The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Mayo still fascinating and infuriating in equal measure
YOU’D have to wonder if Mayo want to win an All-Ireland title at all, or do successive football teams from that county prefer to get to the brink of ultimate success and then intentionally pull back?
Don’t mind that they suffered rotten luck in the first half of last Sunday’s All-Ireland Final by scoring two own goals.
Don’t mind that they showed great determination to level the scores by the 50th minute having trailed by five points at half-time.
Don’t mind that, having gone three down to the defending champions as the game teetered into added time, they showed great courage to mine the last three points of the game to rescue a draw and send the thing to a replay on Saturday week.
For all that, Mayo tried their damnedest to blow their chance.
How, you might ask, when Donal Vaughan and Cillian O’Connor displayed massive cajones to kick those late, late points to brink Mayo back from the brink?
Because they lost all composure and poise and clarity of thought for most of the last 15 minutes of the game and reverted to pot shots at the posts, hero efforts that simply weren’t on and sloppy passes and bad decisions that presented Dublin with more than enough chances to retain their title.
Damn it, but Mayo are a frustrating team.
They did so much right - almost perfect, in fact - in how they went about dismantling a Dublin team most people and pundits thought simply had to show up on Sunday to take Sam Maguire away with them again.
The Mayo management team got their set-up and match-ups and tactics largely spot on. The players played with an intensity and a controlled aggression necessary to unhinge a Dublin team hitherto the epitome of cool.
After both own goals - as much the product of Dublin getting the ball and players into the red zone as Kevin McLoughlin and Colm Boyle were unfortunate - they responded with the next score, and duly carried on with their highpress, hard-tempo game.
In conditions that made it difficult for ball carriers and slick inter-play, Mayo found a way to get at and get through Dublin. They had, in boxing parlance, the Dubs on the ropes.
And yet they did their utmost to throw away their best chance to win the title for the first time since 1951. How? Because they reverted to being Mayo.
They lost their cool. They lacked composure. They began to bottle it. Perhaps that’s being a tad harsh on a team that clawed back a three-point deficit in added time, but that’s the reality.
Look at Aidan O’Shea in those final minutes. He received the ball about 45 metres out, and seeing that there was no option of a pass inside to a team mate he swung a leg at the ball and nearly took out a pensioner in Ballybough.
From a player who should know better it was a classic example of losing the head. O’Shea can kick points from that distance but there was nothing in his body language or execution of the shot to suggest anything other than desperation and defeatism.
Thankfully for him Cillian O’Connor displayed infinitely more self-control to line up his 77th minute shot, which he hit with far more measure and conviction, regardless of whether it went over the bar or not. Can Mayo win the replay? Yes. Will Dublin be as poor again the next day, even though the Mayo defence deserve great credit for how they curtailed the Dublin forwards? Probably not.
Have Mayo the skill, athleticism, game plan and character to get themselves into a winning position on October 1? Absolutely.
Have they the composure to see it out at the end? Not sure.