McStay’s men leave no shortage of room to improve

It’s customary for winning managers to talk about the things their teams needs to improve on (Dessie Farrell even does it after one of those facile victories for Dublin in Leinster), but Kevin McStay wasn’t trying to dampen down expectations when he said last Sunday evening that Mayo will need to improve for their Connacht Senior Football Final clash with old rivals Galway in a fortnight. The five-point victory over Roscommon in Hyde Park was achieved with a lot of huffing and puffing, and it does nothing to dispel fears that Mayo are far from the finished article and will need to improve dramatically if they are to be serious contenders in this year’s championship.

One statistic alone stood out at the end of this game and it wasn’t the scoreline. Mayo surrendered 40% of their own kickouts, and were it not for Roscommon’s wastefulness in front of goal, there could have been a very different outcome. Even in the final 10 minutes when Mayo seemed to be cantering towards the finish line, Roscommon spurned two gilt-edged goal chances with Enda Smith and Eoin McCormack both blazing wide on the right-hand side of Colm Reape’s goal. Had either of those shots found the net, Mayo would have faced a very nervy final few minutes and might have even ended the game on the wrong side of a last-gasp winner.

Mayo’s lack of consistency remains as perplexing as ever. They got off to the perfect start with an early goal from full-forward Aidan O’Shea and led by four points after 12 minutes. This should have settled the visitors but instead it was the home-side who enjoyed the lion’s share of the scores for the remainder of the half. Roscommon outscored Mayo by 0-6 to 0-4 between the 15th and 35th minutes and they put huge pressure on Reape’s kickout, especially when he went long. Indeed, had it not been for their profligacy in front of goal, Roscommon would have tagged on another few points in the run-up to half-time and should really have been in front at the break.

When Mayo have these slumps in form, it tends to be Ryan O’Donoghue who keeps them in touch and that’s exactly what happened in the final 20 minutes of the first-half. Three of Mayo’s four scores came from O’Donoghue with the fourth an excellent point from Fergal Boland, scored shortly after his marker David Murray limped off with an injury.

Mayo’s failure to win their own kickouts was one of the defining – and worrying – features of the first-half and the rot continued after half-time when Daire Cregg levelled the scores after another long kick from Reape was lost at midfield. The goalkeeper’s kickout is now one of the really big problems for Mayo and it is hard to see it being resolved in a matter of weeks. Derry showed in the National League match in Castlebar that there is much to be gained by pushing up on Reape’s kickout and other teams are now following suit. If it is the case that Reape is going to use the long kickout on a more frequent basis in this championship, then the management team will need to identify a ball-winning midfielder who can gain primary possession or at least offer an option for a breakdown. The return of Diarmuid O’Connor will certainly help but we’re not blessed with midfielders of the ilk of Derry’s Conor Glass or Donegal’s Michael Langan who can win long kickouts all day. It’s easy to blame Reape when the kickouts go astray but his options are very limited at times, and that is the biggest concern for Mayo.

The big positive on Sunday was the form of Mayo’s much-maligned full-forward line of Aidan O’Shea, Tommy Conroy and Ryan O’Donoghue. Obviously, O’Donoghue was one of Mayo’s outstanding performers in the National League but Conroy and O’Shea had struggled in recent months to make an impact on the scoreboard so it was encouraging to see them score more on Sunday than they did in the entire League campaign. Some questions might have been asked about O’Shea’s ability to stand the championship pace on a day when the weather was more like August than April but he certainly dispelled any doubts by delivering a really fine performance, especially in the early part of each half. It’s no coincidence that Mayo’s best periods coincided with O’Shea’s. Even at 34, he is still pivotal to the Mayo cause and he deserves a lot more credit than he sometimes gets for keeping himself in such tip-top physical shape after all these years. It is worth noting that O’Shea was the only survivor on the Mayo team from James Horan’s breakthrough side that beat Roscommon on a wet day in the Hyde in 2011 when a young Cillian O’Connor gave an exhibition of free-taking.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether Mayo can build a successful championship campaign around a man who is in his 16th season at senior football, but O’Shea’s name will be one of the first on the team sheet when McStay and his management team sit down to select their first 15 ahead of the Connacht Final clash with Galway in Salthill.

If Mayo’s lack of consistency is a cause for concern, Galway’s complete loss of form since 2022 is equally bewildering. Padraig Joyce’s men were incredibly fortunate to escape from Sligo with a victory last Saturday and there is nothing to suggest that they are slowly working their way into this championship. On the contrary, Galway have the look of a team that have lost their way. Nobody doubts the talents of some of their players, especially their attackers, but there appears to have been a collective loss of form in the Galway camp over the past 18 months.

If Mayo have questions to answer after their patchy victory over Roscommon, Galway have some serious soul-searching to do in the wake of their Sligo smash-and-grab. Indeed, were the shoe on the other foot and Mayo had escaped from Sligo with a last-minute victory, the Green and Red doom-mongers would be out in force. We think we are bad in Mayo when we concede 40% of our kickouts but our semi-final display was still miles better than Galway’s.

However, neither of those semi-finals will count for much when the ball is thrown up at Salthill on the May Bank Holiday Sunday. It is the oldest cliché in the GAA book but form really does go out the window when Mayo and Galway meet. How many times have we seen one team surprise the other by delivering a display that is totally at odds with their pre-game performances. The only time the form-book held firm for an extended period was between 2013 and 2015 when Mayo had Galway’s number and comfortably defeated their old rivals three years on the trot.

Galway will undoubtedly improve from the Sligo debacle and they will be delighted to be going into this Connacht Final under the radar. However, we have been waiting for Galway to catch fire for some time now and it is getting to the stage where they really need to deliver a big display for their manager Padraig Joyce who is now in his fifth season. Mayo, on the basis of what we witnessed last weekend, are going into this provincial decider in slightly better form, but would you fancy the men in Green and Red if Galway’s sharp-shooters got some of the chances spurned by Roscommon? Would Damien Comer blaze wide when presented with the chance we coughed up to Enda Smith?

Therefore, the only conclusion we can reach after these two provincial semi-finals in Connacht is that the final will be a 50-50 game. Will the winner be a serious contender for All-Ireland honours? Would either Mayo or Galway, on the basis of what we witnessed last weekend, beat Donegal or Derry in an All-Ireland quarter-final? Perhaps it is too early to pose these questions but the weekend games here in the West do little to assuage fears that the standard of football in Connacht is not at the same level as Ulster or, indeed, the standard-bearers in Leinster and Munster, namely Dublin and Kerry.

Perhaps the Connacht Final will deliver a game that makes us reconsider that fairly downbeat assessment but Mayo and Galway will need to make some serious strides in the next two weeks to deliver performances in Salthill that will have the rest of the country marking them down as championship contenders.