WEST SIDE STORY
After years of toil on the off-Broadway margins of the All-Ireland Football Championship, Connacht is suddenly box office again
‘WINNING A PROVINCIAL TITLE IS BIG AND ALWAYS WILL BE’
CONNACHT will provide much of the worthwhile drama in the football Championship this summer. You just mightn’t hear much made of it. The western provincial campaign does not have the tireless advocates that its northern equivalent does.
The Ulster Championship runs the Munster hurling competition close for mythologising, and there are pundits and supporters who insist there wouldn’t be football worth bothering about before the August Bank Holiday were it not for the stout-hearted sons of the north.
That argument has lost some force since Donegal slipped back from the position they enjoyed under Jim McGuinness, and emphatic defeats for Tyrone in Croke Park against Dublin in 2017 and 2018 gave a stark measure of the northern standard.
The Ulster Championship will still be decided between three potential Super 8s teams in Tyrone, Donegal and Monaghan, but decent earlysummer football is not confined to one corner of Ireland.
Connacht now measures up to it, with Roscommon on the margins of the Super 8s analysis, Galway semifinalists last August, and Mayo revived by the return of James Horan.
It begins in seven days’ time with Galway’s visit to Ruislip and Mayo in New York, but a week later Roscommon face a slippery test when Leitrim, nourished by a National League run that got them promoted to Division 3, arrive in Hyde Park.
Survive that and Roscommon play Mayo in Castlebar on the last Sunday in May, but the entire draw sharpens towards an anticipated Connacht final between Galway and Mayo on June 16.
In a football season where the winners of the Leinster and Munster Championships are already clear, a province that provides one blockbuster and a couple of other intrigues deserves attention.
Perhaps Connacht’s struggle to get such notice is based on history. Through the decades its leading teams have simply not been relevant in the wider discussion of the Sam Maguire.
Mayo had 38 years between their last All-Ireland win in 1951 and the next time they reached a final in 1989.
Galway won a famous Championship in 1998, but it was only their second time to get to a final in 24 years. Roscommon have contested three AllIreland finals since the last of their two final wins, in 1944.
In the annals of AllIreland glory, the Connacht story has come fourth of four.
What is traditional is not always relevant, though, and the stories building in the west this year are the continuation of a Connacht resurgence.
Since that Galway win in 1998 – the first by a team from Connacht since 1966 – its teams have played in eight All-Ireland finals. They only managed that in the 33 years before 1998 – and that in a time,
of course, when the four provincial winners contested the semi-finals, giving a Connacht team a one-in-two chance of getting to the final every year. Underage success has been a factor in firing the modern improvements: Galway won AllIreland Under 21 titles in 2011 and 2013, and Mayo did in 2016 after a minor win in 2013. Exposure to Division 1 of the League is relevant, too. Mayo are its longest tenants, there 20 years now. Galway were promoted as Division 2 winners in 2017, and reached the League final 12 months later.
Roscommon have yo-yoed between the top two divisions since 2014, but players and management have spoken of the valuable lessons learned competing against the best sides even in seasons that ended in relegation.
Galway’s All-Ireland wins in 1998 and 2001 are the only silver Connacht teams have to show from those recent finals – which brings us to Mayo.
They have accounted for the last six final shows by Connacht teams, in 2004, 2006, 2012, 2013, 2016 and 2017 (plus a replay in 2016).
The first two finals ended in humiliations against Kerry, but from 2012 on they have competed to often thrilling effect on the biggest day of the year.
Their losing margins from the 2012, 2013, 2016 replay, and 2017 final are, respectively, four, one, one, and one points. The value of a provincial Championship has often been discussed in the age of the qualifiers, but the advent of the Super 8s has seen it climb again: the attraction of the most direct route to the most competitive part of the season is obvious, sparing teams the qualifiers when the intensity of the new format demands much from them.
And its worth to Mayo in 2019 is especially interesting, given the years of football in a vastly experienced squad, and the fact they haven’t won a Connacht title since 2015.
In James Horan’s first time in charge, they won it four seasons in succession between 2011 and 2014 (the year after he left, in 2015, they won it again). Diarmuid O’Connor, their captain for this season, made his debut in 2014.
‘It’s huge,’ he says. ‘It always has been, ever since I started playing with Mayo. It’s been disappointing the last number of years, not making it into the final (they haven’t been in the decider since 2015).
‘The competition in Connacht is very high, so we’re just going to have to do what we’ve been doing all year and just take it one game at a time and really try and improve week on week, taking it as it comes.’
Horan never tried to talk down the value of a provincial win, either, even if he is more circumspect on this occasion, ahead of their trip to New York.
‘Provincial titles are great to win, absolutely, (but) we’re a good bit off that now,’ he says, with a smile.
‘We have a game against New York and everything that goes with that so that’s what we’re looking at.
‘But winning a provincial title is always a big thing and always will be,’ he stresses.
That wasn’t the way under Stephen Rochford, when Mayo’s failure to get out from under Galway obliged them to spend summers tracking through the qualifiers.
They managed it in 2016 and 2017, but were undone on a famous, blisteringly hot evening in Newbridge last June.
They won’t say it, but it is certain that knocking Galway off their perch will figure high in the commitments Horan’s squad make to themselves for this summer.
Roscommon are the team who can stop the two meeting in a final, but Enda Smith, their rangy forward and captain for the season, understands the magnitude of their challenge. In doing so, he avers to the strength in the Connacht championship.
‘It’s three games to win a Connacht title, and playing two consistent Division 1 teams to win it.
‘It’ll be tough,’ he nods. ‘Connacht in general has been quite competitive, with Galway, Mayo and ourselves in Division 1 this year, and that sets you up for the rest of the Championship.’
It will be the base from which two of the four teams with credible designs on beating Dublin in the Championship make their start.
Mayo on their own are enough to make a province interesting, but Galway’s toughening under Kevin Walsh and the capacity of Roscommon to undo one of their old foes on a given Sunday enrich it further.
Its legend is not as widespread or as carefully cultivated as that of Ulster, but Connacht is one of football’s salvations in a slow-burning summer.