Andy's notion of three-year project doesn’t stand up to scrutiny

When was the last time a Mayo senior football team started with two outfield players, one of whom was twice as old as the other? That was the first thought to cross my mind when Andy Moran announced his team last Thursday evening for Mayo’s highly anticipated clash with Roscommon, a game that was going to reveal a lot about the current state of Mayo football.

Of course, hindsight can see around corners, but I wasn’t convinced at all about the wisdom of starting either Aidan O’Shea or Kobe McDonald, notwithstanding the longevity of one and the precocity of the other. My reservations about O’Shea were outlined in last week’s preview and, unfortunately, they were evident for all to see on Sunday afternoon. His role now is, at best, an impact substitute around the middle third. If he was ever a full-forward it was under the old rules when crowded defences meant pace was not a necessity. Under the new rules, a full-forward needs to be fleet of foot to make the most of the wide-open spaces that are now available when their team counterattacks. Aidan, for all his outstanding service to Mayo, is just not that player.

As for the generational talent that is Kobe, he should have been spared for the U20 championship. We need our young players to start winning underage titles before we can talk about ending a 75-year wait for Sam Maguire and Kobe McDonald – along with the other talented members of the current U20 team – have realistic ambitions of provincial and national honours. Everything should be put in place in pursuit of that goal and attempts to fast-track Kobe into senior championship football should have been resisted. Andy Moran now finds himself in a situation where he needs the U20s to win tomorrow night nearly as much as he needed the seniors to win on Sunday because a second defeat to Roscommon in a week will only further call into question the decision to play Kobe.

The past few days have been a brutal learning curve week for Mayo’s young manager. The only thing more shocking about Sunday’s abysmal display was Andy’s post-match comments when he cheerily talked about “year one of a three-year” project. This was not what Mayo supporters wanted to hear after a hosing from their neighbours. Mark Dowd, who is in his first year as Roscommon manager, could have taken the exact same approach but instead decided that there is no time like the present to get a job done.

Unfortunately, Andy’s contention that he is in year one of a three-year project doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, and you only must look to the full-forward line for proof of this. Aidan O’Shea is touching 36, so he is hardly going to be playing a key role for Mayo in 2029, while Kobe McDonald, now just 18, will be in Australia by then, and good luck to him. O’Shea’s former Breaffy teammate Rob Hennelly, a goalkeeper inexplicably brought back by Andy, is another who will be pushing 40 by the third year of this mythical Mayo project, while Cillian O’Connor will also be well into his late thirties. If this is the first year of a three-year project, then it really makes little sense to be wasting time and effort on players who won’t have a role to play when that grand plan is reaching its denouement.

In fact, never mind three years from now, what about three years ago? Twelve of the 26 players who were named in the panel for last weekend’s game played in the defeat to Roscommon in 2023. Four of the forwards who started that day also started on Sunday while Tommy Conroy came off the bench at half-time, having started in 2023, and Cillian O’Connor was a substitute on both occasions. In 2023, those six forwards scored a combined three points from play, yet somehow, we believed it could be different three years later.

In case anyone has forgotten, 2023 was Kevin McStay’s first year in charge and he had a four-year contract until he got “relieved of his duties”. So, if I was Andy, I wouldn’t be holding my breath about the Mayo County Board honouring three or four-year deals because recent history has shown that Mayo senior football managers are always just one crassly worded press release away from getting the door.

Andy’s unfortunate post-match comments will mean that he takes a lot of the heat for Mayo’s abject second-half showing but the players must shoulder a huge portion of the blame. For the most part, they let the manager down, especially around the middle third where they were outfought by a Roscommon team that looked hungrier, sharper and far more cohesive. In the other big shock of the day, Donegal were beaten by Down in Ulster, but the highlights package shown on RTÉ’s Sunday Game would suggest that Jim McGuinness’ men were in the game right up to the end. Mayo, on the other hand, had thrown in the towel after five minutes of the second-half and the final quarter was a prolonged victory lap for the Rossies – and boy did they enjoy it.

Some of us questioned Mark Dowd’s wisdom in selecting a vastly understrength team for the league fixture against Mayo at the end of March, but he was absolutely vindicated on Sunday. Roscommon now have home advantage for the Connacht Final against Galway – and based on the Tribesmen’s dismal showing against Leitrim on Saturday, the Rossies have a decent chance of lifting their first Nestor Cup since 2019.

Mayo, on the other hand, are looking at the longest wait for provincial honours since the 1970s. The 10-point defeat was, by this writer’s reckoning, the heaviest in Connacht since that infamous 16-point loss to Galway in Tuam in 1982, and the worst at MacHale Park since the 17-point hammering by the Tribesmen in 1956. The latter defeat marked the end of the road for three of the heroes of Mayo’s golden era of 1950-’51 – Seán Flanagan, Paddy Prendergast and Tom Langan – and it is likely that something similar will happen this time around. A lot may have changed in those seventy years, but intercounty football is still no place for old men, notwithstanding the remarkable advances in strength and conditioning, nutrition, etc.

Andy Moran will be battered and bruised after this defeat, and his usual sunny disposition will have been well tested, but he still has a lot of goodwill among the Mayo faithful. He now needs to throw in his lot with youth and really embrace the theory that 2026 is the first year of a three-year project.

Mayo had more players than any other county on the University of Limerick panel that won the Sigerson Cup earlier this year – guys like Sean Morahan and Conal Dawson who both featured on the Sigerson Team of the Year – and Moran now needs to start looking to some of those for the remainder of the championship.

A lot of us have had doubts about the spine of this team from early in the league and, unfortunately, all those reservations were confirmed on Sunday. In defence, the goalkeeping position needs to be changed, David McBrien must be moved to his favoured berth of full-back, and the experiment of playing Conor Loftus at centre-back must be abandoned because it is no more of a success now than it was in 2023. Loftus might be better suited in the half-forwards with Jordan Flynn coming out to midfield, which needs a total overhaul – not just in terms of personnel but in the kickout strategy. Hennelly didn’t have his best day, but he wasn’t helped by his midfielders who did not stand up when it came to providing him with a get-out-of-jail kickout, compared to Enda Smith who was Roscommon’s go-to man when all else failed.

Up front, we need a fresh new approach – one that does not involve six survivors from the last defeat to Roscommon in 2023. If any good is to come from this disastrous day at the office for Andy, it is that he now has carte blanche to stamp his own identity on this Mayo team and make whatever changes are deemed necessary once his management team have sifted through the wreckage of this horror show.

After Sunday, the Mayo supporters will tolerate anything except more of the same.