Animosity of rivalry not enough for Roscommon to topple Mayo

Come in Agent Farrell, your mission is complete.

Dublin’s primary objective on Saturday evening in Croke Park was to pick up two points and continue moving on their own path to retaining the All-Ireland title. But Dessie and the Dubs wanted to do Kevin McStay a favour by beating Roscommon in the most demoralizing manner possible, they couldn’t have done much better.

This generation of Roscommon players have taken on Dublin several times in recent years, sustaining heavy defeats at times, but also frustrating them greatly in last year’s All-Ireland series match, which was drawn.

Even allowing for the Rossies suffering a serious dip in form in 2024, the overwhelming message from Saturday evening was that they no longer belong in the world of elite All-Ireland contenders. It wasn’t that Dublin blew them away – far from it.

In a contest with fewer than 12,000 supporters in attendance and a glaring lack of physical intensity or contact on the pitch, the Dubs operated in third gear throughout. It was all going perfectly according to plan for Roscommon in that they did nothing to poke the bear, but a remarkably accurate shooting display from their inside line (Daire Cregg, Diarmuid Murtagh and Conor Cox scored their entire total of 0-13 from just 14 attempts) kept them in touch.

Seán Bugler’s point just before the hour mark stretched the lead out beyond three points for the first time, and still the final result ended up a 12-point win for the All-Ireland champions.

Davy Burke couldn’t walk into the dressing room afterwards and say to his players that things went wrong, because they didn’t. He couldn’t argue that Dublin were simply tuned in and at the top of their game, because they weren’t. Cormac Costello and Ciarán Kilkenny didn’t really feature, there were no barnstorming forward runs from Murchan, Small or even Jack McCaffrey after his introduction, and Paul Mannion started brightly but faded out of the game too.

The fans didn’t turn up because there was nothing to see, and Dublin took care of business with all the urgency and zest of 40-year veteran civil servant logging in to process some paperwork. It felt like the footballing equivalent of the scene from the series “Mad Men”, where protagonist Don Draper listens to the complaints of one of his staff members, culminating in their saying “I feel bad for you”, and he replies “I don’t think about you at all”. Roscommon travelled to Dublin, expecting to be defeated. They left, battling feelings of irrelevance.

Of course, the vibe is different in advance of this Saturday’s game at Dr. Hyde Park.

Regardless of where form and fortunes take Roscommon and Mayo, these two counties will never be irrelevant to each other, and even if the Rossies find themselves in a situation like they are now; relegated, without a Connacht title and nowhere close to involved in the race for the big prize; then dealing a hammer blow to the neighbours’ aspirations will still do just fine.

The question of whether this Roscommon team possesses such a hammer is wide open however. They averaged 13 points per game in the Allianz League this year, and have now followed up with 0-9 and 0-13 in the championship.

In their last 17 competitive league and championship games, they scored more than one goal in a match once – though Mayo supporters won’t need reminding of which game that was.

But, since therapy is expensive and it’s good to talk, let’s revisit that Easter Sunday in Castlebar. In that game, Roscommon doubled down on orneriness, obstreperousness and cute hoority to see themselves through.

This year, there is no sense that the same stubborn, difficult streak is in the group. Keith Doyle, Ben O’Carroll and Cian McKeon all made huge impacts for Roscommon last year, with Doyle having a massive game at MacHale Park.

This year Doyle and O’Carroll have got very few minutes, with injury a big part of the issue in O’Carroll’s case, while McKeon is not on the panel. The absence of the line-breaking ability of the man they call “the Bull” is sorely missed.

For good measure, in 2023, Enda Smith won an All Star and Brian Stack might very well have picked one up too. Now both men look a little short of full fitness, and a long way short of peak effectiveness.

Mayo certainly have their issues in 2024. Durcan’s injury is devastating to the man and to the team; the balance of the forward line is very much at issue and has been confused further by Cillian O’Connor’s strong showing against Cavan, and like Roscommon, goals are in short supply.

But this is still a Mayo team that beat Dublin in the league, that might well have beaten Kerry as well, and that looked nailed on to win the Connacht final with a couple of minutes to play. Kevin McStay is chasing the last five or ten percent in order to get the team back to a level where they can beat anyone.

Roscommon look like a team where ten percent off the top has become 20, 30, 40 and even 50 in a very short space of time. And even though the bare result in Croke Park didn’t cause any eyebrows to be raised, the manner in which it was achieved has certainly made that gulf very apparent.

Muscle memory and local animosity might cover up some of it on Saturday, but it’s hard to see a way where it brings Roscommon close enough to cause Mayo any real problems.