The dilemma of Mayo’s split personality
Entertainment the only guarantee in ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ performances
WATCHING Mayo on Saturday evening, it felt like they were two teams playing the same game at the same time as they gave their latest impression of ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’
Their game with Cork was typically entertaining and at times they played like a side steadily rebuilding through the back door, ironing out kinks as they wind up for yet another shot at the Holy Grail.
At others, they looked punchdrunk, waiting on the Rebels to deliver the final knock-out blow.
The logic for the latter argument is simple. Mayo have gone too hard for too long and suffered too much heartbreak along the way to mount another challenge.
They can say the signs have been there all season. They were underwhelming in the league, suffering an alarming defeat to rivals Dublin in Croke Park. They only dug out a couple of big results late in the campaign to ensure they remained in the top flight.
Their championship form has been similarly topsy-turvy, where they have gone from toying with falling on their sword only to rise again. And that has been against teams not considered to be All-Ireland contenders in the way Mayo are.
It’s fair to ask how long this group can go on for because so many of the central characters remain in situ.
Mayo face into their seventh consecutive All-Ireland quarter-final this weekend when they take on Roscommon in Croke Park. That run started in 2011 when they reached the last four before going down to Kerry.
A quick glance at the team sheet from that day shows that seven of the team that started against the Kingdom were in the side that took to the field in Limerick last weekend.
Two more starters from last Saturday night, Lee Keegan and Jason Doherty, came off the bench that day while Donal Vaughan started against Kerry and was introduced against the Rebels. There are others from last weekend’s team who have plenty of miles on the clock too. Tom Parsons has been in and out of the Mayo squad but made his debut in 2008, while David Clarke’s bow came two years earlier.
To give that some context, just three of the Kerry team from that day started their Munster final earlier this month. When Galway beat Mayo in Connacht, it meant they would have to go the long way around if they were to get to an All-Ireland final again. It looked like the last thing a side with such high mileage would need but midfielder Parsons insisted it wouldn’t be a problem. “Last year we got to an All-Ireland final, it was a draw and it was an extra game,” Parsons offered.
“An extra one or two games, does it carry it on your legs? Not necessarily.”
Those long-serving players have been through all sorts of near-misses and agony. It’s at the stage now where when the great famines in world sport are referenced, Mayo football is an entry, as witnessed when the Chicago Cubs ended their World Series drought last autumn.
No one connected to Mayo will acknowledge it but that has to take its toll. And one reading of the clash with Cork was that they were playing on memory and that had the Rebels been more clinical, they would be out of the championship.
How else can you explain an experienced, battle-hardened team coughing up a seven-point lead? Or allowing a handful of goal chances to be created by some simple, hard running down the centre against a Cork side who had offered little this season. DETERMINED At times, it seemed Mayo were determined to help them along. Luke Connolly’s equalising score to force extra-time came about after a free was brought up for delaying play. The extra few metres brought it within scoring range and Connolly obliged. It was far from clever stuff from a streetwise team.
And were it not for John O’Rourke’s miscue when through on goal, Clarke’s amazing dexterity, or Cillian O’Connor’s (left) tour de force at the other end, this could be an epitaph.
But it was not an epitaph. And the glass half-full version of Mayo is that, despite everything, they are still alive.
Qualifiers are there for winning and winning only and the optimists read the three wins in the back door as momentum and point out that even though they have come close to the trap door, they have always managed to find a way back.
They can say too that to come through two periods of extra-time and more than 250 minutes of football inside 21 days shows the desire
burns as bright as ever.
Mayo supporters could argue that of all the top teams, none of them could possibly want it more than this side who, for five seasons in a row, have been put out of the championship by the eventual All-Ireland winners.
Mayo’s marked improvement in front of goal from the Derry game to last weekend, and the form of Aidan O’Shea, gives further cause for hope. Game on game in this back-door campaign, the Breaffy giant has produced time and again.
On Sunday they go back to Croke Park to face Connacht champions Roscommon. The bookmakers have made up their minds and by pricing Mayo at 4/11, they expect Rochford’s men to win with a bit to spare and book a place in the last four.
But then Mayo have lilted between the good and the bad regularly this season. It’s hard to know whether they are refusing to die or are waiting on a team to come along with the tools to put them to sleep. With Mayo, the only guarantee is it will be exciting.