A new year, a new dream. A new way?

Mayo were once known as the ‘League Specialists’, earned due to title wins in 1934, ’35, ’36, ’37, ’38, ’39 and ’41. The reason Mayo didn’t win the 1940 title is simple: they withdrew from the competition due to a perceived shafting by GAA headquarters after the 1939 All Ireland semi-final replay defeat to Kerry. The drawn game was controversial. Mayo, at the death, were awarded a fourteen-yard free in. As the Mayo player was attended to, the Kerry chairman and county secretary came on the pitch, spoke to the referee, and as the Mayo man placed the ball for the free in, the referee picked it up, declared time up, a draw, and walked off the pitch. Hence the 1940 huff.

Currently, Mayo hold thirteen league titles but with seven in the eight-year period referred to above, that’s over half of our current total and underlines the power the county wielded back in that era. But it also highlights the paucity of All-Ireland titles too.

The National League began in 1925. In the first fifty-year period, 1925 to ’75, Mayo won ten titles. In the almost fifty years since, we’ve added three. It tells us nothing – or does it? Part of the gap can be explained by the almost total collapse of the county senior team post 1955 until 1985, an era where we won Connacht titles in 1967, ’69, ’81 and ’85. A closer study of the figures show that after the All-Ireland semi-final replay loss to Dublin in 1955, we would fail to even make a Connacht final until 1965, winning a total of three Connacht championship games, losing to all our Connacht rivals on that run until exiting the rut in 1967. Looking at a similar county, Cavan, it’s a miracle that we eventually pulled out of a fatal nosedive and became relevant again.

“It’s only the league,” many say. Really? A cursory dive into the statistics show a co-relation between championship winners and league winners. Kerry top the list with 38 All-Irelands and 23 league titles. Dublin are next with 31 and 13. The third placed on the league winners' podium are us with 13. But. Just three Sam Maguires says it all. Looking at the figures for Galway, we see a 9-4 split, Cork a 7-8 split, Meath 7-7 and Down 5-4. We are outliers. Ah, you say, that’s auld bunk, the past, history. Only it’s not. Taking the last fourteen seasons, 2010 to this week, three of the four teams that won the All-Ireland in that era claimed twelve League titles between them, Cork doing the double once, Dublin four times, Kerry once. Tyrone won no league but one Sam.

Dublin’s ratio since 2011 is nine All-Irelands to six league titles. Kerry’s is two All-Irelands to three league titles. Cork are one to three. Clearly winning the league is linked to winning the championship. So how come we cannot bridge the gap?

It’s easy to point out the issue. I’ve learned, belatedly, that it’s also incumbent to offer solutions as well. However, us being us, it’s quite difficult to poke amid the entrails and find causes, symptoms and solutions. Certainly the teams between 2011 and ’21 had men of steel and substance. But did we try and pick the ‘best’ player as opposed to the ‘right’ player for our teams all the time? Looking back and in no particular order, it’s really since 2000 onwards that the league was more or less condensed into a single calendar year. Prior to that it was split between spring and late winter, so it was hard to see continuity in form and personnel. Looking back, certain names pop up, lads who I thought had the right stuff to advance themselves onto the championship team and us to glory. But often they burned off into the night only to reappear for the next spring blossom and fade again. I felt many of them might have been given more time,,, but who are we when we aren’t within the county dynamic.

Games stick out where we were bullish, not Spursy, but solid and methodical. Dispatching a team with force and muscle mixed with a dab of nice football. I’ll pick two, both against Dublin and almost a decade apart. In the 2004 National League, we hammered Dublin 1-10 to 0-03 in Castlebar. Dublin failed to score in that second-half. Two names stood out that day for us, solid, workmanlike and effective. Gary Mullins and Austin O Malley, diligent, effective and unnoticed. Mullins hunted the ground defensively, quelling Dublin fires, and O’Malley kicked 0-7, including four frees. Championship oven ready I thought. Wrong. Despite O’Malley scoring 1-32 in the league and a further 2-03 as a championship substitute, both players essentially weren’t there by the time Kerry exposed our soft underbelly.

Michael Moyles, Alan Roche and David McDonagh were another trio whom I felt were shortchanged in the championship. Fast forward to the fog-abandoned league match against Dublin in MacHale Park in 2012 and we brought a New Romantic musical vibe to that match, the fog doubling as a smoky ice backdrop. Dublin were in charge, James McCarthy showing what the future would unwrap. We were soft. Come the re-fixture that March however, and we brought a touch of The Pogues and life to the match. We blew Dublin off the pitch, 0-20 to 0-8, again them failing to score in the second-half. We curveballed the Dubs that day. At full-back was Shane McHale, midfield had Danny Geraghty with Jason Gibbons making an appearance. Sure, we scored 0-19 against the same Dubs that August in the All-Ireland semi-final, but they tallied 0-16 and David Clarke’s size 12s saved a certain Brogan goal at the end.

Were Dublin spooked in March by Mayo going off script and using their tactics of playing a Bastick or Daly type of player, stalwarts that do as is labelled on the tin? By August we reverted to our ‘best’ player rather than ‘right’ player mode and just about got away with it. Donegal would fully expose it a month later.

Going back to Austin O’Malley, he had an Indian summer in 2005 against Kerry in that year's All-Ireland quarter-final after our humiliation the previous September. Kerry squeaked through 2-15 to 0-18, a match the previously ignored O’Malley posted 0-5 for us. Interestingly, Darragh Ó Sé would recall that match for the roasting another fringe Mayo player gave him, namely Shane Fitzmaurice. Ironically, the crucial goal that did for us came from a defensive blunder that a regular committed.

The fact that our disconnect from league titles to All-Ireland wins is at variance with Kerry and Dublin, I’m not sure I’ve a solution as to why. We are not naïve; we know the difference between heavy sod and firm going. And yet we cannot tally the projected expected returns regarding the championship. History can give glimpses though. In 1970, our league win was nulled in Tuam by Roscommon in the first round of the Connacht championship, a title that we wouldn’t reclaim until eleven years later. In 2019 and 2023, both league title-winning years were scratched by the Rossies again. Shades of Ireland’s Rugby World Cup quarter-final travails or La Rochelle versus Leinster in European finals. Does fate stand stubbornly in our way?

Reading sports editor Anthony Hennigan’s recent piece on notable achievements made by Mayo last season, he referenced our stellar first-half display against Dublin in the championship quarter-final. Nobody foresaw the 35 minutes of mayhem later and our total collapse. And yet it had been in the stars earlier, in the 2019 All-Ireland semi-final, leading at half-time, eviscerated by the final whistle. Do we get ahead of ourselves? Do we see the end before the credits run? I wish I knew.

Anyway, a new year, a new dream, a new way. What’s there to lose? We’ve been through every emotion that exists. Hopefully we won’t develop a new strain of pain. That wouldn’t be fair. Good luck in the league ahead. Remember that finishing anywhere between number one in Division One and number five in Division Two leaves you level with the big two, Dublin and Kerry in the starters stall; you get a shot to compete for Sam. It’s in the timing folks. Under this new system, indeed, the league may matter less. It will now become a place to experiment and plan.