Mayo’s vital commodity is stubbornness

Mayo may not be the best team in Ireland right now but they are the team that the best sides least like playing against. With this Mayo team there is no such thing as a lost cause and there is a doggedness in the camp that pushes the top teams to the bitter end.

For the second game in-a-row I thought Mayo were comfortably second best but, yet again, they were right in the mix as the match entered stoppage time. While Mayo probably robbed an extra point against the Dubs, they were unlucky in the end not to snatch any point in Tralee after a gutsy second-half showing. Swings and roundabouts.

It was a far from perfect performance but Mayo’s belief and ability to stick in there is admirable and a trait that we should be proud of in our team. They’re like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cyborg character in Terminator 2 – impossible to kill! Annoyingly for opponents, they keep hanging in there, chipping away and enduring.

There is a myriad of tactical, technical and selection issues for Mayo to work on but what cannot be questioned is Mayo’s moral fibre and stomach for the fight. It’s easier to fine-tune the technical stuff than find big characters with the grit and resolve for battle so Kevin McStay will be heartened by what he saw against Kerry.

Overall, it was a low enough energy and quality game. The first-half was characterised by Kerry’s poor shooting and Mayo’s struggles with their kick-outs. Conditions of course did not help. Wednesday’s Sigerson Cup final in the same venue left the pitch in a bad state. Nearly every move was marred by a player slipping and sliding when trying to change direction and the many divots did not make for smooth play. The driving rain in the first-half typified February football.

Mayo’s forward play spluttered along in the first-half and were it not for Sam Callinan’s impressive finishing the half-time margin would have been much greater. In fairness to Mayo, their attacking moves were much slicker in the second period and the team’s shooting efficiency and economy were top class. Darren McHale and Enda Hession added a freshness and impetus as Mayo finished very strongly. That second-half was similar to the first-half against Dublin as we seemed to kick a point every time we entered the opponent’s 45. What’s concerning though is that for the second game running we did not look like creating or scoring any goal chances. That’s three National Football League games now where a forward has not scored a goal from open play or really looked like doing so.

To be fair, Kerry didn’t make many goal chances either. Apart from David Clifford’s weak scuffed effort early on, Mayo’s defence was locked down securely. Galway or Dublin didn’t create anything of note either so this is a huge positive for Mayo and a marked improvement on last season when you could have driven an Airbus A380 through the centre of our defence. As encouraging as this meanness is from a Mayo perspective, it is a shame that these games between the big sides present so few goal chances. These tussles can be tight, tactical and turgid and often a hard watch.

I saw some criticism on social media for Rory Brickenden for having a shot at the posts when he caught the attacking mark in the 71st minute but I think he was dead right to go for it. Mayo were on a hot streak at the time and it was a free shot at goal to win the game, albeit from a tight angle. With Mayo down to fourteen men, I couldn’t see any free and easy passes that would have helped him to work the ball into a better scoring position. Had he gone short and made a mess of it, he would have been castigated for passing up a gilt-edged winning opportunity. We should be encouraging players to take these shots on rather than advocating for ball retention and backward passes.

How good are Kerry? Nothing special in my mind but for the magic of the Cliffords. Outside of the Fossa boys, they have a lot of ordinary enough players that are not much better than any of the other players in Division 1. The Cliffords though can elevate them to another level that not every team can reach. Paudie and David were far from flying fit or anything on Saturday but between them they still kicked nine points from play and it left us cursing our luck that Saturday was the day Kerry fully reintroduced them to the fold. Where would The Kingdom have been without them at the weekend?

Cillian Burke looks a find and will add an athleticism to their half-forward line. Jason Foley is developing into a top defender but Kerry were almost at full strength without too many more trump cards to play. Their squad depth will be affected by Micheál Burns’ defection. Burns featured in the last two All-Ireland finals so he will be a loss.

It always strikes me how in other counties at least one big player a year seems to step away from the intercounty panel in their peak years. Galway, Dublin and Tyrone seem perennially affected by this. It rarely ever happens in Mayo. The only person I can remember doing it in the last decade was Robbie Hennelly but he returned shortly after and is still going strong. Even Fergal Boland, who was outstandingly accurate on Saturday, was on the cusp of heading Down Under but the lure of the Mayo dream kept him at home. There’s definitely an element of FOMO to it – Mayo players are afraid that the year they step away will be the one in which Mayo finally reach the Promised Land. But there’s probably more to it than that – there’s a personal defiance and stubbornness there to never give in. By extension, that bullheadedness and tenacity of Mayo players has become a hallmark of recent teams.

You need to be a special animal to stick at intercounty football for a prolonged period. As Jack O’Connor said in the wake of Burns’ departure, “inter-county football these days is full-on and a ferocious commitment. You have to make a decision whether the effort is worth the potential reward”. And what an effort it is. Davy Burke highlighted post-Dublin at the weekend that Roscommon had trained 65 times already this year. That is an average of five times a week since November. I know for a fact that the whole Roscommon squad trained at 9.30am in Kiltoom on Sunday morning, barely twelve hours after the full-time whistle in Croke Park. An amateur sport, how are you?

It’s a savage commitment and we should be grateful in Mayo to have a savagely committed group. The squad may not be overly blessed with magic men à la the Cliffords but, by God, the attitude and effort is never in question meaning we’ll always have a chance.

//////// One more thing… Donegal are the highest scoring team in the top two divisions. Jimmy’s winning matches again and his team are scoring points.