Mayo know that now comes the hard stuff

If last Saturday’s game in Castlebar was a Simpsons episode, it would have been ‘The Homer They Fall’, where Homer is revealed to have an extraordinary ability to take a punch, and so he’s lined up as a boxing opponent for heavyweight champion, Drederick Tatum.

The only purpose of the fight is to allow Tatum to have an easy return to the ring, and given that one of Homer’s punches in training quite literally doesn’t hurt a fly, there’s no danger of him derailing Tatum. Needless to say, the fight doesn’t last past the first round.

At the risk of creating material that will go up in a Cavan dressing-room some time in the next three or four years, once Paddy Lynch went down with a season-ending injury, Cavan’s attack offered all the force and threat of a Homer Simpson right hand.

Winning the game was never plausible, and the decision by Cavan manager Ray Galligan before the game to pull out two inside forwards (Cormac O’Reilly and Caoimhín O’Reilly) and replace them with a third midfielder (Conor Rehill) and a typically modern wing-back/wing-forward (Jason McLoughlin) spoke volumes about how the Ulster county were going to play this game.

Referee David Coldrick didn’t have the authority to wave his arms 15 minutes in and declare that Mayo had won by way of a TKO, but he might as well have.

Galligan said afterwards that he felt that his team was disheartened by how Mayo scored from almost all of their early attacks, while his team racked up five wides; but one is tempted to suggest that when you play a system that leads to footballers taking on shots from poor positions, and you’ve dropped two reliable marksmen when your blue chip scorer is already on the injured list, then his heart should have had an inclination what was likely to happen.

A comparatively meagre attendance of just over 9,000 people – the biggest crowd of the weekend outside of the Munster Hurling Championship, but still a very small number for a Mayo championship game – didn’t have any real moment of connection with the game, to bring them into the contest. There were no real flashpoints, no Mayo goals to draw a huge roar, no moments where Cavan offered a real threat. The instances where the crowd’s emotions were at their most palpable were when Paddy Durcan and Aidan O’Shea were introduced in the one double substitution, and then again at the end when Durcan was carried off the pitch.

What that meant was there was never a point in the game when there was an element of frenzy, panic, or even concern – nothing to stress test this adjusted Mayo side, where Cillian O’Connor served as a foil to Ryan O’Donoghue close to goal, with the subsequent effect that Tommy Conroy ended up playing a lot more of his football out around the 45m line and beyond.

Colm Reape’s kickouts largely went unchallenged, as did many Mayo ball carriers in the middle third of the pitch, and the point by Stephen Coen in the second half was a microcosm of the game as a whole. The Knockmore custodian dinked the ball out towards the stand where it was easily gathered by Diarmuid O’Connor, who had time and space to turn, look up, and connect with Jack Carney. Carney duly helped the ball on to Coen, again with the minimum of fuss, and by the time the on-field captain got within shooting distance, he had about as much time to line up his effort and think about his placement as Xander Schauffele might have taken over one of his putts in the US PGA last Sunday night.

So as a footballing experience, particularly with a view towards preparing for taking on the Dubs in a few weeks, there was very limited value to Saturday’s game. But as an exercise in mentally resetting after a Connacht final defeat that will absolutely feel like one that was left behind, Kevin McStay couldn’t have asked for anything better.

Sure, the Mayo backs will rarely get it as easy again. It’s impossible to fault any of the performances on Saturday, but when a starting unit of six forwards scores once from play between them all – and that a scrambled goal from close range – it’s pretty clear that this was as easy an assignment as the group will get for the remainder of the year. Likewise, the ease with which Mayo carried the ball, and the lack of pressure on shooters, where we’ll say that the ratio of 20 white flags to four wides is probably from a combination of sharp shooting and lacklustre defending, are all aspects that might be less likely to repeat next time out in the Hyde against a Roscommon side that is desperately low on confidence, and utterly implausible from then on.

But the other side of that equation is the value of confidence, momentum, and further locking down the ideal balance of the side. To take the Cillian O’Connor versus Aidan O’Shea debate, this was only the second start of the year for the Ballintubber man – but perhaps there is a case to be made for these two to switch around their roles as starter and finisher? It’s too early to say that Darren McHale has locked down his spot for the year, but he certainly hasn’t done his cause any harm, while Donnacha McHugh continues to get an increasing number of carries and possessions and looks more and more like a natural in the number six role.

There were areas of concern too, most notably the ongoing lack of a strong scoring contribution from Tommy Conroy, and the extension of the goal shortage from the team as a whole. Leaving aside the New York game, it’s now been two years since Mayo have scored more than a single goal in a championship game, and if that run didn’t end in a low pressure game like this – and it never looked like ending either – then that too looks like a problem. And that of course is without touching on the issue of the health of Durcan, since it’s getting harder and harder to see Mayo possess their trademark dynamism and force of will without the Castlebar talisman.

There will be plenty more problems that Cavan simply were not good enough, or even tuned in enough, to expose – but time enough to bring all that to the surface. For now, this was a handy re-introduction to the coalface, a chance to get back into stride, with no jeopardy and no danger of a sucker punch. A guaranteed home run, or a Homer, if you will.