Mayo must get back to basics... and fast!
WHAT happened in Castlebar last Saturday evening will either cure or kill this Mayo team. I have been involved in two sides that were on the end of that sort of ambush — Galway in 2001 and Mayo in 2010. One of those years worked out perfectly, the other one ended disastrously.
It will all come down to how the players react to what happened in McHale Park. There will have been an uneasy atmosphere at training sessions this week. Some players will be disgruntled that they didn’t get gametime to try and turn the tide against Galway, others will feel that they let their team down.
This is where Stephen Rochford and his selectors will earn their corn. They need to ensure that players process the shock of losing to Galway and get their head around the idea of the qualifiers.
In 2001, I released the Galway players back to their clubs to allow them to process losing to Roscommon in a Connacht semi-final.
Tomás Mannion was felt to be finished as a footballer after Frankie Dolan had taken him for two goals. We moved Tomás out to centre-back and ended up winning the All-Ireland. Sometimes, when a player needs to prove himself, little switches like that work wonders.
From where the Mayo players are stood this week, the road back to Croke Park looks long and hard. That is why I believe Mayo will be vulnerable in the first game of the qualifiers. As much as nothing breeds confidence more than success, nothing breaks it more than defeat — especially unexpected defeat.
Players will be questioning themselves and their teammates this week. They will need a good discussion to get everything off their chest because if everyone starts blaming everyone else and nobody takes responsibility, then Mayo will not get out of the hole they find themselves in.
Last Saturday night, Mayo management tried a number of tactical innovations that not only didn’t seem to work, but that the players themselves looked uncomfortable with. Kevin McLoughlin was played as a deep-lying sweeper where he was pretty ineffective while Keith Higgins was deployed in the forwards.
Higgins’ trademark over the years has been running in straight lines and breaking tackles from the back. His explosive pace is best served in defence, it’s his speciality. Arguably, the one time Mayo football sorely needed him in attack — the final minutes of the 2013 All-Ireland final when Eoghan O’Gara was injured — he wasn’t used there. But Higgins looked lost there last Saturday.
Coming into McHale Park last week I did wonder if there was more pressure on these Mayo players than they were letting on. Not just because of the way that Noel Connelly and Pat Holmes were removed last year but, walking in, I noticed a number of courtesy cars that were being used by the Mayo footballers.
It struck me that the team already had all the trappings that go with being All-Ireland champions without yet reaching the promised land. That, in itself, brings its own pressures and the main thing on those players’ minds this season has been getting back to Croke Park.
Galway were seen as a mere stepping-stone towards a bigger prize. And when those sort of ideas become ingrained in the mind, there is very little that Stephen Rochford or anyone else can do to get rid of it.
When Mayo had their training camp in London following their win in Ruislip, they would have been working on drills that they planned to use later on in the year. Even James Horan’s comments the day before the match, that he wouldn’t have been surprised if Mayo won by 10 points, will have seeped into the minds of the players.
And in fairness, Kevin Walsh played a blinder. He was one of my leaders on the Galway team that won two All-Irelands and the sort of leadership that Paul Conroy showed in Castlebar was reminiscent of how Kevin could drive his team forward just through his personality.
His suggestion that 52 players had declined an invitation to join the panel completely lowered expectations in Galway. Notice he didn’t say 52 senior players — Kevin is also in charge of Galway’s junior team and I think that many of the declined invitations may have come from that. But still, it worked a treat. Nobody expected anything of them.
I have met a few people in the past few days that claimed they saw last Saturday’s result coming. I don’t think anyone did, but drilling a little deeper, Galway were not in the dire situation that Kevin had painted.
Yes, they had a rookie full-back line but those same three defenders had played together for almost the entire League and put in a fantastic shift against Tyrone while on that same afternoon in Tuam, Eamonn Brannigan scored three points from play, as he did last weekend.
The job for Walsh now is to get these Galway players’ feet back on the ground, but at least they have a Connacht final to look forward to.
Rochford is taking Mayo down a path that a lot of these players have never been. Confidence levels will be low. And a nasty road trip in the qualifiers, say to Brewster Park, will be a real test of character.
I don’t believe we have seen the last of them yet, but how they respond in the coming weeks will tell us a lot about their All-Ireland credentials this year.