All-Ireland Final countdown: Mayo can write final chapter of epic saga

The task facing Mayo is monumental on Sunday. Not since 1965 when Galway completed the second of their three-in-a-row has Kerry lost an All-Ireland Senior Football Final to a team from Connacht.

In the intervening six decades, Mayo, Galway and Roscommon have all tried – and failed – to topple the Kingdom on All-Ireland Final day. Roscommon were narrowly beaten in 1980, Mayo in 1997, 2004 and 2006 and Galway in 2000 and 2024. Only one of those games went to a replay – Galway in 2000 – and two of Mayo’s three defeats were of a wide-margin variety.

Yet Kerry are far from invincible on All-Ireland Final day. They have been defeated seven times since the turn of the millennium – four times to Dublin (2011, 2015, 2019 and 2023), twice to Tyrone (2005 and 2008) and once to Armagh (2002) – but they have never lost by much. The biggest defeat was in 2019 when six points separated the Kingdom from Jim Gavin’s Dublin, but that was after a replay in which Kerry came tantalisingly close to ending the Dubs’ five-in-a-row dream. So, Kerry may lose finals, but they always show up, and if you are going to win, they will make you work tirelessly for it right to the final whistle.

There is no point in pouring over Mayo’s All-Ireland Final baggage because there is little to be said that hasn’t been said before. The long litany of defeats since 1989 has left a scar – certainly among supporters of this writer’s vintage and older – that won’t be healed until Sam Maguire eventually finds its ways into the hands of a Mayo captain. Whether that lamentable history matters to young players like Kobe McDonald and Darragh Beirne, who weren’t even born the last time Mayo played Kerry in an All-Ireland Final in 2006, is debatable, but there is little to be gained from dwelling on it apart from learning some lessons from those defeats.

The biggest lesson to be learned, especially from the Kerry defeats in 2004 and 2006, is that Mayo have to maintain a watertight defence and try not to concede any early goals. Nothing boosts the Kerry confidence more than a green flag in the opening quarter of an All-Ireland Final, and that is especially the case in the modern game where opposition teams can pile pressure on a goalkeeper’s kickout, resulting in a flurry of scores in a matter of minutes. Mayo have to try to avoid this kind of scenario at all costs because if there is a repeat of the Meath debacle when 2-5 was conceded in 20 disastrous minutes in the first half, there will be no stirring fightback because Kerry do not give up big leads. We all saw what this Kerry team is capable of in last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final when they blitzed Armagh, scoring 14 points in 15 second-half minutes, so depriving the Kingdom of those kinds of purple patches is paramount.

Both teams enter this final with potent, high-scoring full-forward lines but ultimately this game will be won and lost in the middle third and especially on kickouts. Mayo have to break 50-50 in the possession stakes – and ideally a little bit more – to be in with a chance of causing an upset. Our full-forward line may be in fine form, but Ryan O’Donoghue and his two teenage colleagues can do little without the ball and it is foolish to think they can conjure up a victory on scraps. It is worth remembering the last time we met Kerry in an All-Ireland Final we had a starting forward line that included four All-Stars – Kevin O’Neill, Ciaran McDonald, Alan Dillon and Conor Mortimer – yet we still came away with our heaviest defeat ever in a final. The reason for that was simple – we lost midfield and fell apart in defence.

Much has been made of Mayo’s path to the final and there is certainly a view in the national media that Andy Moran’s men have not been properly tested yet. It is an argument that carries some weight when you look at the likes of Dublin, who had to beat Donegal and Galway for a place in the All-Ireland semi-final. But Mayo have beaten Cork and Louth, teams that defeated Donegal and Dublin respectively earlier in the championship, so these things are all relative. Indeed, if Kerry had reached the final by Mayo’s route, they would still be favourites regardless of the teams Mayo had defeated on the other side of the draw. And if Jack O’Connor’s men had beaten Louth by 17 points, they would be getting far more plaudits than Mayo have received.

Louth were certainly a surprise packet in the All-Ireland semi-final, and it was a little bit reminiscent of 2004 when Mayo faced Fermanagh at the same stage of the competition. There are a couple of key differences though. Fermanagh took Mayo to a replay in two games that were utterly unforgettable, the draw finishing on a scoreline of 0-9 apiece before Mayo squeezed past on the second day by 0-13 to 1-8.

It is interesting to draw a comparison between the scoring rate of Mayo’s full-forward line then and now. In those two games against Fermanagh, Mayo’s full-forward line scored a total of 0-13, which is just a fraction of the 2-36 that our current full-forward line posted in the quarter-final and semi-final against Cork and Louth. Indeed, look back at any of the previous All-Ireland Final campaigns and it is easy to see why fans are so excited about the current Mayo front three. In 2021, our full-forward line managed 1-14 in the two games before the All-Ireland Final, while in 2016 it was 1-15. Only in 2017 did Mayo come close to matching this year’s scoring rates when a full-forward line of Cillian O’Connor, Andy Moran and Jason Doherty struck 2-20 in a draw and replayed semi-final against Kerry. We know how close we were in the final that year as we pushed Dublin harder than any team during their successful six-in-a-row campaign.

The Louth game may not have been the toughest test from a football perspective, but it gave Mayo’s younger players an opportunity to get used to playing in front of a capacity attendance at Croke Park. The atmosphere during the parade and in the first quarter of that game was electric and it should stand to those Mayo youngsters who are now facing into their first All-Ireland Senior Final. The late throw-in in the Louth game might also be a blessing in disguise as it would have allowed the Mayo management to prepare the team for an elongated match day, something that is always an issue on All-Ireland Final day as players try to while away the hours ahead of their arrival in Croke Park. In this case, Mayo will face a shorter match day build-up than they had for the semi-final. These things might seem trivial but often the waiting can be the hardest part of all, and it is good to have already had that experience, albeit not on All-Ireland Final day itself.

The last time Mayo and Kerry met in a championship clash in Croke Park was in 2022 when the Kingdom enjoyed an easy victory in James Horan’s last game as manager. Of the 26 who featured in the match day panel for Mayo that day, just 12 were named for the game against Louth – six on the starting 15 and six on the bench. Our full-forward line in 2022 was Kevin McLoughlin, Jack Carney and Cillian O’Connor, so there has certainly been a lot of change there. For example, Ryan O’Donoghue didn’t feature for Mayo.

Kerry, on the other hand, have far more survivors from that game. The Cliffords, Seanie O’Shea and Paul Geaney were all in the forward line, while the defence included Graham and Tom O’Sullivan, Gavin White, Brian Ó Beaglaíoch, Tadhg Morley and Jason Foley. The margin that day was eight points, 1-18 to 0-13, and our full-forward line managed just three points from play – one for each player. That was, of course, in the era of the old rules when scores were much harder to come by, but it was still a poor return and illustrates the difference between Mayo then and now. Today, we finally have a full-forward line that can win games, but we need to get ball to them, and that will be the key on Sunday.

Some people argue that this is a ‘shot to nothing’ for Mayo but I don’t subscribe to that theory. All-Ireland Finals are never a ‘shot to nothing’; they are there to be won and everything else that has happened in the preceding games counts for nought when the winning captain climbs the steps of the Hogan Stand. Mayo may have had the easier passage to the final, but the record books won’t show that in 10, 50 or 100 years from now because the only thing that matters is what happens next Sunday.

Winning an All-Ireland Final would be a monumental achievement for Mayo alone but to do it against Kerry is going to take something very, very special. Yet the eight-point gap from four years ago is far from insurmountable, especially with an entirely new and in-form full-forward line. Andy Moran’s refashioned team, which exudes the manager’s positivity and can-do attitude, can defy the overwhelming odds and finally write the last chapter in one of the longest-running sagas in Irish sporting history.