Mayo wrong to feel they’re owed a break

SYMPATHY, and rightly so, has been in short supply for the Mayo football team this last week. And, as I stated on these pages last Saturday, on the morning of their three points defeat by Galway, players can’t just click their fingers, order themselves a new manager and become transformed overnight. I also warned the Mayo team boss, Stephen Rochford, last week that he is living in a nest of talented, but underperforming footballers who come with danger signs attached. On the field, and off it — as we saw last winter when they moved against their former management team of Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly. This summer was a ‘new beginning’, their captain Cillian O’Connor forecast the week before losing to Galway. Hopefully, he is right, because the good people of Mayo have slogged as long and as hard as their footballers, and deserve some suitable reward sometime soon. The beginning needs to start with the Mayo team having a reality check, however. Galway have helped them commence that ‘check-up’ but the biggest problem with this Mayo team is that they believe they have been unlucky in not getting the breaks and winning at least one All-Ireland title. They believe they deserve more, which was the primary reason they were unhappy with Holmes and Connelly in charge and decided on drafting in a new manager last winter. As if Rochford was going to somehow offer the finishing, magic touch to a group of footballers who had everything else. Last Saturday — on the day when every last Mayo footballer needed to stand up and be counted — too many of them sat down. Their captain O’Connor was amongst them. Right behind him, in not showing enough fight or wit on this occasion, was Aidan O’Shea (left). Neither player scored from play in MacHale Park. Both of them failed to show up on an evening when we were promised that new beginning. That’s either bad timing or a sorry disregard for their jersey, their county, and the ruthless actions of the Mayo team last winter.