No end to Mayo’s suffering
The desperation to bridge an agonising 65-year gap won’t be enough to dethrone a powerfully dynamic Dublin team shaped by an astute and innovative manager
ONE OF the most celebrated baseball tomes is Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer, an account of the writer’s time marvelling at, and then covering, the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Before Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier and helped make it all happen, this lyrical tale revolved around Ebbets Field and the team that couldn’t win. Each new season of the early 1950s was a tale of frustrated ambition, ‘when they entered autumn full of hope and found catastrophe’.
When Kahn combined his childhood affection with a job covering the Dodgers for The Herald Tribune, his beat coincided with the years 1952 and 1953, when they lost the World Series to the New York Yankees. His words carry a sporting resonance that Mayo supporters travelling to Croke Park, or listening around the world, can easily identify with.
‘You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat. Losing after great striving is the story of man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it… The team was awesomely good and yet defeated. Their skills lifted everyman’s spirit and their defeat joined them with everyman’s existence, a national team, with a country in thrall, irresistible and unable to beat the Yankees.’
A national team, with a country in thrall: what better could describe the
House of Pain, as chronicled by Keith Duggan, that now stretches to seven lost All-Ireland finals since that very same period in time, the early ’50s, when Seán Flanagan captained Mayo to back-to-back All-Irelands.
Looking at the attention to detail in the brilliant front cover of the Mayo News’ All-Ireland pull-out, the cartoon showing Jim Gavin quite literally driving the Dublin juggernaut with the O’Shea brothers hanging off the windshield and braced in its way, it’s easy to detect the same sense of sporting obsession and yearning for the game’s ultimate prize from those on the Mayo beat.
And the American connection is something that lives on, in the living, breathing shape of ‘Flying Doctor’ Pádraic Carney.
When Aidan O’Shea took part in AIB’s second instalment of The Toughest Trade, auditioning in an NFL combine, he made a point of hooking up with a man who featured on that double-winning team. In a revealing conversation with Carney, he spoke of how the warm-up area of MacHale Park features the winning team of 51 on one wall and the present team on the other and how it’s about trying to ‘make a connection between the two’.
In a year when the reigning champions lost All-Star full-back Rory O’Carroll and Footballer of the Year Jack McCaffrey to sabbaticals, maybe, just maybe, their stars are aligning.
Tom Parsons’ inclusion in place of Barry Moran wasn’t that much of a surprise given the latter was never going to be asked to reprise his deep-lying sweeper’s role that limited the goal-threat of surprise semi-finalists Tipperary’s inside line in Croke Park last month.
Kevin McLoughlin is the mobile version that has been road-tested to clog the central channels and prevent the sort of goal blitz that has undone Mayo in big games – Michael Murphy’s early rocket to the net in the 2012 decider; Bernard Brogan stealing in for two goals 12 months later; Kieran Donaghy’s ransacking of the full-back line at the Gaelic Grounds in the 2014 replay; conceding 3-3 in 13 minutes at a critical period in last year’s semi-final against Dublin.
If Parsons does actually start, then Mayo risk losing his dynamism from the bench, though Moran is another blue-chip fielder for the middle third when legs tire.
Donal Vaughan could just as easily start there, though his placement at full-back suggests individual match-ups are going to be key.
So much thinking has to go into plotting ways to disarm Dublin’s main weapons, starting with the kick-outs of Stephen Cluxton. Kerry’s full-court press after a free-taking opportunity won’t have been lost on manager Stephen Rochford but it says everything about Dublin’s incredible 27-match unbeaten streak in League and Championship competition that they will play to their own strengths.
Finishing out the semi-final against Kerry with eight recognised forwards on the field was the boldest of tactical gambits. Pushing up on Kerry’s sweeper caused Éamonn Fitzmaurice to sacrifice his team’s best forward Paul Geaney for extra defensive cover in Marc Ó Sé.
Gavin deserves serious kudos for having such confidence in his players and setting them up to win rather than being consumed by the fear of losing.
When he took over the Dublin team after Donegal were All-Ireland champions, he could have followed the defensive crowd. But Gavin is part of a new wave of inter-county managers and the former player has always been an independent thinker.
Donegal’s 2014 ambush has taught him a valuable lesson in the dangers of all-out attack and so Cian O’Sullivan’s ongoing tutorial in how to play as a covering number six is at the heart of Dublin’s set-up.
Mayo have the athleticism, pace and raw power to match Dublin all the way – what has separated the champions from everyone else since 2013 is a game-breaking bench.
The new regulations concerning added time and substitutions where five added minutes has become the norm only plays into the hands of the team with the strongest arsenal at the ready entering the final quarter. Paul Mannion, Eoghan O’Gara, Paddy Andrews, Cormac Costello – all of whom are gamechangers.
And that’s before the natural match-winners of this Dublin team James McCarthy, Diarmuid Connolly or Bernard Brogan are factored in. Dean Rock’s position at the top of the individual scoring charts shows that Mayo can’t be as lax as Kerry in conceding freekicks.
Making this another bone-crunching war of attrition like the 2013 final is exactly what Mayo need to do, to try and bridge present with past.
The Dodgers went on to put their winters of discontent behind them, to shed their status as plucky losers.
It will happen for Mayo. Just not yet. VERDICT: Dublin