Attacking strategy requires urgent attention if Mayo are to bloom in summer

If this is the league that ‘nobody wants to win’ then Mayo and Dublin certainly looked like two teams doing their very best to lose as they traded wide after wide in the final 10 minutes of this Round 2 tie at MacHale Park last Saturday evening.

After Ryan O’Donoghue kicked a free to level matters in the 63rd minute, players from both sides exchanged a succession of wides – four for Dublin and three for Mayo – before O’Donoghue found Fergal Boland who kicked a memorable winner in the 73rd minute. It wasn’t just the number of wides that was surprising, it was the players who were missing them. Paddy Small, Ciaran Kilkenny and Con O’Callaghan for Dublin, Cillian O’Connor (twice) and Jordan Flynn for Mayo. These are not rookies, so it was surprising to witness such a lack of composure in those dying minutes when the game was there to be won. It’s hard to imagine the Dublin of old spurning so many winning opportunities, regardless of the time of year, but equally it’s not often Mayo win a match against one of their biggest rivals having played so poorly. In that sense, it was one of those nights where form went out the window, and by the end of 70-plus minutes we were none the wiser about where Mayo are headed in 2024.

There are, of course, some encouraging signs. Goalkeeper Colm Reape continues to impress and his first-half point from a long-distance free – at a time when the Mayo forwards couldn’t buy a score – was an early highlight from a Green and Red perspective. The defence is gaining in stature with every passing game and the return to form of captain Paddy Durcan, who can be as talismanic on his day as Lee Keegan in his pomp, is great to see. David McBrien and Sam Callinan look like they will be major players for Mayo for years to come and any defence built around them should stand up fairly well.

But problems persist further up the field, as they have always done in Mayo. Indeed, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Two points from play from a full-forward line in a fairly open game of football is not exactly a cause for optimism and the amount of turnovers in that area of the field, especially midway through the second-half, was notable.

There is not much coming off the bench either in terms of scoring forwards. Second-half substitute Stephen Coen – a defender/midfielder – scored the only goal of the game but the three natural forwards who came on failed to score at all. Cillian O’Connor’s profligacy in front of goal in the final 10 minutes was concerning, as was Aidan O’Shea’s performance in the full-forward line up to his 58th minute substitution.

It's extraordinary to think that Aidan has entered his 16th year in a Mayo senior jersey yet nobody can state with any great degree of conviction what his best position is. Before he became manager, Kevin McStay was adamant that O’Shea was a full-forward and he seems intent on persisting with that theory even though there is little by way of scoring statistics – other than the 2015 season – to support it. The truth is that Aidan has never possessed the ruthless finishing of someone like Kieran Donaghy, nor does he have the quick hands or spatial awareness of the former Kerry No 14.

It’s 10 years since Donaghy’s famous comeback in a Kerry jersey when he broke Mayo hearts in Croke Park and Limerick before scoring the crucial goal in the All-Ireland Final against Donegal. Donaghy was the same age that year as O’Shea is now. Readers may recall that at a critical moment in that 2014 All-Ireland Final, the Donegal goalkeeper Paul Durcan botched a short kickout and Donaghy finished the ball to the net in the clinical style of Colm Cooper or Clifford. Contrast that to the All-Ireland Final in 2021 when Aidan O’Shea found himself one-on-one with the Tyrone ‘keeper Niall Morgan and fluffed his lines. Big full-forwards need more than sheer physicality and Donaghy proved that time and again.

Therefore, it is very hard to make a case for O’Shea to be Mayo’s first-choice full-forward at the age of 34. Perhaps he might have done it a decade ago but I think that ship has sailed. He doesn’t even look like he wants to play in the role and his insistence on contesting the throw-ins at the start of each half suggests he would still like to be in the middle of the park.

The throw-in cameo is something that leaves me perplexed. Would it not make more sense to be in the goalmouth awaiting a pass should the actual Mayo midfielders – the ones selected by management – win the throw-in? If I was a Mayo midfielder, I’d be quite happy to contest my own throw-ins, thank you very much, rather than having the full-forward coming out and doing it for me. It is hard to imagine Darragh Ó Sé in his heyday stepping back to allow Donaghy to contest the throw-in for him.

Aidan O’Shea’s service to Mayo has been exemplary, and it is never easy to watch a player come to the end of his career, but his role in Championship 2024 will almost certainly be an impact sub – and what an impact he can have in the middle-third in the final quarter of crucial games. As for his recent role as a right-sided free-taker, hopefully that particular experiment ended last Saturday because free-takers – no more than full-forwards – are not known to emerge fully-formed in their mid-thirties. O’Shea’s willingness to take on responsibility is to be commended but if it’s not working it needs to be changed and there is little logic in a veteran taking frees when he never previously did it for club or county.

The Mayo management is now in the comfortable position where they have four points in the bag and victory over Kerry in less than a fortnight would all but secure their Division 1 status for another year. It is to be hoped that they will use the later games in the National League to try out some new formations in the full-forward line.

Do we have an obvious replacement at full-forward? No, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try and find one. Maybe we will have to adjust our style of play to accommodate a new full-forward and that is why we need to do it in the National League, and the sooner the better. If we’re nonplussed about winning the League then we should use it as a springboard for a championship campaign that will hopefully end more competitively than last year’s chastening at the hands of Dublin.

Four points from two games is better than most people would have hoped for at this stage of the National League. There are quite a few positives – notwithstanding our indifferent form for long periods on Saturday night – but until we figure out a strategy for scoring goals and points that doesn’t involve attack-minded defenders, then talk of All-Ireland titles will continue to be just that – talk. We might have four League points from two games but our full-forward line has only delivered two points in those same two games! You don’t need a crystal ball to tell you that there will be trouble ahead if that sort of dismal scoring rate continues.