The law of averages must stop in Ballindine

The long wait for All-Ireland success in Mayo has changed all of us who care deeply about the fortunes of our senior football team.

How many times have we heard people of a certain vintage say they hope to live to see the day? It’s normally those of an older age but after the Donegal defeat three weeks ago a contemporary of mine, all of 42 years of age, texted me to say simply: ‘I’m beginning to think I won’t live to see it’. 

‘It’ needed no explaining.

So many final defeats have a huge impact on a county’s, a people’s psyche.

I was seven in 1989, a young Mayo fan who went to my first ever game that year, Mayo’s drawn Connacht championship opener in Tuam. I was fortunate enough to go to every game on that magical journey to Mayo’s first All-Ireland Final in 38 years.

I was lifted over the turnstiles by my father for the final and we sat in the old Upper Hogan Stand with a big banner which read ’89-MO-Willie Joe’.

My mother regularly reminds me of my shout with time running out and Cork breaking clear: ‘What’s wrong with ye Mayo, do ye not want to win?’ Of course, want has never been the issue, but 36 years on, the wait endures. We’ve togged out for 12 more All-Ireland finals since (including two replays) and failed to win a single one. The law of averages must stop at the border in Ballindine.

We’ve had underage success along the way. Under 21 titles in 2006 and 2016, both in Ennis and against Cork. The bulk of that 2016 Under 21 team tasted minor glory three years previously. Mayo were in the senior final that day in 2013 too and the hour or so after minor glory and before the senior final was the most spectacular feeling of hope until reality kicked via Jim Gavin’s Dubs.

But even in underage, our relationship with the law of averages is not good. The Under 21 success in 2006 ended a 21-year wait for underage success since the minor All-Ireland of 1985 and 23 years to the last Under 21 win, in 1983.

Before and since there has been more heartbreak than heaven. Our minors have lost All-Ireland finals in 1991, 1999, 2000, 2005, 2008 (replay), 2009 and 2022. At Under 21/20 level we lost finals in 1994, 1995 (replay), 2001, 2004 and 2018.

I brought our two eldest kids to their first-ever game in 2022, the All-Ireland minor final against Galway in Dr Hyde Park in Roscommon. Mayo had beaten Galway in the Connacht group stages and the Connacht Final and were asked to beat them for a third time in one campaign to win the title. It was a big ask in retrospect and that pesky law of averages came back to haunt us.

As we left the ground, a Galway fan made a few friendly comments but as he turned to go in the opposite direction to us, he pointed at the kids and said ‘fair play, you’re getting them used to losing early’. Aside from the arrogance of it, it cut deep because it had truth in it.

We’ve a spectacular record when it comes to losing All-Ireland finals. It even extends to the All-Ireland senior club championship. Wins for Crossmolina (2001) and Ballina (2005) were rightly celebrated and massive breakthroughs but they, too, stand as outliers to final defeats by Garrymore (1982), Castlebar Mitchels (1994, 2014 and 2016), Knockmore (1997), Ballina (1999) and Crossmolina (2003).

So we’re 0/13 at senior level since 1951, 2/9 at club level, 1/9 at minor level and 2/8 at Under 21/20, inclusive of drawn and replayed finals. Overall that’s 5/39 across all those grades, a win rate of under 13%. There is no way of dressing this up as being anything other than a deeply rooted problem.

So when I hear so many express relative optimism about where Mayo stand after the All-Ireland quarter-finals, I cannot but wonder. We beat Tyrone – and should have beaten them by 15 points – in the group stages. We were level with Donegal when the hooter sounded (their winner coming in the very last play in case anyone needs reminding).

But there’s a lot of whataboutery involved. Tyrone were ripe for an ambush after beating Donegal and Mayo’s loss to Cavan. Mayo’s response was excellent but Tyrone were abject too.

Donegal’s season was not on the line like Mayo’s in Dr Hyde Park and they looked like a team playing with the handbrake up at times. Mayo were courageous but I find it hard to convince myself that if Mayo made it to the quarter finals against either of those two teams that they would have won.

Laboured build-up play, an inability to kick two-pointers to anything close to the level of other teams competing at the business end, an over-reliance on Ryan O’Donoghue in attack and a long-running list of losing tight games are all factors in my scepticism.

We were edged out in two successive Connacht finals against Galway, had Dublin beaten just before a last-second equaliser that sent us into the prelims last year, lost to Derry on a penalty-shoot out and were denied a prelim place by a buzzer-beater winner from Donegal this year.

Looked at in isolation, you can make an argument for misfortune but when there is such collective evidence, it points to something deeper.

It is one thing to be competitive for 65 plus minutes but the reality is that in the modern football championship, the real action begins in the closing stages. So many games are close and the team with the wherewithal, the confidence and the ability to get it done in frenetic closing stages sees it home. Mayo have consistently fallen the wrong side of that line.

Management may be blamed for that, so too the players. But there are far more existential questions to ask. Why do we repeatedly fail to produce sufficient high-level inside forwards? Why are we so often close but not close enough in the championship at whatever stage we exit? What impact has the weight of history had on various teams and on our psyche at large?

Off the field why are we always in the news for the wrong reasons? Very few were arguing for Kevin McStay and his management team to wait on but the statement announcing their departure (‘relieved of their duties’) was disrespectful in the extreme as was its haste. We are often a punching bag for other counties looking to feel good about themselves but we don’t help ourselves.

You get the feeling that for all the good work we are doing – you don’t get to so many finals by being ‘at nothing’ – we are not learning enough from the past. And with every passing season, the anger and frustration grows.

Whoever becomes the next Mayo manager has a huge job in front of them. But that’s only one part of the jigsaw.

In the heydays of the last decade, the famous quote ‘we’re all in this together’ rang through. That unity is a thing of the past. Huge change is required. We all want the same thing but we seem to lack the leadership to know how to get it.