Consistency is Mayo’s key to clawing back the gap

That last of the club action finishes up in the next few weeks, with hope of a Lahardane MacHales run to an All-Ireland final at Croke Park in the air. But as one season reaches a conclusion, for Kevin McStay, his backroom team and the senior footballers of Mayo, they now have laser-like focus as the 2024 inter-county campaign gets ready for take-off.

Bar the tax liability issue that raised its head before the County Convention last month, it has been a relatively quiet time off the pitch for Mayo. That in itself has been a breath of fresh air considering we have been the source of much distractions over the past several years. Instead, some major managerial moves and returns dominated the media space, none more so than Mickey Harte’s controversial switch to Derry (has Joe Brolly calmed down yet?) and the sensational return of Jim McGuinness to Donegal. We can only hope that should Donegal and Mayo meet in another All-Ireland final, Jimmy ain’t winning any more matches.

But what about Mayo and where they sit in terms of the All-Ireland contenders? Did we all get carried away with the start of last year after they won another National League and was an All-Ireland quarter-final more or less where Mayo’s journey would reach its natural end? The answer is somewhere in between. One thing though, the ‘McStay Way’ in those early months was great to watch, albeit Division 1 victories were against Kerry, Tyrone, Roscommon and Donegal teams not playing anywhere near the levels you’d have expected of them come summertime.

But given how 2022 had panned out with big defeats to Kerry in the National League final and in the All-Ireland quarter-final as well after a first-round exit to Galway in Connacht, the general feeling in Mayo was one of being further away than ever before. So, coupled with Lee Keegan’s retirement at the start of last year and Oisin Mullin’s inevitable move to the AFL, it was important for McStay to get a feel-good factor back into Mayo quickly and the league provided the perfect platform.

Draws against Galway and Armagh were solid starts but the manner of a ten-point win over the All-Ireland champions Kerry got everyone talking. When they fired four goals past Tyrone in another convincing ten-point victory, Croke Park was on everyone’s mind.

The emergence of Jordan Flynn and Enda Hession as key cogs, coupled with Diarmuid O’Connor continuing to enhance his reputation as one of Mayo’s best ever players and Colm Reape’s rapid rise as a goalkeeper, saw Mayo playing with a confidence not seen throughout 2022.

Young stars such as Bob Tuohy, Sam Callinan and the relatively inexperienced Jack Coyne were also becoming part of a new-look Mayo side while at the other end of the spectrum Aidan O’Shea was playing his best football in years at full-forward, a position McStay had been vocal about being O’Shea’s most effective in his time as a pundit.

Surviving a scare in Roscommon and ending a long wait for a league win in Donegal meant Mayo’s place in Croke Park for the Division 1 final was secure, with a defeat to Monaghan in the final league game inconsequential.

The final against Galway was one to forget but you can never turn your nose up at a national title, especially given that the Tribesmen were desperate to end that wait for a win over Mayo in Croke Park. It didn’t happen for them, largely due to an inspired showing by Colm Reape as Mayo went into the championship full of confidence after a second league title in five years. Already McStay had delivered the second biggest trophy in Gaelic football just months into the job and expectations were through the roof that another visit to Croke Park for the ‘big one’ in July could happen.

A firm land on earth was delivered less a week later however, when Roscommon, who ironically beat Mayo in Castlebar in Championship 2019 after Mayo won the league title, repeated the trick in Connacht. An ambush always looked likely, especially given the rapid turnaround, and so it was that Mayo were handed ample time to prepare for a new-look All-Ireland Championship and an opening round clash against All-Ireland champions Kerry in Killarney, a place where the Kingdom had not lost since 1995 in the championship.

But spearheaded by Ryan O’Donoghue, Jordan Flynn, Aidan O’Shea, Jack Carney and the enigmatic James Carr, Kerry were battered and the five-point loss flattered them in the end. If you were trying to keep a lid on Mayo expectations from this point, there was not a hope of doing so. Unfortunately, Mayo themselves would close that lid in their next two group games.

They stumbled over the line against Louth in MacHale Park with the Wee County unlucky not to win in the end while the following game against Cork, in hindsight, was the beginning of the end. As sports editor Anthony Hennigan wrote in the opening line of his match report, “It didn’t get any more Mayo”.

Tommy Conroy’s goal had seen the Green and Red open up a six points gap on 57 minutes but that would be Mayo’s last score as Cork ran out three-point winners and any hopes and dreams that Mayo supporters harboured for 2023 were replaced with a harsh dose of reality.

Thankfully, from a Mayo perspective, Galway were not the team to completely end Mayo’s year as David McBrien’s goal in the preliminary quarter-final set up a mouthwatering Croke Park clash with Dublin but just like in 2019, the Dubs blew Mayo away in the second-half and were worth every bit of their twelve points victory on their way to reclaiming Sam Maguire later that summer.

The manner of the defeat will have left a sour taste in the mouth but overall, Kevin McStay would have been right to look back on ’23 as largely a positive year for Mayo. Of the starting 15 against Dublin, only Aidan O’Shea was left of the old guard who featured against the same opposition in the 2012 All-Ireland final, while Cillian O’Connor came off the bench as a new-look Mayo took shape.

The subsequent departures of Kevin McLoughlin and Jason Doherty have seen another two of the old guard depart but Carney, Coyne, Flynn, Callinan, McBrien, O’Donoghue, Paddy Durcan and Tommy Conroy form a spine that on its day can match anyone in the country. That ‘day’ was seen in Killarney and also in beating Galway twice in the space of a couple of months. The next task is to find that consistency and to try a claw back the gap that has developed between themselves and the big two in Dublin and Kerry.

Time will tell whether they can.