Mayo take champions to the brink but draw is bittersweet

A game to rank alongside the epics that Mayo and Dublin served throughout the 2010s brought supporters to their feet at full-time in Dr Hyde Park on Sunday afternoon, as the two old rivals served up a classic 0-17 apiece draw.

While performing far above the expectations of their supporters, the result will be bittersweet for Mayo who took the lead in the final minute of stoppage time, as the subsequent equalizer by Dublin’s Cormac Costello consigns the Green and Red to next weekend’s Preliminary Quarter-Finals while Dublin, by virtue of scoring difference, exit Group 2 as winners and travel directly into the last eight.

Mayo led twice in the first-half but had spent the entire second-half on Dublin’s coattails until Ryan O’Donoghue drove over a self-won 35-metre free in the 73rd minute with what had all the look of match-winning point. But the continuing excellence of the All-Ireland champions was evident from the restart as Ciaran Kilkenny majestically caught Stephen Cluxton’s kick-out to launch an attack that resulted in Cormac Costello fisting the leveller, the half-forward’s seventh point in total.

Mayo will now have home advantage for a game against any one of Derry, Cork and Monaghan (third place group finishers), the draw for which will take place on Monday morning.

There’s no question but that Mayo will have regrets at not seeing out what would have been this year’s shock of the championship, as if for the beaten Connacht finalists to even draw with Dublin could not be considered that already. Kevin McStay’s team left a host of excellent scoring chances behind them, particularly in a first-half that also saw them create a couple of excellent goal chances.

Tommy Conroy, Mayo’s best player on the day, and Stephen Coen scored their side’s only first-half points from play, as Dublin took a 0-7 to 0-6 lead into the dressing-room. And when the Leinster men opened up a three points advantage inside six minutes of the restart, while at the other end Ryan O’Donoghue posted his fourth wide of the game, you wondered if the Metropolitans might be about to inflict one of their brutal third quarter assaults.

But Mayo were level at 0-10 apiece by the 40th minute and five more times in the second-half would strike equalizing points, with Conroy and Matthew Ruane kicking a brace apiece.

Dublin’s unease was reflected in their 63rd minute substitution of midfielder Killian McGinness who had only been introduced at half-time, and when Colm Reape, from a ’45, and O’Donoghue, a free, finally nudged Mayo in front for the first time since the 14th minute, it looked for all the world that Mayo were quarter-final bound. Cormac Costello had other ideas.

But dependent on the physical toll the game might have had, Mayo have every right to be confident in their ability to secure their passage to the quarter-finals. This performance alone should encourage a healthy Mayo support to turn up to MacHale Park and back them in that mission.

See Tuesday’s Western People for full report, reaction, analysis and opinion.