MACHALE STORM
Mayo’s home ground not quite the Castle’ it should be
THIS evening, Mayo will bid for their first home win in Division One in almost four years as Galway come to Hastings Machale Park.
It’s a curious thing about what is widely accepted to be the best supported team in the GAA that their home record is so poor.
With the backing that the Mayo footballers enjoy, Castlebar should long be established as a fortress.
But while Mayo have contested League finals in recent years, they’ve flirted with relegation more often and it was largely down to their ability to put together a succession of home wins. Going back to 2010, they have played 57 home games in League
and Championship and won just 32, a 56 per cent winning record, which is a very modest return for a county that is regularly competing at the back end of the Championship.
Compare it to Dublin, who have won 56 per cent of the 124 home games, the vast majority of which have been at Croke Park, that they have played in the same time span.
Admittedly, Kerry’s home record has been patchy in the League at times over the years but they haven’t lost a home game in the Championship since 1995 and have still won 71 per cent of the games that they have played in Killarney or Tralee since 2010.
Galway’s home record is actually worse than Mayo’s as they won just 31 of 62 games in Tuam or Salthill in the same period, but they were a struggling Division Two team for much of that period and, besides, none of that
will worry them in the slightest tonight given their brilliant record of late in Castlebar.
Mayo finally lost their longheld top flight status in 2020 having lost each of their three home League games, with a final day defeat to Tyrone in Castlebar sending them down after they had blitzed Galway in Tuam, typically, the previous weekend.
They won immediate promotion in the truncated 2021 League, recording two home wins from two outings against less heralded opposition, before strolling past Leitrim at Machale Park in that year’s Championship.
After that, the ground was closed to allow for the relaying of the pitch, which then boss James Horan argued was at the root of their problems.
“I know it sounds strange, but it’s a slow type of surface,” he said in
2021. “It’s a little bit up and down. We played on other grounds, or say when we train in Abbottstown or play up in Croke Park, the pace of the game is completely different.
“With GPS and everything you can measure the tempo of the game, or the metres per minute or whatever it is, and at Machale Park it’s different to other top pitches.”
The relaying of the pitch meant Mayo had no home games in last year’s League, playing their seven regulation games at seven different venues and still managing to reach another final.
So, all’s good since they accessed the fresh and faster sward at Machale Park, right? Not quite.
The new pitch was ready in time for their Championship opener against Galway last year but the result was all too familiar as Mayo slipped to a flattering one-point defeat. They did beat Monaghan there in the first round of the qualifiers but it was less than convincing.
Tonight, they return there under new management led by Kevin Mcstay looking to record a first home win over Galway the 2014 Connacht final, with their great rivals having left victorious in each of their last four visits (three Championship, one League).
“You want to make your home ground your home, you want to make it difficult for people to come and take any points away from you,” said Mayo’s Padraig O’hora this week. “We have more home games this year than we have away, of course we’ll be trying to win every game but definitely trying to keep Machale as our own and make it difficult for teams to come to.”
If they want to build an aura around the place, ending a near nine-year winless streak against their greatest rivals there this evening must be the starting point.