Hard calls are inevitable for Andy
Mayo manager Andy Moran issues instruction to his team during last Sunday's FBD Connacht SFL Final against Galway. Picture: INPHO/Andrew Paton
After a tough Serie A season, Italy’s 1982 World Cup manager, the wily Enzo Bearzot, realised that the Spanish summer heat would flog his players in the forthcoming finals if he went from the starting gun with them. That particular World Cup was broken into a first round involving four teams in each group with the top two going through to round two. The second round was reduced to four groups with three teams, with only a single team making the semi-final.
Beatzot, a calm pipe smoking suit wearing guy who looked as if he walked out of one of Milan’s fashion houses, knew how to prep his team. Ignoring the press and clamour back home, his team paced themselves as the Plains of Spain roasted that summer. They failed to win a single match in their group, drawing all three matches, scraping through ahead of Cameroon in second place by virtue of their goal difference over three matches – 2-2 to Cameroon’s 1-1. The Italian press went ballistic.
Three points, two goals, didn’t sit well when compared to Brazil who set fire to the tournament by winning all three matches in style from the off, 10 goals scored and two conceded. Socrates, Zico, Falcao, Eder, Júnior and Oscar were amongst their stellar choir. Even England won their three matches with a 6-1 ratio. However, the wily Bearzot had his players believing. A clever tactician but also like Celtic’s Stein, Holland’s Rinus Michels and United’s Ferguson, he also knew when to trust and empower the players on the pitch. He didn’t pick the best player. He picked the right player.
Stage two saw Italy grouped with Brazil and Argentina. The original Group of Death from which only one emerged. Brazil were the samba boys of that glorious summer and three times world champions already. Argentina were the reigning champions with the brooding young Maradona moodily in the team. Italy were to be the salami in the South American sandwich – only it didn’t happen. Both having beaten a sour Argentina, their meeting was in essence a quarter-final save Brazil had an advantage. They needed only a draw due to their superior goal difference. Italy had to bet the house. They did, 3-2 as Brazil’s legs melted in the closing stages.
Italy beat everyone’s other favourite team that year, Poland, 3-0 in the semi-final. Poland had topped Italy’s earlier group scoring five times and conceding a single goal. But when the jeopardy came into it, as both Argentina and Brazil found out, Bearzot had them outwitted. They won the final against West Germany easier than the 3-1 score indicated.
Bearzot had learned from the past, particularly the 1978 finals in Argentina where his expansive team were outwitted by Holland. He wasn’t looking to the future in 1986. All that mattered was the present, 1982, that tournament and his team. He gave a masterclass.
What has this to do with Mayo? Nothing, maybe. Or maybe everything.
This is what I expect Mayo to do. The new manager has to ‘prove’ himself to the followers and team. The team has to ‘prove’ themselves to the new manager. It’s almost a vicious cycle. James Horan, on his second coming in 2019, won an improbable league but bombed in the championship that season. Kevin McStay flew out of the blocks in 2023, also winning a league title, but trod championship water for three seasons. So Mayo will this spring target points to stay in Division 1 of the National Football League, lads will bust a gut to impress Andy Moran and the cycle will continue. Who knows what after but the indications of the last four seasons are not great.
Let’s invert the entire process. Forget about Division 1; you can actually drop down as far as three off the bottom of Division 2 and still be guaranteed championship football. Why not build and deepen a solid panel during this league? Road-test new ideas. Kerry ways or Donegal ways are perhaps not our way. Let’s do new. Who cares if we drop a division if we unearth a team.
Similarly, with the Connacht championship, assuming the boss avoids the London banana skin (otherwise becoming the first manager to lose to both New York and London), even if we beat Roscommon next time out, odds are that Padraig Joyce will complete a five in-a-row Connacht sequence. But if we have honed and hardened some greenhorns, weeded out what we don’t need, then we advance to what actually matters. Mayo’s target this coming season should be from the preliminary quarter-final onwards, knockout football. Nothing else matters.
We have bloomed and blossomed like Japanese cherry blossoms in winter and spring too often only to be blown away on a stormy summer’s day. Let’s rip up the script. Let’s be bold. Aping the others turns us into monkeys. We are better than that.
Listening to Morrissey and Johnny Maher of the Smiths give their version of Moz’s underrated song ‘My Hurling Days Are Done’, I think about the departure of Donegal’s Paddy McBrearty and of Cork’s Patrick Horgan, who went after eighteen seasons minus his Celtic cross. Dublin’s Brian Fenton stepped away at his very peak and has decided to stay gone. Michael Murphy has come back for a second season after departing three seasons ago – I’m not sure, his legs looked tired the longer the Meath semi-final lasted and in the All-Ireland final his impact was minimal. Mayo has reversed the trend, attracting back quite a few players who seemed gone and holding on to a few that have massive mileage on the clock. I hope it works out. Morrissey sang:
That was Brian Cody’s gift, when to call time on the careers of greats like Tommy Walsh, Jackie Tyrell and Henry The Great. Our manager will find he too has that dilemma to face. Managers like Boylan and Gilroy didn’t like doing it but did it because they had to. That’s the grain of sand that tilts the scale or puts a manager on the out tray.
