The spirit may be willing in Mayo, but the minds are weak
Stephen Rochford’s men aren’t learning or listening and that will prove costly
See pages 40-41
MAYO ARE no longer a football team, they are a thesis waiting to be written. If this feels like I am starting where I left off last week, I will make no apologies because every time they take the field they are utterly compelling.
I wrote here seven days ago that one of their constant failings is that they keep making the same mistake over and over again and then they go and do this. Stephen Rochford had arguably his best 35 minutes as manager of the team last Sunday, seeing his team survive a nightmare start that left them facing a sevenpoint handicap only to retire at halftime two points up.
They did not have the game half-won, they had it three quarters won and the beauty of it was that it was the turnaround was all down to Rochford’s smarts.
He went with that ‘hammer the hammer’ strategy from the outset, sticking his best player Lee Keegan on Roscommon’s most important one, Enda Smith, killing two birds with one shot.
It would ensure that Keegan would be transported to the heart of the action and that Smith would spend more time chasing the Mayo defender than fetching ball and pulling the strings.
It was a great stroke but the trick in football management is not how you set up your team when you have had a week to think about it, but how you react in an instant when you realise that it is your move next.
Kevin McStay, the man who wanted to be Mayo’s leader but was rejected, reacted cleverly by moving Smith into full-forward at the start of the second half but I am guessing, at best, that he was hoping the move would buy Roscommon 15 minutes of respite before Mayo copped on and released their Westport thoroughbred.
Instead, it earned him and Roscommon if not a get-out-of-jail card then certainly a brand new appeal hearing tomorrow, which at halftime last Sunday was more than they could have hoped for.
What is disturbing about this from Mayo’s perspective is not so much that another game has been added to their roster, in what has already been a hectic summer, but they are not learning and they apparently are not listening either.
Four years ago in the All-Ireland final when they were desperately chasing a tight game, Keith Higgins found himself shackled to a hamstrung Eoghan O’Gara in the final minutes even though the Dublin forward could have been marked comfortably by a tortoise at that stage. It was a baffling decision, but then this spring as Mayo were cleaned out by Dublin in an Allianz League game, O’Gara spent his evening at full-forward in the company of Keegan. No slight on O’Gara, but he is no Bernard Brogan, Conor McManus or Paul Geaney and yet Mayo were willing to sacrifice their best player in a position where his impact was going to be minimal.
It’s beyond me and leaves me wondering if the Mayo management are talking to each other and, more importantly, listening to one another. I am not privy to what is going on inside their camp but I had Donie Buckley as a coach and I always found him to be perceptive and sharp-witted. Everyone thinks of Donie as a defensive coach but he is ultimately a footballing one.
When he was with Kerry, he always pushed my case to be released from corner back to play in the half-back line because he felt I had the skills and the speed to express myself up the field and cause headaches for the opposition.
His thinking was that there is more than one way to defend, and forcing teams onto the back foot can be as good a way as any.
I find it hard to believe now that he is working with the best halfback in the game — and let’s be clear about this there is no one even in the same parish now as Keegan as a footballing wing-back — that his outlook would have changed so radically to approve of Keegan playing in the full-back line.
I’ll make a bet that McStay will seek to flip the table on Rochford tomorrow by trying to stick a man-marker on Keegan, so we could have a lot of fun and games in the opening minutes.
The bottom line, though, is that Mayo will win. As McStay was at pains to point out afterwards, Roscommon will take so much from the experience of last Sunday and they will be better prepared this time.
But that, in no way, comes close to compensating for the seven-point headstart which, you can be absolutely certain, they will not enjoy this time. That’s going to be critical.
The bigger picture from last weekend is that the quality of the game suggested two modest teams at play. To be fair I think is a bit harsh on Mayo, because, as much as is rightly made about their resilience, they would not have stayed at the top for this long without being an exceptionally good football team.
The wet day and the oil-slick Croke Park surface was offered up as an explanation for the low quality served up, but I am not buying that either. I always found that the best players stand out in conditions when
I’ m left to wonder if their management team is on speaking terms
Mayo’s issue is their key players are struggling to find form
the execution of core skills becomes more challenging, which explains how Keegan thrived while so many others struggled.
Mayo’s issue is that key players are struggling for form, not least Cillian O’Connor who has mixed the good with the mediocre all summer, while their full-back line remains fragile. The other lie peddled is that this run of games will empty them. Don’t believe it. Yes, they were shattered at the end of last Sunday’s game, but a Roscommon team — with a younger age profile — that had played just two games all summer were also out on their feet.
If you play a high-intensity Championship game in Croke Park — and I had the jellied-leg syndrome myself on many an occasion — tiredness is a given.
There is a reason why we all preferred the format of the League to the Championship, because games week on week, with the odd twoweek break, meant less training and more football.
If Mayo get over this tomorrow, they will have two weeks to prepare for Kerry which will suit just fine. Their bodies will not let them down, it never has.
Their heads… now that’s a whole different kettle of fish.