Once more unto the breach

Poking the entrails, looking at the stars, finger to the wind, watching the fox watching you from the hill, I’m looking for signs, omens and portents of Mayo’s next managerial magician. All a bit Shakespearean for you then? It shouldn’t be. We have covered the Mayo catalogue from tragedy to comedy and all stops in between. For the fun of it I entered the following into ChatGPT: ‘Give me a Shakespearean quote that defines Mayo people?’ ChatGPT replied ‘Just a second….’ 

It’s still spinning. No answer. Pigeon holing Mayo even defies AI.

So Andy Moran is the man and the month is November. Just like that. ‘No contact training’ to keep the GPA happy, a bit like their stance on Gaza.

What happens with ‘non-contact training’? Up until November 21 guys can chew the fat and look at slides, forecast, think in, do yoga and meditate at county level. Then it’s back to grass, ball and grunt. We go again for another season. Those of us, okay, me, born in 1952, face into year 74 minus Sam. We’ve got used to it. In fact, we’re so used to it that it would be a major shock to see Sam back before the debt on MacHale Park is fully cleared circa 2052.

So do we tune out? Not really. Too ingrained in the psyche. The days, for me dear reader, of hope are gone though. Now it’s the soap opera attached to mainstream sport that attracts me to the spate of interest. Will West Ham sack their third manager before Premier League game 10? Will Sean Dyche be out of a job before Ange Postecoglou is back in again? Will Ruben Amorim’s 3-4-3 be etched on his football tombstone or how in God’s name has insanity grasped the once sane Arne Slot? Will Sam Prendergast get his 10 back, will Spurs drop into the bottom four thus having all four of Nuno Espirito’s ex-clubs locked at the base, Wolves, West Ham, Forest and Spurs?

That for many of us is how sport has splintered. The GAA was an exception, possibly a little too conservative but wholesome, healthy and a thing you wanted to be attached to. We will spin into January and race into a league race, interest waning as the top spots are about to be decided on whether it’s all too close to championship. Which will then be consigned to a bin after the two provincial finalists get seeded for the group stages of which we face three quickfire matches between four teams to eliminate a single one in order to bring down the inter-county season late July as we enter high summer. Croke Park is now a concert venue amongst many other things. It’s GAA face is fading.

So don’t blame the likes of me, blame the haste, the hurry, the sense that the GPA representing elite get all the attention and front loading. It’s all too rushed and I’m not sure anyone ever explained why? Which begs the question, why bother writing about it, talking about it, bitching about it? One answer being is that’s it’s all I know.

Having grown up during two Mayo famines, 1955-67 and 1969-81, where possibly a handful of championship matches was the entire exposure we and the county got, we’ve now hit a point of saturation. We are asked to swallow the elephant but for no discernible reason other than the stock ‘split season’, a dollop of nods towards the clubs. That never-ether world between August and November inhabited by 98% of GAA players.

Anyway Andy is Mayo manager and by popular accord. The players wanted him, or so the Main Street newspapers and influencers told us so. The press and media wanted Andy too. The board evidently wanted him. Much of the county, okay, most of the county wanted him. Me? No. Nothing personal here towards Andy, I felt/feel we needed a few seasons of purging, different voices, less love, less carrot and more stick. Then maybe, just maybe… Andy. Instead we continue a Mayo for a Mayo fit. But I could be wrong.

Andy went from an average half-back in 2009, out-fetched by a Meath substitute for a handy point in a dismal quarter-final loss under Johnno MK2. He had before that been a fill-in for the forward line. Loud, visible but not effective, Andy for me was another creation of that Mayo conveyor belt of nice but ineffective players, great on the flat but prone to fall on the jumps. Then he appeared under Horan MK1 against Kerry in the 2011 semi-final and I didn’t recognise him. Built up, bulked up, sharp, angular, mean, purposeful, running good lines, looking for the ball… leading. I left that match thinking had we more players like Moran, maybe, just maybe we could be contenders.

In fairness, many of the team reached Andy’s standards and Andy drove the standards higher, culminating with a Player of the Year during Dublin’s relentless run. No mean achievement. From 2011 to the league final win of 2019, Andy Moran symbolised Mayo grit and leadership, essentially the go to guy. Taking over Leitrim along the way was an indicator for today’s job. A detour to Monaghan to brush and colour the CV, his work with Ballaghaderreen further adding to his image. But is Andy Moran what Mayo needs now?

Men better placed than I attest he is. The lead GAA writer of the Irish Independent Colm Keys is a backer. The Irish Times Second Opinion columnist Ciarán Murphy was more than effusive. Across the Mayo media and blogosphere it’s Andy’s Army all the way. A trend from them all is that Andy is infectious, hell he’d make the clouds part on a grey day… so what can go wrong you say?

Taking a line from 2011 to 2021, each year All-Ireland semi-finals at a minimum bar 2018. That’s a high bar, a bar we have slipped from and some.

Football has evolved so much in the last two seasons that’s it is pointless perhaps to look further back than Kevin McStay’s arrival in 2023, just three seasons ago folks, not a decade. What will Andy do that Kevin didn’t? And what was it Kevin did that Andy shouldn’t? Like all plans starting out, they look good until Tyson’s punch in the nose test. I agreed with McStay’s deployment of Conor Loftus as a playmaker and linkman. But. For it to work it needed a standing 6 and all defenders back. Having invested in that plan year one, it was abandoned after Cork in Limerick in the round robin series.

Year two then took a turn when time was invested in a player dropped a season earlier, Boland, restored to 11 and given a leading role in the league but by the time championship had settled in, the heat around the lad had cooled. Year three was a culmination of years one and two, good men and players lost in a fog and ennui settling in. A team that rattled Galway and Donegal to the bones mixed flour and water against the likes of Cavan, Leitrim and Sligo. That centre couldn’t hold. So is it the players, the system or the manager? That’s on Andy’s desk now.

In September, I read a Herald piece by Philly McMahon on Dublin’s appointment of Ger Brennan as manager. Philly played with Ger, winning two All-Irelands beside him. His piece is cold, factual, blunt and honest. Philly noted that the Dublin team after Ger moved on to higher planes not exposed to Ger. That wasn’t a clout at Ger, merely a road sign on Dublin’s journey. In siting Brennan into the current Dublin set up, Philly looked back and it was interesting who he referenced. Looking at Denis Bastick, he noted Bastick didn’t championship debut for Dublin until he was 28. He ended up with five All-Ireland medals. Dean Rock, he noted, wasn’t of Gilroy’s taste and was 25 before he debuted in the league.

Those two are part of Brennan’s backroom team. Nothing handed to them, one the son of a legend Barney, had to wrestle various Brogans out of the way before nailing a spot. Bastick, the engine room greaser that no successful team can do without, will bring that hunger, determination and a bucket of medals to the current Dublin dressing-room. They are going to need it. Dublin 2025/26 are miles off Dublin 2011-2020. Have we lost Rocks and Basticks to glamour boys over the years? What about Jason Gibbons? What about Caolan Crowe or Danny Geraghty in their prime. There are others.

Philly lays this ominous line. “Culturally, that group has changed in a big way over last few years. Ger has to put his own spin on it now. It doesn’t matter who the lads were last year in the leadership roles. He must go in and flatten the hierarchy. From day one, every player must feel like they’re being treated the same. You need to empower leaders but a pre-existing hierarchy can be an impediment to young players or just new players stepping up immediately. They already feel they’re at a disadvantage. When Dublin start training in November or whenever, it shouldn’t matter whether you are a Con O’Callaghan or someone who has just come on from the U20s. To get the most from everyone, it must be the same message across the board.” 

Will Andy come in and flatten the hierarchy? Will the old leaders still lead? Indeed will we be augmenting more older ones back in? What’s the point in going on with lads who have, let’s be honest here, had their day? How long is a piece of string, how long do we persist with what plainly hasn’t worked for us, made us predictable and flat. Same throw-in system, square pegs in pivotal positions, a team still caught in a game exorcised by most decent teams but which we clung to fatally last season. Or will we have a nice happy dressing-room where gentleness and kindliness wafts amid the scented soaps and bath bags and cool tops?

In 2004, in the aftermath of that awful final humiliation, at the next Mayo county board meeting where blood on the floor was the minimum (spoiler alert, we didn’t get it), what we got from the floor was this balm, and I paraphrase here, ‘Our aim form the start of the season was to beat Galway and win Connacht. Anything after that was a bonus’, So stinking out Croke Park over three dire games in full public view, twice against Fermanagh if you don’t mind in the semi-final plus that Kerry massacre, was okay because we beat Galway to win Connacht. Jesus wept.

In extolling Andy’s candidacy, Ciarán Murphy closed with this challenge for the new boss. “We can often be guilty of ascribing the characteristics of the player to the manager. If Joyce’s talents as an on the field leader revolved around a take-no-prisoners will to win, he had to adjust to work with a different generation of player. This has led to four Connacht titles in a row. The first item on Moran’s to-do list will be to break that hegemony.” 

I’m not sure that Joyce and Galway see winning Connacht titles as the prime focus no more than Johnno’s reign in Galway set the bar as All-Ireland winners. That’s what Joyce wants. That’s what we want. Neither should we be revisiting the year 2004 where a win against the Corrib Maroon should be celebrated as a high tide mark. We’ve long left that shore and if that’s Andy’s aim, then our fall from 2021 is steeper than imagined and his load heavier.