Burning ambitions, burning bridges and another year to wonder

Bertrand Russell wrote, “The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.” I confess I crossed a few I shouldn’t have and likewise burned a few I should have crossed, but I digress.

Mayo. What next? Many bridges built, forded and a few burned. Many claims to higher status thrown out. Top two, or four, is it now top eight? In part, we are, as The Eagles sang, the perfect Hotel California trope – inside paradise but never quite finding satisfaction. The closer we come, the further we drift. We have checked in but maybe we need to get out for a while, decamp, rebuild, deep clean the entire project. But we cannot. I will explain why further on down the line.

The All-Stars were handed out on Friday night with not a single player from the top three finishers in NFL Division One (Mayo, Galway and Roscommon) selected. Which leads us to the importance of the league. Online comment since our championship demise the season gone by, saw the league as how a real ale drinker sees a pint of shandy: sweet and quickly piddled away. And yet the Kerry and Dublin teams of between 2011 and ’23 attached league titles to All-Irelands like happy twins. We can do one but leave no energy for the other, hence a quick rush to decry the league because we get caught, mainly by the Rossies in the shark-infested waters of championship football.

Look at the last six winners of the Premier League in England, five for Manchester City with four League Cups thrown in and a double for Liverpool, with Manchester United the only interloper with a single League Cup. Great teams scent silver.

Mayo, the one-time league specialists, now welcome the league title like a bad Covid result, which suggests our armoury lacks the right ammunition. This is year two of the current managerial team. Goodwill certainly existed on the appointment of Kevin McStay; articulate, a proven manager at both club and county and clued into the modern game via his RTÉ work. For many years I championed the cause of Kevin to assume Mayo and for a short while we, or at least I, occasionally emailed him suggestions, support and good wishes. The gentleman he is, he often replied. And then I set fire to a bridge: I opined after Mayo beat the Rossies in the 2017 replay that allowing the cameras into the Primrose and Blue dressing-room might not have been the smartest idea. It’s just the way I am.

But football is all about opinion and so we head to another bridge. Last season, certainly towards the end, we seemed to manage by collective. The worthy experiment of playing a Libro six was worth a punt. Indeed I suggest it should have been persevered with. Someone championed that style and others uncoupled it at the sharp end of the championship. We fell into the Dublin blades but in truth the Roscommon, Louth and Cork games prepared us. In the end we resembled an each-way bet. Were we singular in manager or were we operating a collective?

An amber light flashed early for me. A dogged point gained against the head at home to Galway in the league was contrasted with a point lost up in Armagh. I was on the road for that match but stopped for a bit of grub. On entering the hotel Mayo were five ahead with time just about up. I ordered a BLT and Lucozade with ice. In the four minutes of added time Armagh nailed four points just as the iced drink arrived. The manager, in his after-match interview, saw it as a point gained. Really? I wanted to hear annoyance, hurt, anger and this won’t happen again. Mayo and healthy leads tend to herald unhealthy habits; our inability to see out a match was the defining trait of the season gone by.

The collapse against Dublin was stunning. We had the blueprint in our possession. League champions in 2019, playing Dublin in a semi-final, healthy first-half, total collapse in the second… surely this couldn’t happen to the 2023 league champions against the same opponents. It did. Did anyone suggest at half-time: “Lads, let’s flood the defence for the next fifteen minutes, silence the Hill, soak the attacks… no need to go in for the throw-in Aidan, we’ll back one of the midfielders. You go into 14 and we will pump it in. This isn’t going to 2019,” kind of thing? Well, it was 2019. With interest. Awful. Draining. Killer.

So, we face ahead again. I read a football book recently. It was by Neil Cotter and titled ‘The Chaos Years’. I recommend it. It described the pit Dublin dragged themselves out from between 1995 and 2011. Sobering. It wasn’t a conveyor belt of cash that made Dublin, it was brutal endeavour, fallouts, cliques and stupidity and the willingness to drag those that wanted it badly enough to the Bull Wall on a shitty 6am November morning. Dr Pat Duggan, ex-Kilmacud Crokes and Dublin, once wrote about what makes up a county panel. He referenced the stalwarts, leaders and then the guys there for the gear and buzz. Pat Gilroy spent three seasons fine-tuning and combing out the buzz boys, deadwood and so-called superstars. It wasn’t pretty but it got them on that first rung. The 2011 All-Ireland winning team morphed into seven new players two years later for their 2013 win. Ruthless was the calling card. It was about Dublin first. The rest was about the support cast.

We aren’t Dublin but let’s go back to the roots again. The 2008 All-Ireland junior-winning Dublin team (they beat Roscommon) hosted Mick Fitzsimons, Darren Daly, Jonny Cooper, Denis Bastick and Eoghan O’Gara who would collect a rough total of 33 All-Ireland senior medals. The gangly right corner-back on that 2008 junior team holds nine big shiny senior medals. What we do is produce good footballers, what we don’t do is max their best. We need to improve on this. 

Two World Cup winning managers, 57 years apart, had this in common. Alf Ramsey had in his 1966 World Cup winning team Jack Charlton at centre-half. Jack was 29 when he made his England debut. Years later he smugly thanked Ramsey for picking the then best centre-half to which Ramsey curtly replied to Jack by stating he wasn’t the best centre-half, merely the ‘right centre-half’. When Jean Kleyn thanked Rassie Erasmus for putting him in the direction of a rugby World Cup winners medal recently, Erasmus replied ‘It wasn’t about the best player but the right player.’ Do we always pick the ‘right player’? Have we a tendency to pick the best lad for each individual position but not necessarily the right player for the team? Alan Mullery and a host of others were the better soccer players than Nobby Stiles in 1966 but Nobby, tooth-gaped and bald, was the right player. 

Identifying the right player as opposed to the best player is an art. Can we do it? Would we haul off, like the Springboks did, Manie Libbok after 32 minutes and drop him entirely from the final squad? Would we haul off most of the forwards in the 45th minute like the Springboks did when England were gaining the upper hand? Winners win. Standing, status and place within the herd doesn’t count with winners. You’re literally there to serve. Have we that ruthlessness?

Another bridge going up in flames here. This current iteration of Mayo appears, to me, as a team that has no jeopardy attached to it. For a number of years, certain positions and squad places have been set in stone, I don’t smell hunger. I see a few there for the buzz and gear. For others it’s a profile thing. Lads retire, few if any are dropped. Unfortunately, because the county seems to take precedence, all current views on club football, especially senior, paint a drab picture, with very few tyros appearing to challenge. We seem to promote from within the U20/17 system thus losing the late developer, the Mick Fitzsimmons, Bastick, Daly or O’Gara from the squad. Numbers 21 to whatever within the county senior team see little competitive action other than three senior club matches. Stagnation can set in.

Ironically, I referred to it in my opening paragraph, we are also almost unable to get off the treadmill due to the current way that Sam Maguire is contested. In the old days championship was straight knock out, then back door. The National League served a different function, a few matches in autumn with the remainder the following year. Mayo could do with a year or two in dry dock, refitting and renewing. The final version of what Croke Park really is driving to, an elite inter-county competition for the top 16, has to be decanted slowly to prevent awkward provincial councils scuppering their domain. So, in essence, on this journey, the value of the league is sacrificed. Once you finish between number one in Division One and stay out of the bottom three in Division Two you are guaranteed championship Sam Maguire football.

So with that in mind this next season, starting in January, teams who want Sam will pace their journey. They need to be fresh come June and peaking at the end of it. Technically, Mayo could lose their seven league matches, beat New York, lose to the Rossies in the Connacht championship, win a single group game and draw one in the All-Ireland group stage and make a preliminary quarter-final. And the following season, as long as they stay out of the bottom three in Division Two, Mayo could repeat the dose. Would making the last twelve each season be seen as a success? This current championship format suits Croke Park because teams like Mayo with big followings will ring the tills.

So, what’s for us this year then? We certainly won’t lose every league match, but I expect us to approach them differently. Will the FBD League see the bones of the first fifteen laid down with a few tweaks? Will we do an Andy Farrell on it when he took over Ireland, point out the need for two men in every position, the need to win games differently, and all pointed out to the supporters from the off? Will we persist with getting the non-midfielder going in for the throw-in? Will we develop a system that throws up regular scorers? Will we develop a system that stops teams clawing back our leads with ten minutes to go? Will we put the right players in the right positions? Will we play the players in their best positions? Both the last two questions are not the same, there is a subtle difference.

To me, and I’m in the minority here, I see a cosiness within the current set-up, a super club side, a certainty of some lads that their position and status is safe. I don’t see anger, bad, I don’t see fear that someone is actually fighting for a spot. The squad needs deep changing, a shake-up, a moving on of lads scarred with too many big-day losses. Young leaders need to step forward and thrive from taller older trees. We tend to look at Flynn, Conroy, O’Donoghue as young. Some of those lads have played in two All-Ireland senior finals. Their time has come. They are no longer the younger lads, they need releasing into the leadership class on their own, free from past practitioners. Mayo belongs to us all. Those charged with its football across all facets of the game have one duty, play the most ruthless hand you have. Let’s see it.

I read a piece in the national press very recently about ex-Mayo player Tommy O’Malley. I recall him playing, he deserved a hell of a lot more, a top player. Tommy, 73, sees Mayo winning an All-Ireland soon. He sees all the ingredients there. Tommy would know. Played at the highest level and managed pretty high too. I’m 71 and I don’t see what Tommy sees. Maybe that’s what makes sport that great, great elixir it is, opinion and another bridge torched. One thing for certain is this, if we land on the same perch as we did last season, then the natives will be restless.