Don’t let the narrative fool you. This wasn’t a Mayo-like performance

It’s not playing to the gallery – well, okay, it is, but it’s still true – to say that the All-Ireland senior football championship is a little less colourful today than it was before the last round of group games at the weekend.

Some of that is attributable to Monday morning’s draw, which threw up one intriguing clash between Galway and Down, and three other games where it’s difficult to visualise an upset, even in this year of upsets and egalitarianism. Sure, the payoff will be in the quarter-finals where it’s looking more and more likely that every battle will be a heavyweight contest, but with a mere four weekends of intercounty adult football remaining, it’s a pity for one of them to be so underwhelming.

For a moment, imagine instead that Ciarán Moore heard the hooter in Dr Hyde Park and simply knocked the ball out over the sideline to take the draw that confirmed his team in second place in the group.

Mathematically, it was the correct thing to do, as in the greater scheme of things, Donegal had nothing to gain from the St Eunan’s man choosing to drive for goal and kick a score, while if he was turned over, there was a risk of Mayo winning the game, which would have put Donegal on the road this coming weekend.

If it was Mayo and not Cavan who were down to go to Killarney this weekend, that would be the fixture that everyone would be talking about. Even aside from the historical context, which is significant in its own right, a Mayo team on the back of two positive results against elite opposition, travelling to take on a Kerry team that clearly is less than the sum of its parts would be must-see championship football.

Cavan’s bid to deliver the greatest comeback since Lazarus (given their recent form) doesn’t pass the smell test the same way.

Within this county however, the welfare of the wider championship is nowhere near as much of a concern as the basic fact that for the first time since 2018 and ‘Newbridge or Nowhere’, Mayo are not one of the last twelve teams standing in the race for Sam Maguire. And the first step in addressing that concern has to start with that most fundamental of questions – why?

At the executive level, where any post-mortem must start, the first step is to give Kevin McStay sufficient time to overcome his recent health issues, and then the conversation can begin.

A significant number of talking points will arise. 2025 saw Mayo win a first Connacht U20 title in seven years, and when the job at hand is to replace a truly golden generation of players, that is a limitation.

Mayo’s struggle to embrace the new game is a factor as well. The two-point shooting is the most obvious symptom, and Sunday’s game saw that come to the fore as well. With a decent breeze behind them in the first-half, Mayo took a mere three shots from outside the arc, failing to split the uprights on any of the three. This included ten minutes when Mayo had the advantage of a Donegal black card, or effectively an 11 v 10 attacking edge. 12 v 11 was so much of an advantage that they had to change the rules, yet Mayo struggled to make 11 v 10 count.

The danger with this process however is that the old saying that ‘when you are known as an early riser, you can lie in bed all day’ starts to apply.

As the second-half unfolded, and Mayo rallied from three points down while playing into the wind, and then again when Donegal responded to David McBrien’s goal with 0-4 unanswered and Mayo had to climb the mountain once more, you didn’t have to cock your ears too much to hear people uttering old tropes like “that’s Mayo for you, have to do it the hard way”.

And while there’s some grain of truth in that perhaps, a huge part of the problem was that in a lot of ways, this wasn’t a very Mayo-like performance. But that got missed in the post-match discussion.

No county in Ireland is more celebrated for their ability to drive forward from the back and score from all over the pitch, yet by half-time, it was Donegal that had four backs on the scoresheet. Even by the final whistle, Donnacha McHugh’s first-half point and McBrien’s goal were the only scores from any non-forward on the Mayo side.

All across Ireland, footballers and supporters are envious of the deep connection between Mayo players and fans. Mayo people have responded to a culture of dying with boots on, of seizing the initiative and trying to make things happen, and yet Donegal won more of those moments on Sunday. After McHugh’s departure through injury, McBrien’s battle with Michael Murphy was a totemic physical contest and the Ballaghaderreen man was the ideal foil for a player that carries the hopes of his county, but Murphy never stopped looking to make big plays either, and his second-half points from play, not to mention his incredible kickout catch when the pressure was on and his block on Matthew Ruane, were huge moments.

So too were Dáire Ó Baoill’s two-pointer after the goal, Shaun Patton’s double save, and of course Moore’s winner. Donegal had the majority of the crowd, and the players played up to that.

Mayo had their moments too. Jack Coyne and Colm Reape combining to prevent Paddy McBrearty from scoring a certain goal, Conal Dawson shaking off a poor first-half to hit those two crunch scores after half-time, and of course there was Fergal Boland’s score – but all too often, there were other moments where Mayo players ducked the responsibility. Look at the build up to Ryan O’Donoghue’s failed two-point effort in the first-half, or Donnacha McHugh’s point not long after. The issue is not whether or not the ball went over the bar at the end, but how better shooting chances were passed up by players who didn’t want to take them on.

If any of that reads like a calling out of the character or bravery of certain players, it shouldn’t. Mayo’s footballing identity, not to mention the character of the players involved, has been tried and tested before. But just as empires decline slowly, and then suddenly, this championship has now seen two games (versus Galway and Donegal) where Mayo put themselves in a position to get the result they needed, only to be undone by their failure to come up with the big plays when the stage was set. Against Cavan in Castlebar, it was like watching Arkle or Tiger Roll try dressage, so constrained was the performance.

There’s an odd sort of comfort to be taken from leaning on old crutches, such as “that’s Mayo for you”. Ciarán Moore’s winner fit perfectly into the narrative of glorious failure against more streetwise opposition, but more than that lurks beneath the surface. At a time when non-football distractions have never been more of an issue for Mayo GAA, it would be all too easy for no-one to look too deeply, and that’s the real threat.