Mayo football doesn't need a messiah

There was nothing inevitable about Tipperary’s recent All-Ireland title. No early signs of a juggernaut. No whispers from the training grounds. No panicked bookies slashing odds. Twelve months earlier, they’d limped out of the Munster championship like a band packing up before the headline act. They weren’t unlucky; they were ordinary. Unusually so.

But something shifted in the off-season. They came back harder, sharper, hungrier. You could see it in small things and how they hunted hooks and tackles in the league, how they tore into the Munster championship like the world was against them. They didn’t start 2025 as champions. They built towards it, one session, one match, one week at a time.

There’s a lesson in that for Mayo, who now find themselves searching once again for the man who might finally take them beyond the edge of greatness. Because what Tipperary did wasn’t a miracle. It wasn’t born of genius or luck. They've left a blueprint for others to follow.

And in a county like Mayo - with its raw materials, its bottomless well of ambition and its obsession dressed up as patience - the right appointment could spark something just as steady, if not seismic. Their 2025 campaign didn’t collapse. It just faded. It was a year that never caught fire. It simply smouldered. Now comes the next phase, the one where committees meet and names are whispered and hopes are projected onto whoever ends up in the Bainisteoir bib.

If Tipperary taught us anything this year, it’s that transformation doesn’t always require a revolution - just the right man with an idea and a clear run at it. For Mayo, that search begins again now.

Still, when you strip everything back, two criteria seem to matter more than the rest.

You have to go back to John O’Mahony in 1998 for the last time a senior intercounty manager won an All-Ireland without having previously done so either as a player, or with a club or underage side. Since then, success hasn’t come from nowhere. It’s come from track records. Managers who’ve been in the fire and have come out unscathed know how to keep the walls from closing in. They know what a winning week feels like.

That’s why Austin O’Malley earns attention. He led Cuala to All-Ireland glory. He’s proven. But he’s also based in Dublin, and nobody is quite sure how interested he is or how feasible it would be for him to take the reins.

Which leads us to the second test.

Intercounty football now happens in the margins. It’s shaped by who turns up early, who stays late, who picks up the phone on a Wednesday and says, “Come in for a chat.” Proximity isn’t everything, but it helps. Being based in the county means you’re in the rhythm of it all the time.

Those hours, the informal ones, add up. And in a sport where the difference between success and heartbreak is a single dropped ball or missed tackle, the manager who spends more time with his players doesn’t just build a team. He builds trust and momentum. So, the ideal candidate should be Mayo-based. Right now, no candidate ticks both boxes. Nobody obvious. Nobody perfect. But there is one man, mentioned rarely and often too quietly, who comes close. And maybe that’s the kind of appointment Mayo needs right now.

Sean Deane knows the county, the game and the weather. And if Mayo football is about anything, it’s surviving all three. During his time with the Mayo minors, he did what only looks easy in hindsight - he won back-to-back Connacht titles, and brought that group all the way to an All-Ireland final. The football was sharp and modern, and it was clear that his players weren't afraid to take a chance. They played like a team that trusted both the plan and the man giving it. You couldn’t always say that about other Mayo sides.

He stepped away following the 2023 season after his term came to an end And like many before him, he discovered that time away from the sideline can feel long enough. The sabbatical didn’t last - like every Mayo man who swore off the pints in January and was back on the sauce by Nollaig na mBan. He was back with Breaffy midway through 2024, recently guiding a team that had been filed under past their best to a league title.

Deane doesn’t come with an aura. But he does come with an address in Mayo, a feel for how things work and a track record that suggests he gets more out of a team than the spec sheet might predict. He’s not the perfect candidate. But he’s close enough to start a conversation.

Mayo doesn’t need a messiah - the county has been down that road before. What they need now might be someone who knows how to read the room, fix the roof and inject a little pizzazz back into Mayo football.

Of course, no man manages alone - not anymore. Even the best ideas need someone to hold the cones and argue with the stats. If Deane is to be handed the keys, he’ll need a backroom team with teeth. For Mayo football is a peculiar beast; and to navigate it, a manager needs lieutenants who’ll tell him the truth, especially on the nights when the crowd is roaring and the logic is leaking. The job comes with the Sword of Damocles built in, polished by years of heartbreak and hung by threads of public opinion. One poor performance, and it starts to wobble So maybe Mayo doesn’t need to have a complete overhaul. Maybe Mayo’s next big leap forward starts with something smaller - a local man, a smart backroom team and a plan that makes sense. Tipperary didn’t win the All Ireland by hiring a saviour after a poor season.

That’s the trick now: not chasing shadows, but backing substance. After all these years, Mayo might not need a revolution. They might just need to get out of their own way.