Mayo’s tragedy is that they should have won

IT played in the moment more as an elegy than a celebration. A Dublin song, written by a Dublin man – the quintessential Dublin man you might argue – and sung by one of the city’s most famous sons.

It did more to sum up Mayo’s day than anything we could say or write now at a couple of days remove. There’s a feeling of loss and sense of yearning intrinsic to the song, written to describe the experience of prisoners in Mountjoy prison.

As Mayo slumped to the turf, as the stark reality of their situation sunk home with them, the Mayo players, management and fans alike heard Luke Kelly sing Brendan Behan’s words.

‘A hungry feeling came o’er me stealing’ – ain’t that just the truth.

Right there at the pit of their stomach was that familiar old feeling. An emptiness, a hunger brought on with a deadening thud by the final blast of the whistle. To paraphrase another famous Dubliner, James Joyce’s Stephen Deadalus, history is a nightmare from which Mayo are trying to awake.

Theirs is a tragedy epic in scale. Biblical, Shakespearian. They’re Job wondering what they’ve done for fate to be so cruel to them. They’re Hamlet having to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

They’re Sisyphus forever pushing that boulder up a hill, only to watch as it rolls down past them time and again. Like Sisyphus they have no choice, no matter how weary they might be, but to pick themselves and boulder back up and start all over again.

Otherwise what’s the point? What’s the point of any of it? The search for meaning, for answers insists upon it. Mayo can’t stop now. They can’t give up, not having come as close as they did and they did come close, achingly close.

Mayo were certainly the better team in the first game and, we would argue, they were again the marginally better team – with a couple of all-important provisos – last Saturday afternoon.

At the very least it was a game they could have won and, to state it even more categorically, ought to have done. The principal reason they didn’t was not – as most people seem to accept – a lack of firepower.

A lack of firepower brought Dublin to a replay. A lack of firepower brought them to within one Cillian O’Connor free into the Hill of extra-time. A lack of firepower brought them to within a point of a team now being fêted as amongst the greatest the game has ever seen.

Of course Mayo could have done more and done better up front. They were far too hesitant in offensive positions. Take their first chance for a score just a couple of minutes in.

Tom Parsons is in possession of the ball. An opportunity opens out in front of him, but he doesn’t take it. Instead he holds onto possession and tries to fashion something for somebody else and ends up having to take a pot-shot that skirts wide. That was a pattern repeated throughout the game. Frustrating no end for anybody hoping the Mayo dog would finally have its day. Even so their return of five points from play isn’t as bad as everybody seems to think and Dublin’s of eight isn’t as dominant. To repeat that’s not where Mayo lost the game. They lost the game largely because the management opted to change their goalkeeper for the biggest game of the season, a decision that always carried far more potential downside than upside. Rob Hennelly was always going to be under pressure under those circumstances. He had to – had to – nail his first kick-out. When he didn’t it just piled the pressure on him and his team. His first three kick-outs went direct to Dublin men, meaning that Mayo were under the cosh from the off. Starting at a disadvantage it was remarkable Mayo were able to battle back to near parity before long. That’s the thing we can’t forget about this Mayo team. They have character, buckets of the stuff. Mayo absorb the losses, the disappointments, the set-backs and come back for more. In the first half that poor selection issue – the blame more properly lies with the management team than the individual player – cost Mayo three points and their best player, Lee Keegan. In the second half it cost them a penalty. How any team could absorb losses like that and come back for more is quite remarkable. Then again we’ve seen this Mayo team do that before. Who else but them could absorb two own-goals in the first half of an All Ireland final and live to tell the tale? Eventually it was going to catch up with them and their defeat was a consequence of that. Not a direct consequence, it’s impossible to say that Mayo would have won had Hennelly not given that penalty away, or had Keegan remained on the pitch. Dublin may well have been more assertive in attack and aggressive everywhere else. Still you can’t discount the significance of such moments as mere ephemera. Those incidents – and that one big bad decision – had lasting ramifications. In a game of inches Mayo lost out by the bare minimum having started with a built in six-point deficit – 1-3 of Dublin’s 1-15 came from Hennelly’s kick-outs – you’ve got to believe that was the difference between the sides. On Saturday the Dubs had the last laugh and the last word, so it’s only right that here we give the last word to a Dub who, though he died long before these Mayo players were born, could well have writing with them in mind. ‘The day was dying and the wind was sighing as I lay crying in my prison cell. And the old triangle went jingle jangle all along the banks of the Royal Canal, all along the banks of the Royal Canal’.