Finalists must learn to control the chaos

The final quarter was chaotic. Beautifully chaotic. It was the kind of chaos that separates a great county final from a poor one – wild, unfiltered, full of noise and nerve. Every ball felt like a live fuse, every break like a small explosion.

“The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos,” Napoleon once reflected. “The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemy’s.” In many ways, there’s not a whole lot of difference between war and the closing stages of a match when the stakes are this high. Plans dissolve, discipline frays and instinct takes over.

But last Sunday afternoon in MacHale Park, neither Westport nor Ballina could tame what was developing around them. Neither side could control a game that had become pure disorder, a blur of scores and near-misses, where structure had been reduced to smoke. And so they’ll have to do it all again next weekend.

It was one of those finals that seemed to take on a life of its own. You could almost feel the noise thickening as the clock ticked down.

The chaos all began with Finbar McLaughlin’s two-pointer, a strike that didn’t so much open the final quarter as detonate it. The teams were level for the first time since the first score of the game. The noise rose, and for the first time all afternoon, you could sense that Ballina were rattled. Then came Niall Feeney’s black card moments later. From the resulting placed ball, Killian Kilkelly swung over another two-pointer, and in the space of a minute Westport had turned the tide of the afternoon.

Alas, momentum is like a stray sheepdog. It’s loyal for a while, then gone the moment you take your eye off it. By the time you’ve whistled for it, it’s already trying to herd someone else’s cattle. When Mikey Murray’s shot dropped short, it seemed fairly harmless until a Ballina hand redirected it to the net. Suddenly, the match was unrecognisable – structure had gone, logic had evaporated, players were moving on muscle memory alone. Scores flew in both directions: Westport answering with three of their own, Brian McDermott clipping a sensational two-pointer that looked like the winner, only for Frank Irwin to nail a two-pointer from a placed ball just before the whistle.

By then, it was barely football in the traditional sense. It was theatre, chaos with a scoreboard. You could sense that familiar Mayo madness creeping in, that inability to play a quiet ending. It was gloriously entertaining unless, of course, you were a manager trying to keep to a game plan.

It hadn’t always been that way. For 20 minutes after the restart, the game had hovered somewhere between order and upheaval. The game never quite caught fire, but you could smell the smoke. Westport began to find their rhythm, the ball moving with a little more conviction, the crowd rediscovering its voice. The gap shrank to two, and suddenly Ballina began to creak.

Pat Holmes went to his bench and asked for a lift. Pat Lambert arrived like a caffeine shot, while Kevin Keane introduced himself like an old tune rediscovered on the radio. Each landed the sort of point that does more than change a scoreboard – the scores injected belief into the underdogs. Westport grew in confidence.

Ballina still looked like the tidier outfit, but there’s a danger in tidiness when a game starts to fray. Their passing was neat, their shape intact, yet it all began to feel like maintenance rather than mastery. They were sweeping leaves in a storm – admirable, but hopeless. For the first time, Ballina’s poise began to look like hesitation, and hesitation is a dangerous habit in a game like this. The pitch of the afternoon was rising.

It was a far cry from the opening 30 minutes of football. For the entirety of the first-half, Ballina looked like the finished article. They were humming with certainty – crisp, economical, deliberate. Evan Regan was their compass, while David Clarke stood at the other end like an old lighthouse, steady and unblinking. When Eoghan McLaughlin burst through and shot straight at him within the opening minutes, Clarke didn’t dive or flinch; he simply planted his feet in the ground and swatted away the moment. Within seconds, Ballina were up the pitch and Mikey Murray was curling over a two-pointer that felt almost cruel. Ballina had sailed into the county final, and Westport still hadn’t scored.

When Lee Keegan finally got them on the board, the relief lasted only momentarily as he had to limp off, though Padraig O’Hora also followed him down the tunnel. The game was crying out for Keegan later, for that veteran’s instinct to lift the temperature when it cooled and cool it when it boiled. He’s the sort of player who knows when to take the sting out of a frenzy or pour a little petrol on it. But with Keegan off the pitch, the reigning champions smelled weakness and went for the throat. They moved the ball with purpose, every pass a little statement of intent. By half-time, they were four up and looking like a team with the game exactly where they wanted it.

But it never quite works out as expected in Mayo football. Westport trotted off the field at half-time looking beaten, but somewhere in that walk was the start of a revival.

Now they’ll have to go again. However, unless one of them learns to steady the ship when the sea turns wild, this final could just loop forever.

High-stakes games aren’t won by the prettiest football; they’re won by the team that stays calm when everything around them is burning.

Napoleon had a point about chaos. That said, he never said you shouldn’t embrace it. For chaos can be both embraced and controlled. The side that figures out how to master that madness this Saturday will be the side that lifts the Moclair Cup.