’s match-ups in defence worked brilliantly, especially in a first half when they reduced the most feared forward line in the game to a muddled unit secondguessing every decision.
But as managers are wont to tell us, their work is completed when the team crosses the sideline and enters the field of play: in the modern game, responsibility for leadership is explicitly entrusted in the players.
And no manager could suppose one of his most experienced players would make the decision Donal Vaughan did to steam into John Small after the Dublin defender committed a foul that it was instantly clear would end his day.
Instead of playing 14 men with an extra player for the final 25 minutes, Mayo had to take on Dublin on similarly reduced terms.
The relationship between this manager and this squad is notably close, though, and it was no surprise when Rochford refused to engage with the suggestion that Vaughan’s needless dismissal was decisive.
‘Look, it would be easy for us to jump on that,’ he said. ‘These things happen. To be honest, I genuinely didn’t see the incident because we were looking to get a sub on. We were looking to get Diarmuid O’Connor in at that time.
‘Again, today isn’t about a sending off or not a sending off. We’ve come second in an All-Ireland final to a better team on the day. That’s where we have to be with it.’
That was the day’s upshot, and his magnanimity on a red card for one of his veterans was of a piece with how Rochford conducts himself.
Even in the blizzard of recrimination after eventual defeat to Dublin, he stayed quiet. And when his predecessors resorted to finger-pointing with a bitter interview castigating the players last winter, he didn’t react.
That is not his way, preferring silence and as a result, inscrutability. It wasn’t hard to read him yesterday evening, though.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, sounding surprised when asked how it felt. ‘You come second in two All-Ireland finals by a point, you just tip your cap to Dublin.
‘Today is really about them. In fairness, it’s a phenomenal achievement to win three in a row, and sincere congratulations to Jim [Gavin] and to Stephen [Cluxton].
‘It just wasn’t to be. We rattled the post with a free kick in injury time. Dean Rock, not to take away from the enormity of the kick, but a slightly easier kick or a slightly easier angle, he nails it and that’s the margin.
‘Sport can be cruel, never more than in those 70-plus minutes.’
Mayo’s start was undermined by an early Con O’Callaghan goal, but they roared back into the match, dominating Dublin and ruining Stephen Cluxton’s kickout effectiveness.
They held a one-point lead going into the break.
‘When you’re a point up, you’re trying to do the same again through the second half,’ said Rochford. ‘We had created a lot of good chances. Of their 1-5, they scored the goal in the first three minutes or so [it was actually after 83 seconds] and we held them to maybe two or three points from play over the course of the next 34 minutes.
‘I felt we were doing a lot of things well. Again, it was just to go out and try and look to repeat that.
‘I thought it [O’Callaghan’s goal] was a fine, fine finish for a guy starting his first All-Ireland senior football final. It was a really cool finish.’
ONE consequence of Mayo’s quality first period was a rejigged Dublin substitution strategy. While Gavin might have been of a mind to introduce some of his stars in the final quarter, he had to bring both Diarmuid Connolly and Kevin McManamon on at half-time.
Paul Flynn was in inside 10 minutes after injury to Jack McCaffrey.
It had been widely predicted that Dublin’s replacements would do damage from the 55th minute on, but Connolly and McManamon were good from the re-start: they kicked a point apiece, Connolly sent in Rock for a point with a wonderful pass, and McManamon tested a tiring defence with charging runs.
‘It’s well documented, Dublin have a very experienced bench,’ conceded Rochford. ‘Our bench maybe had a bit more youth on it, but also we have minor and Under 21 All-Ireland winners on it. I thought our guys performed admirably.
‘I don’t think there’s any one defining part to that game if you’re talking about a point being scored on the stroke of 76 minutes from a free.
‘Maybe on reflection and looking at it, I may think the benches did have a bigger impact, but it’s not something I felt had a defining impact off the sideline.’
He wasn’t in the form for ascribing much in the way of definite cause. There are plenty of others to do so, of course, and in time Rochford might come to accept that there were a couple of pivotal
‘It wasn’t to be today. You have to tip your cap to Dublin’
moments in the match: the brilliant Jason Doherty seeing his goal chance saved by Cluxton, and the dismissal of Vaughan.
What he was happy to dismiss entirely, though, was another serving of the re-heated argument that Mayo’s long summer cost them. This was their tenth match of the championship.
‘No, not at all,’ he scoffed. ‘We played, what? Three minutes of injury time in the first half. We played 77 minutes in the second half [in total]. Over 80 minutes and we’re chasing down Dublin who are masters of possession, and an inch or two away from getting a dispossession.
‘I certainly don’t believe that there was tiredness there. At certain times, maybe, after we scored the goal: I don’t know what the margin was [Keegan’s goal put Mayo a point ahead] but Dublin came back and kicked two points.
‘We weren’t able to build the margin we would have liked. There was nothing in relation to fitness or mental fatigue.’
No, it was because they weren’t quite good enough.
It is a familiar feeling, but one that does nothing to damage the reputation of this durable group. Even in the pits of their disappointment, they can now be assumed to be Dublin’s biggest challenge as the champions think of four in a row come 2018.
There was no time to wonder if Rochford will be in charge of them. The role is his, one can safely assume, if he wants it.
But the thought of another battle to get back to this place, where there is nothing guaranteed, is a serious one to conjure with as the winter falls.