Little chance of ambush as Mayo set for Carrick cruise
Leitrim's Shane Quinn in a battle with Tommy Conroy of Mayo during the 2021 Connacht SFC semi-final in MacHale Park, Castlebar. Picture: INPHO/Tommy Dickson
Most aficionados of football will have no difficulty in providing the year of Mayo’s last senior defeat to Leitrim. The likelihood, however, is that the majority will be right for the wrong reason. Because while 1994 remains famous for Leitrim’s slaying of the Jack O’Shea-managed Mayo to win what remains the last time the Wild Rose County lifted the Nestor Cup, most will have forgotten it was only the first of two times that John O’Mahony’s ‘minnows’ got the better of his native county that year.
Mayo’s annus horribilis under O’Shea – they had also won just one out of seven National Football League Division 1 games in the 1993/94 season – saw the former Kerry footballer make way as manager for Anthony Egan. But there was no bounce under the Bonniconlon man either, with Mayo losing all four of their pre-Christmas matches in the 1994-95 Division 2 campaign. The fourth, on November 27, 1994 was in Charlestown’s Fr O’Hara Park, meaning John O’Mahony hadn’t far to travel from his Ballaghaderreen home to lead his Leitrim team into battle against the Green and Red.
Mayo, in their previous home game, had lost by four points to Louth so that the defending Connacht champions also beat them, 0-13 to 1-7, didn’t come as much of a surprise, even if Leitrim were only a few weeks home from a team holiday to New York and Connecticut where they had been treated like kings by the diaspora for their historic championship exploits earlier in the year.
What might also be forgotten by a lot of people is that the trainer of that particular Mayo senior football team managed by Egan was a 32-year-old Kevin McStay. He’ll be hoping that remains the last time Leitrim have had Mayo’s number, when he takes the 2025 version to Avant Money Páirc Seán Mac Diarmada in Carrick-on-Shannon next Saturday for the Connacht SFC semi-final.
Coincidence or not that it was played on his home pitch, but John Casey made his National Football League debut for Mayo in that November ’94 defeat, albeit the Charlestown man already had two championship appearances as a substitute under his belt, including the earlier Connacht SFC final loss to Leitrim. Casey was one of seven Mayo players used that day who would go on to feature in the All-Ireland SFC finals of 1996 and ’97, yet by the end of that 94/95 league the team had amassed just one point out of a possible fourteen and had a scoring difference of minus 38. The one point earned came at home to Galway, with whom they had drawn 0-9 apiece, yet when championship came around the Tribesmen hammered Mayo 0-17 to 1-7 at Tuam Stadium.
Times, however, are very different now. Beaten in the final maybe, but Mayo topped this season’s Division 1 standings after seven rounds while Leitrim were relegated to Division 4 without a single point to their name. The odds of an upset when the sides meet at the weekend are unlikely to have ever been greater.
And yet it’s worth remembering too that in 2006, when Mayo finished atop of Division 1A ahead of the likes of Kerry, Dublin and defending All-Ireland champions Tyrone, while Leitrim duked it out against the likes of London, Longford and Carlow, when it came to the sides meeting in Carrick-on-Shannon in that year’s Connacht SFC semi-final, Mayo only managed to sneak through by the very narrowest of margins, 1-10 to 1-9. Three weeks later and Mickey Moran’s men were provincial champions and by season’s end were All-Ireland finalists.
That’s why it will be impossible to get any sort of a read on Kevin McStay’s team, no matter the margin of their victory next Saturday.
What is known, however, is that even allowing for old money scoring i.e. if the 2-17 that Sligo tallied against Mayo in the Connacht quarter-final became 2-15 by removal of two-point scores, the last time the Green and Red had conceded as much in a senior championship match at home – Connacht or All-Ireland series – was all the way back in 1979 against a Roscommon team in the midst of winning four Connacht titles in-a-row.
Some will submit this season’s new rules as part-reason for that – and there is no doubt but that scoring averages are higher thus far because of the changes that have been made – but then consider the 2-20 scored against Sligo, and Mayo bettered or equalled that in home championship matches on no fewer than five occasions since ’79, most emphatically the last time they played Leitrim (5-20 in 2021) but also in 2009 when posting 3-18 against Roscommon.
Leitrim are unlikely to be equipped to expose any repeat of what Kevin McStay referred to as the ‘patchiness’ of Mayo’s display against Sligo, highlighted by ‘cheap’ turnovers and a lack of rhythm to their play, but Steven Poacher’s team may look to test the inexperience of some Mayo players should, as has been suggested, McStay use the opportunity to rest key personnel in favour of further blooding the likes of Dylan Thornton, Davitt Neary, Fenton Kelly, Sean Morahan, Conor Reid, Niall Coggins, goalkeeper Adrian Phillips and even Shairoze Akram, who has been a constant in the panel all season without a minute of competitive game-time to his name. Frank Irwin, who sat out the Sligo game, enjoyed an impressive league but is still waiting to make his championship debut.
Diarmuid O’Connor has made a welcome return from injury and would benefit from starting his first game of 2025 having made five appearances off the bench this year, with all eyes still on the match-day panel to see if either or both Paddy Durcan and Tommy Conroy are yet fit to make their seasonal bows.
