High stakes Sunday as Mayo seek first points
Mayo manager Kevin McStay with his assistant Stephen Rochford during the defeat to Galway last Sunday week in Division 1 of the Allianz Football League. Picture: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
What tradition tells us is quite an even rivalry has seen the balance tilt towards Tyrone in recent years.
The visitors to Castlebar for next Sunday’s Division 1 encounter have beaten Mayo fourteen times in the National Football League and lost twelve times. The swing has all happened inside the past seven years during which time Tyrone have won four of the six league games between the counties. Add in the 2021 All-Ireland SFC Final triumph of the Red Hands and Mayo have been playing second fiddle to the Ulster outfit more often than they should be comfortable with.
The most stark statistic, however, is that out of the entire 17 National Football League matches where Mayo have enjoyed the home advantage against Tyrone, Mayo have won only five compared to Tyrone’s six, the other six all ending in draws.
One positive that the Green and Red might take into this Round 3 fixture however, is just how dominant they were when Tyrone last they visited MacHale Park in 2023. But the circumstances around Mayo’s 4-10 to 0-12 victory that Saturday night were very different; Kevin McStay was only a couple of games into his tenure as Mayo boss so he – and his players – were keen to lay some early markers whereas Tyrone had entered something of a spiral ever since lifting Sam Maguire at Mayo’s expense in ’21.
This time they travel under the new management of Malachy O’Rourke. He’s a serious operator. Success follows O’Rourke like seagulls after a trawler. As a club manager, O’Rourke guided The Loup to a first Derry SFC title in 68 years and a first Ulster title, Errigal Ciarán and Cavan Gaels won Tyrone and Cavan senior championships under his watch and most recently, Glen claimed three consecutive Derry SFC titles having never won one until O’Rourke’s arrival as manager – and buttressed that with two Ulsters and the Holy Grail, the Andy Merrigan Cup, as 2024 All-Ireland SFC champions.
And then there is county.
In his first year in charge of Fermanagh (2007), O’Rourke steered his native team to a first Ulster SFC final in 26 years. Likewise, Monaghan won their first Ulster SFC in 25 years in 2013, the first year of O’Rourke’s tenure as Farney boss in which he also saw them promoted from NFL Division 3 to Division 1 in successive seasons.
Tyrone, then, are of the hope it’s a case of when, not if, they begin to see the fruits of Malachy O’Rourke’s labour too.
Kevin McStay is at an entirely different point in the road. The league title annexed during his maiden season in ’23 remains the only silverware Mayo have won since their last Connacht SFC crown in 2021 which has left lifting the Nestor Cup this year feeling like a minimum requirement. The optics of entering the championship as a team relegated from Division 1 would not be good, which is why next Sunday’s match has been identified as must-win; to be pointless after three rounds, with an away game against All-Ireland champions Armagh and a home fixture against Kerry to follow in rounds four and five, would leave the Green and Red the hottest of contenders for the drop.
Tyrone were actually responsible for Mayo’s last relegation, winning a high-scoring final round game during the Covid lockdown in 2020, in what was Mickey Harte’s last season in charge, but James Horan still managed to lead Mayo to that year’s All-Ireland SFC final, and the 2021 final also despite playing Division 2 football.
The expected return of some survivors of that last All-Ireland final appearance – take your pick from Aidan O’Shea, Jordan Flynn and Tommy Conroy – and possibly Jack Carney, will instill hope into supporters that a first win of 2025 is within reach. But Mayo’s failings to date, it could be argued, have been as much due to poor adaptation to the new playing rules as because of absent personnel. That Galway, who beat Mayo by 10 points last time out, have scored eleven two-point scores across the first two rounds compared to Mayo’s two, is only one example to support the charge.
At whose expense any Mayo changes come will be a source of debate in the coming days. Newcomers like Davitt Neary and Conor Reid and the heretofore underused Paul Towey have been among the side’s better performers while further game-time is also required if Sean Morahan and Cian McHale, for example, are to indicate that they might also have something to offer the team come championship time. Sam Callinan’s schedule has been chock-a-block with UCD’s advance to the Sigerson Cup final so you wonder, too, if Kevin McStay may instead be tempted to offer a start to Eoin O’Donoghue at corner-back.
It would certainly be a fiery reintroduction to senior football for the Belmullet man if, as suspected, Tyrone welcome the Canavan brothers, Darragh and Ruairí back into the fold on Sunday, now that they’ve had three weeks to mull over Errigal Ciarán’s near miss in the All-Ireland senior club final. Both players visited the Mater Hospital for assessments on head injuries after the defeat to Cuala but were discharged within hours.
Darragh scored 1-3 from play and a pointed free as well, in Tyrone’s 1-15 to 1-11 win against Mayo in Omagh last year, and his side missed his influence badly in their loss to Armagh last Saturday week, where they trailed by fourteen points at half-time before narrowing their arrears to seven points by full-time. Some of the old guard were on show, the likes of Frank Burns, Brian Kennedy, Ciaran McGeary, Mattie Donnelly and Darren McCurry (who kicked 0-8 when sprung from the bench against Mayo last season) but there’s obviously a fragility there at present that Mayo will hope to exploit.
It's time to make home an advantage.
