Mayo defy the odds to turn tables on Tyrone

Crisis. What crisis?

A week that began with Mayo making headlines for unfortunate off-the-pitch reasons, has ended with the senior footballers doing what they do best – upsetting the applecart.

A sobering defeat at home to Cavan in the first round of the All-Ireland SFC saw their odds to win Sam Maguire extend to 100/1. On Saturday evening they visited Omagh and served up a seven points beating of Tyrone.

The small but vocal travelling support were treated to a heartening display that resulted in a 2-17 to 1-13 win for a Mayo team that paid a fitting tribute to manager Kevin McStay, who five days earlier had stepped aside from his position on health grounds.

In his absence, assistant manager Stephen Rochford handed first championship starts to Conal Dawson and Sean Morahan, and first starts of the summer to Castlebar Mitchels teammates Paddy Durcan and Bob Tuohy, and their impact couldn’t have been much more emphatic.

If Dawson seemed an unlikely source of two first-half points, his Westport clubmate Rory Brickenden was even more so, but together with a Darren McHale goal on the stroke of half-time, that contributed to Mayo leading by eight points at half-time, 1-9 to 0-4, with the wind advantage still to come.

McHale’s goal came after Tyrone goalkeeper Niall Morgan flapped at a Bob Tuohy delivery, but when Darragh Canavan raised green for the hosts inside ten minutes of the restart, it ignited something much better from Malachy O’Rourke’s side. Canavan and Darran McCurry kicked two points apiece and there was a two-pointer free by Morgan, as the Ulster outfit reduced Mayo’s lead to just one point by the end of the third quarter.

The visitors, though, were ravenous all evening in competing for the hard and dirty ball around the middle third, and also received a huge injection off the bench, in particular from Davitt Neary. The Breaffy attacker, who had been named to start, had a telling hand in Paddy Durcan’s third point of the game and was also fouled off which Ryan O’Donoghue struck 1-1, the goal in the 62nd minute wrong-footing Morgan from the penalty spot.

With Aidan O’Shea and Jack Coyne scoring the game’s final points, Mayo had nine different scorers on a memorable evening in Healy Park.

A sobering thought however, is that should they lose to Donegal in two weeks’ time, and Tyrone beat Cavan, then they will exit the championship. But beat Donegal and the Green and Red would top the group and advance directly to the quarter-finals.

Either outcome feels equally possible. That’s just Mayo’s way.

See Tuesday’s Western People for full coverage.