MAYO NEED TO TALK ABOUT CILLIAN
Concern over O’Connor’s free-taking, and his form in general, may force a reevaluation of the talisman’s role
IF MAYO’S torture has a face then most likely it belongs to Cillian O’Connor. It is safe to assume that in the history of the game no player has ever had, with one swoosh of a ball, the chance to alter the outcome of three All-Ireland finals In truth that is a stretch, given more noise was made about his decision to take a point from a close-range free, with what was effectively the final play of the 2013 final when Mayo trailed by two, than it merited.
Dublin are not in the habit of parcelling gifts at the tail-end of All-Ireland finals, so they were unlikely to facilitate a pot-shot on goal sourced in desperation.
But from neighbouring patches of grass, out on the Hogan Stand side, in the last two finals he has had shots to save this team, as in the 2016 replayed decider or, like last year, to give them a critical lead, and failed both times.
If that hasn’t left mental scarring on the 25-year-old, it most certainly has on the county’s supporters, which might explain their trauma last Saturday night in Castlebar.
It wasn’t that they lost to Kerry, but how the lost — playing against 13 men for a whole quarter.
And central to that failure was O’Connor who missed two kicks from inside 20 metres during a 10-minute spell that normally would be so routine for the kicker that he would be asked to wear a blindfold to make it interesting.
In his first home appearance since last September’s final, it was not the ideal way for O’Connor to exorcise the doubts about his kicking game that grow by the year.
It was not just those missed clutch frees, but there has been increasing evidence that his free-taking has gone from a 90 per cent sure thing, to more like a 70 per cent roll of the dice.
Had Bryan Sheehan nailed that Hail Mary free for Kerry at the end of August’s All-Ireland semi-final, not only would Mayo’s season have been done but O’Connor would have felt the heat.
The focus, in a game of two kicks, would have returned to his astonishing 21-metre miss from in front of the posts in the second minute.
But missing kicks is an unfortunate, and inevitable, consequence of being asked to take them in the first place.
With Mayo having an obvious alternative in Jason Doherty, perhaps the questions that now hover over O’Connor’s competence are simply down to the fact that he raised the bar so high and kept it there for so long, that people expect too much.
The nerve he showed when he was still a teenager and kicked eight points in defiance of a rain-splattered storm in Hyde Park in 2011, set the tone for what was to follow.
Billy Joe Padden watched on from the press box last Saturday night and felt the anxiety that accompanied those two missed kicks, but suggests that perspective should be applied rather than panic.
‘Of course there is some concern but I think people underestimate the difficulty of maintaining that high conversion level from frees over a long time.
‘You could have two or three years where you are at your absolute best so you are going to drop back a few per cent over your career,’ says Padden.
That may well be true, but unless the reason is identified as to why his form has slipped, how can it be addressed?
There may a technical issue at play with O’Connor, who is obsessive about the mechanics of his kicking and still engages the services of Ed Coughlan — once a key member in James Horan’s management team — as his kicking coach.
If there is a difficulty that raises its head from dead kicking on the ground, it is a lack of elevation which gives some of his kicks the feel of a punched six-iron rather than a full swing of the pitching wedge.
‘He has a had a number of injuries and they can knock you out of your stride when you are on free-taking duties in terms of your release action while he had an issue with tendonitis in his knee at one stage.
‘That is definitely a factor when he is trying to kick the ball off the ground, especially when he is taking 45s.
‘And there is a huge mental side to free-taking and I think there is a strong argument for altering your technique so maybe the best thing that Cillian could do is strip back his tech- nique and routine and he could be rejuvenated by that,’ suggests Padden.
But place-kicking is only one element of his game, but could it be having an impact on how he is performing when the ball is alive.
There is a perception, that he has lost some of his explosiveness because of those injuries —the most prominent being a dislocated shoulder which he defied to play in the 2013 final and a knee injury sustained with his club
That is not necessarily true since speed was never his friend.
And last year he saw more gametime, starting all 17 League and Championship games and finishing them all, too, apart from the semi-final replay when he as shown a black card.
The latter highlighting his reputation as a player who tends to play on the edge.
His lack of pace means that he has physicality will always be central to his game, but that does not explain the suspicion that he engineered the dismissal of Galway’s Thomas Flynn and Kerry’s Darran O’Sullivan for black card offences, when he made bodychecks unavoidable.
Padden suggests that he is more sinned against than sinner.
‘Your history will always determine how people will look at you and there is a narrative out there that he is playing too close to the edge but I think he is aware of that but I am confident he will manage his emotions no matter what treatment he receives.
‘And a lot of referees let defenders away with a lot of physical contact that I would consider foul play.’
Still, it might not hurt if the burden of captaincy was removed (Stephen Rochford still has to appoint one for this season) and he was handed a more conventional inside-forward role.
Running up to 60 metres to take those frees, can take its toll
In terms of place-kicking, he compares unfavourably to Dean Rock in recent seasons but, for all of Dublin’s worth ethic, the latter plays a pretty orthodox strike forward’s role.
In contrast, O’Connor can be drawn far from goal as he rolls up his sleeves, and the strain that places on a tired kicking leg should not be underestimated.
‘When you spend your whole underage career kicking frees while playing close to goal and then you move up a couple of levels in intensity and find that you are playing out the field, and you find yourself 60 or 70 metres from goal and even running up to take those frees that does take its toll.
‘I would like to see him play inside,’ suggests Padden.
The biggest folly, however, is for Mayo to lose confidence in a man who has proved time and again he is a natural born leader.
That clutch point in the 2016 final that forced the replay summed up his courage and conviction, and any suggestion that he is a fading force was contradicted last year when he had one of his most prolific seasons from open play.
In his 45 Championships games, he has averaged just over two points a game from open play, but last year that climbed to almost three.
An inch perhaps, but isn’t that just what Mayo are seeking?