Mayo settle in for a long winter of introspection and soul-searching

Regrets? Kevin McStay will have more than a few. That Mayo led in the 74th minute against Derry and the 72nd minutes against Dublin and Galway and didn’t win one of those matches will give McStay nightmares. Holding out in any one of those games would have given Mayo’s season a totally different complexion. As it is, letting late leads slip will be the story of Mayo’s 2024 Championship campaign.

This is the earliest date Mayo have exited the championship since losing to Sligo in the first round of the Connacht Championship on June 11, 2000. Yet, apart from a brutal first-half on Saturday evening, you cannot really say Mayo played poorly in this championship campaign. They’ve only lost once in regulation time (narrowly against Galway), comfortably beat Roscommon twice and drew with two serious All-Ireland contenders. The cruelty and inequality of this championship structure is highlighted by the fact that both Roscommon and Derry, having both lost three matches to date, will compete in next weekend’s All-Ireland quarter-finals while Mayo are on the scrap heap.

It’s easy to be wise after the event but I felt that Derry was the worst possible draw for Mayo. They have more high-quality players than us even if they were badly out of form. They have a lot of players in their ranks who have won underage All-Ireland medals, Ulster championships and Club All-Irelands. They were also likely to have a big kick in them given all the negativity and bashing they have taken since winning the league. You have to remember too that it was only three months since the same teams faced in the same venue in the National Football League and Derry gave Mayo a good clipping that day. And, most tellingly, Derry, and Mickey Harte teams in general, play with a defensive system that Mayo don’t like to come up against.

You have to give credit to Harte for the way he configured his troops. With his players low in confidence and belief, he instructed them to get bodies back, sit deep and stink the place out; not too dissimilar to the way his Louth team set up in MacHale Park last year, the difference being that Derry had better players to cause Mayo damage on the counter-attack. Ryan O’Donoghue was earmarked for special attention and why wouldn’t he be given his form and ability. The jet-heeled Conor McCluskey was his direct man-marker but Conor Glass didn’t venture too far from ROD at any stage either in the first-half when performing his sweeping duties.

In that grim first-half, there probably was a bit of a hangover and come-down from the highs of the Dublin game the weekend before but we once again showed little inspiration or ingenuity when trying to breach the blanket. Derry soaked up all Mayo’s slow and laboured attacks and Mayo could only conjure up six shots on goal in the opening period – an incredibly low number for any team in modern Gaelic football. One of those “shots” was also Stephen Coen’s toe-poke that dribbled wide from a rebound. Derry had no such problem though with their sharp-shooter, Lachlan Murray, on fire and torching Mayo’s defence at the other end.

Kevin McStay must have given a rollicking half-time bollocking as Mayo came out a different team and had overturned the deficit inside 10 minutes. Those 10 minutes were everything we love about Mayo. Pressing high, tackling like maniacs, chasing everything, running hard and riding the wave of momentum as the crowd found their voices and came alive. It was typical Mayo – comfortable in chaos! That approach requires a huge amount of energy though and is not sustainable for an entire game. Derry rode out that storm, got a grip again, took the sting out of things and controlled the game thereafter. If only we could become as comfortable in calmness as we are in chaos, then we’d be on to a winner.

As the match approached stoppage time, it became a tale of two handpasses. Sam Callinan had a gilt-edged one to put Mayo out of reach but faltered at the key moment. Annoyingly, Chrissy McKaigue’s equalising fisted score was a carbon copy of Cormac Costello’s one which also denied Mayo victory a week earlier. Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Both scores, right at the death, from a combined distance of about 10 yards have been fatal blows to Mayo’s season.

Derry managed extra-time better. Their subs, such as Eunan Mulholland and Niall Toner, had more of an impact than Mayo’s and those Derry players who lasted the full game looked that bit fresher. Mayo’s mammoth effort against Dublin a week prior really began to tell in extra-time.

Let’s call a spade a spade, the withdrawal of Aidan O’Shea was a mistake by management. He had another great game and for all the criticism he gets about not scoring enough, is there a player in Ireland who tackles more or records more turnovers? Not having his presence, size and leadership in extra-time was a problem. Could he or Mattie Ruane have been re-introduced after a rub-down and a twenty or so minute break?

In extra-time, Derry found a golden shooting pocket on the right-wing that Mayo just couldn’t close down and Brendan Rogers and Ethan Doherty made hay. But, still, Mayo came back and fought ‘til the death. Jordan Flynn’s leveller was a heroic act. What a leader he has become.

There’s no point really analysing what happened in the penalty shoot-out. They’re a pure lottery and the worst way to decide a game of Gaelic football. Surely somebody can come up with a more imaginative, Gaelic-football relevant method of deciding drawn games. A golden score where the next score wins would be my preference. Even a free-taking shootout would be more aligned to the skills of our game than penalties. Given our hapless, tragi-comic history, it was inevitable that we would fall foul to a shoot-out sooner or later.

It is said in life that people must suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. For Mayo, a few lapses of focus and concentration mean that regret will be the overriding emotion this winter. Effort, commitment and work-rate were never in question this season, just a failure to see it out when everything was at stake.

We’re used to long winters of introspection and soul-searching. Unfortunately, as it’s still only June, we will have a summer and autumn of it too.

One more thing … 

Kudos to the county players who lined out for their clubs in league games a mere 15 hours or so after a crushing defeat on Saturday night. No moaning or wallowing in self-pity, just hopping back up on the horse. They are a credit to their clubs and county.