Mayo may rue return of ‘Prodigal Son’ McStay
It might have started out that way but Kevin McStay was always likely to become something more than a number to Mayo football.
One of his early claims to fame was togging out in a full-forward line against Leitrim in the 1985 Connacht championship whose combined age came in at 97.
That had little to do with him – the 41-year-old Billy Fitzpatrick and the 33-year-old Sean Lowry did most of the heavy lifting on that front – but it would be about the only time in an eight-year intercounty career brutally cut short in 1990 by a broken leg that McStay would not hold his end up.
He won three Connacht medals and got to play in an All-Ireland final in 1989 – four years after he was named an All-Star – but in these rich times for Mayo that counts as sparse pickings.
As much as he would have wished to have been around now, it is likely to be not half as much as his native county does.
‘He was a brilliant player, as corner forwards go he was one of the best. He was very hard to pin down,’ reflects his one-time team-mate Fitzgerald.
His value as a player was not so much to be found in the 1-45 he gleaned from 17 championship appearances, but in the esteem which saw him named in a greatest all-time Mayo team that was published by the Mayo News in 2010.
But if Mayo had pangs of regret at losing him too early as a player, they are dulled compared to the deep-rooted one of never giving him a chance to be their manager.
That he stands before his own today has resurrected the farce that was the shambolic appointment process to replace James Horan in 2014, which left McStay humiliated as the Mayo board dismissed his candidacy with all the subtlety of a Donald Trump tweet.
The board’s dire handling of the affair didn’t cut as deep as the knowledge that a number of senior players had objected to his proposed coach, Liam McHale.
McHale, his brother-in-law, has been a mainstay in McStay’s management career as a coach but his public criticism of the team in his role as a pundit – in particular after a draw against Dublin in the 2014 league – did not sit well with some.
That may all be history, but it is hard to believe that the sense of betrayal and rejection does not still linger.
‘Yes I was hurt by it. I had given a lot of service to the county. They would never allow me to manage them.
‘It was my second time going for it. I went for it in 1996 as well so my face does not fit,’ he told this paper in December 2015, just months after he had been appointed joint manager of Roscommon alongside Fergal O’Donnell.
That move had taken people by surprise. The attraction of Mayo was obvious; they are a ‘cause’ as much as a county.
Roscommon, even though it has been his county of residence for most of his adult life, was a little more left field.
It amounted to a leap of faith to leave the comfort zone of The Sunday Game studio where he had established himself as a seasoned, balanced and respected analyst.
But a fire had been lit inside by what he had, with McHale by his side, achieved with St Brigid’s in winning the 2013 All-Ireland club championship and Mayo’s rejection was never going to be enough to douse it.
His impact with St Brigid’s had been immediate, as outlined by their veteran goalkeeper Shane Curran, who had his head turned after the team met with their new manager for the very first time.
‘It was obvious to me that he had the knowledge and intelligence to do the job. I was hugely excited by the end of that meeting and I was
ready to commit 200%. I remember I went home to my wife, Sharon, and told her that this guy was going to give us a great chance of winning the All-Ireland,’ wrote Curran in his excellent autobiography, Cake.
There is enough in those two paragraphs to make Mayo folk wonder if their players had been blessed with a little thicker skin, and their board with a little more sense, how far they might have travelled in McStay’s care.
Of course, the doubters can finger his underwhelming first season with Roscommon, which saw the team end in a defensive heap followed hard by a close-season of some acrimony.
The breakdown in the relationship of McStay and O’Donnell was strictly business in the former’s eyes. The difficulties were not so much between the pair, but with joint managers there was too much democracy in the air for the team’s good.
David Casey and Stephen Bohan added greater weight to O’Donnell’s voice than McHale on his own could provide for McStay.
That became a problem when they got spooked last year in the aftermath of the league semi-final mauling by Kerry and they became infected by fear and caution.
If it was business, though, inevitably it became personal when McStay informed O’Donnell that as a management team they no longer had a future.
‘He was very hurt and upset by my decision and I have no doubt he still feels quite sore about it.
‘It surprised him, if I can put it like that, and that was the hard part,’ recalled McStay in another interview with this paper back in January.
In the fall-out, it was little surprise that there were divided loyalties – O’Donnell’s past relationships with the players at both underage and senior level had obvious traction – but the story that this had become a hopelessly divided group was wide of the mark.
Those who retired had come to the end of a well sign-posted road and the handful that withdrew – with the exception of Niall Daly – came armed with legitimate reasons.
That unit never wavered all spring, but even when they were losing, glimpses of their ambition kept shining through.
‘There was an emphasis on moving the ball quickly out of defence, through the hands, and when you got into a certain zone on the pitch, players on and off the ball knew how to react and where to go,’ recalled Curran, when outlining how McStay changed St Brigid’s attacking blueprint.
That philosophy was there for all to see in Diarmuid Murtagh’s exquisite cross-field pass and Cian Connelly’s turn and run for Roscommon’s first goal in the Connacht final.
But in the main, it is the spirit he has fostered that has allowed them to soar.
They play, literally, by the mantra of ‘honesty of effort and absence of ego’ which is the signage pinned to their wall, but those would be just empty words without leadership.
On the Friday night before that 2013 All-Ireland club final, McStay gathered his St Brigid’s players around him and according to Curran ‘delivered the speech of his life’.
‘It was confessional, personal, emotional. He opened himself up, spoke deeply from the heart. There was an innocence and humanity about it. He made himself more vulnerable than any manager I have ever seen and it touched everyone in that room.
‘It filled us all with energy and conviction,’ recalled Curran.
That gift to inspire belief will now be turned on his own.
Far from being a number from the distant past, Mayo’s fear today is that he may be back to do one on them.
Roscommon boss back to do a number on his native county