Pressure eases but Mayo must keep trajectory upwards
Eugene Lavin with his family and his now former colleagues in Mayo GAA's Games Promotion and Coaching department, at a reception held in Hastings Insurance MacHale Park to mark his retirement as Mayo GAA Coaching Officer, a role the former Mayo senior goalkeeper held from 1998 to 2025.
There’s been a lot of noise over the past week or so about how reaching the final of Allianz Football League Division 1 not only wouldn’t be a priority for teams like Donegal and Galway, the division’s pacesetters, but that they might actively attempt to avoid qualification. Or that even if they do reach the final, the strength of their team selection would be tempered on account of their opening provincial championship matches taking place the following weekend.
It's hard to imagine anything that might happen in Croke Park on Saturday, March 29 could impinge on a routine Galway win in New York eight days later, but for Donegal and Derry, last year’s winners, to face off in the Ulster SFC so close to the Division 1 final certainly does smack of bad planning on behalf of the fixtures officials. That’s presuming the Tir Chonaill men get there, of course.
Galway and Donegal, however, aren’t the only Division 1 teams who commence their championship campaigns the weekend after the league final. There’s a third. Mayo. On Sunday, April 6 the Green and Red will host Sligo in a Connacht SFC quarter-final. And while it’s unlikely, with two rounds left to play, that Mayo will have to contend with an appearance in the Division 1 final the week before that clash with the Yeats County, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility either.
Victories away to bottom of the table Derry next Sunday and at home to a Donegal side possibly nonplussed about the result seven days later, would leave Mayo sitting on nine points, a tally that was good enough to secure teams a place in the Division 1 final spot in 2009, 2012, 2014, 2017 and, most recently, 2022, when Mayo advanced, after which they suffered a heavy defeat to Kerry.
They returned to the final 12 months later and based on that experience – winning the Division 1 title in ’23 and exiting the Connacht SFC one week later with defeat at home to Roscommon – there’s everything to suggest that Kevin McStay would happily settle for a continuation of his team’s form in their last three halves of football (against Derry and Kerry) without the addition of a visit to Jones’ Road at the end of this month.
Indeed, if it turns out that the visit of Donegal to MacHale Park on Sunday week does develop a sort of dead rubber feel, it’s possible that next Sunday’s match against Derry could be Mayo’s last meaningful outing before their dip into championship, because plenty will on the line in Celtic Park, of that there’s no doubt. The Oak Leaf boys simply have to win if they are to have any chance of avoiding relegation while as much as we have highlighted their albeit feint final chances, Mayo could first and foremost do with another point, or two, just to guarantee they won’t also be making the drop to Division 2 for 2026.
If they are able to replicate their performance against Kerry last time out, and the second-half in Armagh before that, where they scored 1-12 against the All-Ireland champions, you’d fancy Mayo will easily achieve that goal of remaining a top tier side.
The improvement in Mayo’s results (they have picked up five points out of a possible six in their last three games) coincided with the return of a handful of players who sat out the opening couple of rounds, as Aidan O’Shea, Jack Carney, Jordan Flynn and Jack Coyne underlined their worth. Of interest now is whether Paddy Durcan and Tommy Conroy will, as the manager has previously indicated, appear in either of the two remaining Division 1 fixtures. Their usefulness in this new rules era – Conroy’s speed against a less crowded defence and Durcan’s ability to score from outside the arc as examples – is an intriguing prospect.
There is a cohort of players who have been named on the bench for Mayo this campaign without yet making an appearance, such as Evan Ivers, Finbar McLaughlin, Kevin Quinn, Shairoze Akram, Dylan Thornton, Niall Coggins, Tom O’Flaherty, and goalkeepers Adrian Phillips and John Vahey. And there’s another cohort who have been granted limited minutes and who will wish for more before the league is done, like Eoin O’Donoghue, Cian McHale, Bob Tuohy and Sean Morahan, while others such as Conor Reid and Rory Brickenden will be hoping there are opportunities to regain the starting berths they held in earlier rounds.
Trying to balance all this whilst keeping their side on an upward trajectory is the task at hand for management right now.
Despite the upturn in Mayo’s scoring stats over the course of the past two games (1-17 against Armagh and 0-21 against Kerry), they are level with Tyrone as Division 1’s two lowest scoring teams after five rounds of matches, but they have conceded 24 points less than their hosts next Sunday, whose only point of the campaign to date was achieved when they came from nine points behind at half-time to draw with Galway at Celtic Park in Round 3.
Delighted as Paddy Tally’s side were with that point then, a similar result would be of no use this time around. And yet who needs reminding of Mayo and Derry’s tendencies for draws, their MacHale Park championship encounters that went to extra-time in 2024 and 2017 (remember that spectacular Conor Loftus goal!) being prime examples.
Don't expect there to be much in it either way.
