Minor meddling has not changed football for the better

Trawling through social media recently, I saw a piece about Mayo winning the 1971 All-Ireland minor title, defeating Cork in a 2-15 to 2-07 victory. Cork were the market leaders in underage football back then so it was a magnificent, though not unexpected achievement, by the Mayo lads. The county had won the 1966 minor title and the 1967 under-21 title too, so underage victories sat easy on our heads and were within our expectations.

53 years have passed since that ’71 win. Let’s go back before coming forward. Subtract 53 from that year and we are back in 1918, a time recorded in black and white, flat caps and great unrest. WW1 was just ending but was merely a two-decade postponement by the superpowers until WW2. Ireland was also about to go into upheaval with a War of Independence.

Back then I’m sure the then denizens of the nation thought the world a dangerous and challenging place; in other words, a bit like today. Put together, we have a timeline of over 100 years, all linked within the ambit of us of a certain generation.

So, what was special about the 1971 minors? In some ways not a lot from previous Mayo minor teams; they played the Mayo ‘way’ and back then we produced forwards who could score as opposed to the grinding corn of today.

The 1966 team were the last relics of, perhaps, boarding school diocesan catholic education. Three from the U21s of that era were already in Maynooth, not released for the replayed 1967 final against Kerry. Donagh O’Malley, in 1967, introduced ‘Free Education’, which in my humble opinion was one of two planks that dragged Ireland into modernity. The other was joining the then EEC in 1973, now the EU (thank you Apple by the way!).

The 1971 team were the first graduates of O’Malley’s far seeing initiative. Education, now no longer the preserve of the few, was available to the masses. Technicolour movies surpassed black and white films for the first time in 1967 too. The ’71 minors were the vanguard of a new teenager in O’Malley’s Ireland, with their long hair a break from the old heavy boots and conservative gear of the past. They mirrored the revolution engineered across the continent where sides like Ajax, with Cruyff and Krol, played rock and roll sport. But digging deeper, there was something else about that particular underage group.

From it was the framework of the 1974 All-Ireland U21 winning team. From the ’71 minors came eight or nine of the ’74 U21s. That was a good return, so good in fact that in the Connacht senior final of 1975, a year later, ten of the ’74 U21 squad would see action in a one point replayed loss to a generational Mickey Kearns-inspired Sligo team. Unfortunately, Mayo, having coaxed that squad from 1971 to that fateful day, dispensed with many fine players. Though still young, time would be no longer invested in them.

In contrast, and the difference between Mayo and Kerry, taking the Mayo team from the 1973 U21 final, a narrow defeat for us to Kerry, the Kingdom were to turn eleven players from that team into the machine that went on to win eight senior titles from 1975 to ’86. We were unable to wrest the talent from the 1967, ’73 and ’74 U21s into a meaningful team, a fact highlighted by the barren decade of 1970 to 1980 without a single senior Connacht title – a first and thankfully, a last.

Our problem wasn’t the lack of talent, our problem was the lack of a plan on how to use it. We, if my memory is correct, wound up with the farcical situation where a noted senior player was overlooked by the U21 management in that era. We could be that cavalier and get away with it. There was always another underage team on the oven, awaiting delivery.

The U21 teams of 1971 and 1974 gave us two managers. By 1983, the late John O’Mahony was Mayo U21 manager, barely 31 himself. His subsequent career from leading Mayo to that year’s U21 All-Ireland title is now etched in history across Mayo, Leitrim and Galway. The word ‘myth’ accompanies his name.

Another from that ’71 minor team who did the county some service, John P Kean, never got the credit he deserved for the conveyor belt of talent he produced between 1996 and 2001. Five Connacht minor titles, producing by my count at least 30 lads who would later don the county senior jersey, many who would play multiple All-Irelands and win four All-Stars, plus players who were contenders for that accolade but hadn’t perhaps the media support required – Billy Joe Padden, Trevor Mortimer and James Gill being stalwarts.

Kean was unlucky perhaps in that the progression ladder that Mayo should have had in place wasn’t there. The 2001 U21s were managed very ably by Kevin McStay where once more Tyrone were the beneficiaries of an earlier national pestilence, the Foot and Mouth of 2001. That Mayo team were the real deal and provided four or five of our National League winning team of that year. The Covid breakout of 2021 would also fall favourably for another Tyrone team, this time against our seniors. Such are the vagaries of life. Either your time is right or it isn’t. It’s all down to the timing.

More than likely without realising it, Mayo had a fine managerial underage system in place from Martin Carney’s minors of 1991 that morphed into his U21s of 1994/95, followed by Kean’s minors of 1996-2001, a decade that provided players who contested four All-Ireland senior finals for us. Both Kean and Carney at that time merited further promotion, as indeed did McStay much earlier. It wasn’t to happen. And in fairness, John Maughan worked very well with that bountiful produce.

Part of me looks at how Kerry promoted Páidí Ó Sé from his U21 success into the senior set up. Likewise Micky Harte, Tyrone’s 1998 minor manager who moved to become 2001 U21 manager and the rest is history. Jim Gavin cut his teeth with Declan Darcy as his sidekick, leading Dublin to three U21s, the last in 2012, a year before winning his first as senior manager, against us in 2013. Who knows how we might have fared had we stuck to what brought success to other counties.

By 1978 we had consigned much of the 1971 minor squad to history. The ’74 All-Ireland minor losing team threw another tranche of players our way who were augmented with a fine crop from a shock but welcome recovery against Dublin in the 1978 All-Ireland minor final, where goals at the death created young legends on that wet day which also saw the Kerry senior machine roar into action. And that folks was kinda it. Between 1961 and 1978 we reached six minor finals, winning three. We didn’t fear winning back then. Between 1964 and 1983 we also picked up three U21s. Underage and Mayo were synonymous. Since 2000 much has changed in our game.

The minor and U21 grades have moved back but a single year each and yet it seems a chasm. For me at least, the connection has gone. The last few seasons has seen the tradition of playing the minor final before the senior final abolished. Nowadays they appear to have taken the format of hothouse for certain lads to fast track on to the senior squad, not teams who want to create that niche in history for their own age group. Indeed nowadays, if you play senior you are ruled out from the U20s even though age eligible. I attended the 1978 All-Ireland senior final. Two Sundays later, I was in Drogheda where Kerry U21s squeezed past Louth by the narrowest margin in front of a 15,000 attendance. On that Kerry U21 team, fresh from trouncing Dublin a fortnight earlier, were Bomber Liston, Sean Walsh, Jack O’Shea, Mick Spillane, Ger Lynch, Charlie Nelligan and Vincent O’Connor from the senior subs. No one suffered reputational damage that day, no one felt exploited, burned out nor precious. In fact, they were so grounded and normal that an excellent Roscommon team were to beat that generational great Kerry team a few weeks later.

In trying to codify and please powerful players groups, we are stealing the very fabric created by followers of the GAA since its formation. We are now quasi semi-professional at senior inter-county level from players to managers. Underage competitions have been meddled with, rules changed needlessly and a bloated calendar created that has marginalised the club and county underage system.

The Mayo minors of 53 years ago (sadly a few have prematurely passed) were of a an era when time seemed not a blur but an occasion to savour our achievements and indeed shortcomings. I can recall most minor and U21 teams up to 2016 and after that it became a blur. An age group to get out of the way as fast as possible in order for what? The stodge of the group phases of the last two seasons at senior level? Likewise Sigerson and now preseason matches, how’s a kid going to make the breakthrough today?

By the way, thank you to the class of 1971 for the memories.