McStay pulls no punches as Mayo fail to fire in final

Mitigation was offered but no excuses. What disappointed Kevin McStay much more than losing on Sunday was the standard of his team’s performance.

Agreeing that six points was the least Mayo deserved to lose by, the longer he spoke, the harsher he seemed to become.

“We never asked a big question,” he responded to the first journalist’s request for an opinion on the 1-18 to 1-12 defeat.

By question four McStay was admitting Mayo “were cleaned out of it” at midfield.

To question seven, he said the execution of skills by his team was “not acceptable”.

And just before boarding the bus home west, he spoke about a game that looked “one-sided” because of “poor kicking” and missed tap-overs.

And yet, Mayo had entered the final five minutes of this Division 1 final still within a pair of two-pointers of a Kerry side who gained revenge for a two points defeat in Castlebar on March 1. What a difference 29 days makes.

“We were coming into that game playing five weeks on the trot and I think we just ran out of energy that day. I had a fair idea we’d have a bit more energy [today],” remarked Kerry boss Jack O’Connor shortly after seeing his team having become the first to lift Corn Mhíchíl Uí Mhuircheartaigh, a new trophy named in memory of a famous Kerry native and GAA broadcasting legend.

“Any day you come up here and get a bit of silverware is good. It’s nice that it’s the Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh trophy as well. We didn’t do a lot of talk about it but looking at it now, it’s nice that we won the inaugural one,” said O’Connor who swiftly moved on to downplaying his side’s title win.

“I wouldn’t be giving us too much kudos. I thought we were average at times but we managed to raise our game when we needed to.

“We wouldn’t be shouting from the rooftops but it was good enough for today.” 

Which says exactly what about Mayo? They had qualified for the final having won four and drawn one of their last five games of the regular league season but looked off the pace at GAA headquarters.

“We’re a little bit disappointed with the performance,” began manager Kevin McStay.

“We came to win it, don’t think otherwise, but I just thought we were a little bit leggy maybe or just didn’t get to the pitch of the game. We never asked a big question at all and that’s the disappointing part. We didn’t mind the ball properly, at this level of the game. We didn’t mind it all actually. And we didn’t get the scores. We had plenty of opportunities.” 

McStay hinted that a contributory factor in his side’s below-par display might have been that preparation was not only for this final but for next weekend’s game to come against Sligo also, in the quarter-final of the Connacht senior football championship.

“You’ll understand we have a big week ahead of us, so it was very hard to balance that coming in, even though we tried really hard to do that. You’re caught up with different training loads to balance.

“We were mad to win it but the schedule just hurt us a little bit. We are very keen to have a good go at the Connacht championship and Sligo is the first fence and we have to keep them in mind. That’s in the background all the time.

“We’ll have to have a good look during the week to see why we didn’t get to the pitch of the game because the turnaround is pretty fast and we can’t be disappointed and thinking back. We just have to move it on now,” said Kevin McStay who admitted to getting very little purchase out of stacking his team around the central third.

“We were beaten in midfield, no question. We thought we would get a trick out of that, we loaded up our selection that way to have a good go at that. One of the key things about keeping players like David Clifford and Paudie Clifford quiet is to not let the ball into them and we thought that if we went after the primary, that would be extremely helpful. But we were cleaned out of it, especially on the break, and usually we’re good on the break. Just that energy or that sharpness wasn’t there. And when you start losing the break heavily, you’re in trouble.” 

David Clifford was the game’s top scorer with eight points, divided evenly between open play and frees, while the Kerry attacker kicked another five shots wide and drew an excellent save from Adrian Phillips who made his inter-county senior debut in the 54th minute as a replacement for injured goalkeeper Colm Reape. But Kevin McStay was strongly of the opinion that Kerry – and Clifford in particular – had been afforded far too much protection by referee David Coldrick, claiming the free-count against Mayo at one stage was thirteen to one.

“We’re good in defence, we take our defence very seriously and that’s why the free count was surprising to me. And I say that with complete respect to the people involved. David Coldrick is a top, top ref.

“I have to be careful, because I really like him as a player, I think he’s a fabulous player, but by God, I thought today [David Clifford] got well looked after,” the Mayo boss stated, saying Donnacha McHugh gave Clifford a “good shot” as his marker.

“Donnacha’s jersey must be resistant to pulling altogether. It has to be a two-way street when these big battles… like, he’s six foot two or three. It’s a man’s game.

“[Clifford’s] a fabulous player but if you see the camera angles I’ll be looking at on Monday and Tuesday from behind, he is so clever at making sure the picture that the referee sees is an excellent picture for him.” 

It wasn’t long, however, until Kevin McStay was back focusing on his own team’s shortcomings. Kerry, on the counterattack, had gained numerous scoring opportunities on the back of handling errors and misplaced passes by Mayo at the other end of the field, in the first-half most notably.

“We’ll do a lot of work on Wednesday, on the ball and on our touch,” assured the Ballina man. “We are way, way better than that. We pride ourselves on brilliant basics, we’re able to do it in training but the pressure of bringing it on to a bigger stage hurts every team. So we have to get better at it. We will get better at it, I have no doubt. We have to improve week on week.

“That is not acceptable to us as a group of players or coaches. Our ball work wasn’t anywhere near where it needed to be. The game looks so one-sided because we didn’t ask the questions when we had the moments to do so. Like, we had an awful lot of possession. Poor kicking, I can think of three or four that should have been tap-overs, and we’re missing them and you can’t build the pressure points then, to see what they’re like on the back foot.

“But we’ll bump into teams of that calibre down the road during the summer, I’ve no doubt we will, and the challenge for me as manager, and for the coaches and the players, is that we just have to be better,” he concluded.