McDonald Jnr is already in rarefied company

For a previous generation, Padraig Carney’s debut in a Mayo jersey was the stuff of legend. Uniquely, the Swinford man played for the county’s senior side before he had even lined out at minor level – the provincial and All-Ireland minor competition having been suspended in the summer of 1945 due to the fuel restrictions imposed by World War II.

Carney was just 17 when he lined out for the Mayo seniors in a challenge match against Galway in Charlestown in August 1945 and was said to have kicked a point with his first touch of the game. The young maestro’s competitive debut came almost a year later in the Connacht Senior Championship semi-final against Sligo when he kicked four points in a 2-9 to 2-6 victory in Ballina.

In 2011, this writer was fortunate enough to interview several of Carney’s peers when researching the book The Road to ’51, and I was fascinated to learn that the passage of time had not dimmed their youthful wonder at the instant impact this precocious teenager made in his early games for Mayo. Their faces literally lit up as they recalled Carney’s arrival on the intercounty football scene in the mid-1940s, a fallow period for Mayo’s senior footballers after the glorious era of the 1930s when multiple national titles were won.

Carney’s early performances were a harbinger for the prodigious career that followed and he went on to establish himself as one of the greatest Gaelic footballers of the 20th century before leaving Ireland for the United States in the spring of 1954. All of those who soldiered with Carney during that era were unanimous in the opinion that Mayo would not have won All-Ireland senior titles in 1950 and 1951 without the ‘Flying Doctor’, as he later came to be known. He was a generational talent and that was evident from the moment he pulled on the green and red jersey at senior level.

It’s a bit early to go comparing Kobe McDonald with someone of such immense stature as Padraig Carney but certainly last Sunday’s competitive debut, which saw him emulate Carney by scoring with his first touch before finishing with 1-4 in a 20-minute cameo off the bench, is surely one of the most impressive introductions to senior football by a Mayo teenager. Cillian O’Connor kicked 1-6 in his first competitive game in January 2011 – an FBD tie against GMIT – but he played the full match and five of the points came from frees.

Kevin O’Neill won Man of the Match on his competitive debut in the Connacht Final victory over Roscommon in Dr Hyde Park on a wet summer’s day in 1993, kicking three points from Mayo’s 1-5 in a low-scoring and easily forgotten final. Kevin played the full match and was a year older than Kobe is now, but as competitive debuts go, it wasn’t too bad at all…. in fact, I would go so far as to suggest it was a more impressive achievement than hitting 1-4 in a National League tie against a team that was already well beaten and almost surely relegated.

Yet there was something about the way Kobe McDonald took those scores – a goal, a two-pointer and two singles – that left most of us a little awestruck, even those world-weary cynics who been following the Mayo team for more decades than we care to remember. His first point was a thing of beauty, measured perfectly despite the close attentions of the Monaghan defence, and the goal was taken with the aplomb of a player who has the temperament to match the talent. His two-pointer – kicked in poor weather conditions and into a strong wind – exhibited another facet of his remarkable skillset, which is the ability to kick accurately from distance. We saw that in the Mayo Senior Club Championship last summer when he was converting frees from ridiculous distances, drawing comparisons with another prodigious Mayo footballer of yesteryear, Padraig Brogan, who famously kicked 13 points in a Mayo Senior Football Final while still a teenager.

Inevitably, people will warn against the danger of hyping up a young footballer who still hasn’t sat his Leaving Certificate, but you cannot ignore the evidence before your eyes either and McDonald is a uniquely gifted footballer. We’ve known that for some time now and last Sunday was merely a confirmation of what many astute GAA people in Mayo have been saying for the last few years: this kid is something special.

Inevitably, McDonald’s star turn dominated the conversation at the end of a game that saw Andy Moran’s Mayo take a huge step towards securing Division 1 status for another year. Monaghan were awful – and that caveat is important – but Mayo gave a very accomplished display, especially around the middle of the field where Bob Tuohy produced his best performance yet in a Mayo jersey. His ability to win clean ball from kickouts is hugely impressive and augurs well for the summer ahead as it is an area where Mayo struggled last year. Kieran McGeeney may believe that the new rules have made a “piggery” of midfield but the majestic art of high fielding, as exhibited by Tuohy on Sunday, is a precious part of our Gaelic football heritage that has thankfully been revived under the new rules. Long may young Tuohy lord it i lár na páirce.

Darragh Beirne, who is almost as young as Kobe McDonald, also had a hugely encouraging afternoon, finishing the day with five points and winning a penalty that yielded a point for Ryan O’Donoghue. Beirne was dispossessed in one of the first plays of the game, yet he didn’t let it knock his confidence and went on to deliver another highly effective display, both on the scoreboard and as a creative force. He is another who has managed to successfully transfer his underage exploits to the senior stage.

Some of Mayo’s more experienced players also delivered their best performances in a long while, including Jordan Flynn and Fergal Boland. The latter’s back-to-back two-pointers on the cusp of half-time were immense and gave Mayo a lead that was always going to be very difficult to peg back, notwithstanding the wind advantage for Monaghan after half-time.

It wasn’t all plain sailing for Mayo, though. Robbie Hennelly looked nervy between the posts and struggled from placed balls, Ryan O’Donoghue’s penalty miss could have been costly on another day, and our full-back line was far from watertight, especially in the second-half when Monaghan substitute Jack McCarron made the most of the limited possession that came his way. Andy Moran may well be forced to move David McBrien into full-back for the championship as it is debatable whether we can afford to have such a naturally gifted defender at midfield. We haven’t been blessed with too many full-backs in Mayo in the past 25 years so it seems a little wasteful to move McBrien from a position where he was born to play.

Ahead of the Monaghan game, we wondered whether Andy Moran could get the show back on the road after a humbling defeat in Donegal, but that question has now been answered and the banisteoir is under a lot less pressure for next Sunday’s tie against Armagh. However, the next three games will tell us more about Mayo than last Sunday’s exhibition against a low-on-confidence Monaghan. Can the likes of Tuohy, Beirne and, indeed, McDonald deliver the same level of performance against the All-Ireland champions of the past two years in Armagh and Kerry, followed by a local derby against an in-form Roscommon. If they can, then we could be in for a very interesting summer, but the suspicion is that Mayo’s younger players will need a few more years of development before they can reach their full potential.

And therein lies the problem for Mayo because Kobe McDonald is almost certainly going to be in Australia a year from now, and that is just such a crying shame because it’s not too often that Mayo GAA unearths a precocious teenager who can score with his first touch in a senior jersey.

Once every 80 years, in fact.