Provincial glory must be primary focus of Mayo

For a county that craves success, Mayo has become a bit blasé about the Connacht senior football championship. At the start of each year, all the talk is about winning the All-Ireland title, which seems a bit ridiculous when we currently have a team that hasn’t won a Connacht title since 2021.

Perhaps we were spoilt during James Horan’s first period in charge when we won five provincial championships on the bounce, several of them by wide margins. Then came 2016 and 2017 when we reached the All-Ireland Final despite crashing out in Connacht, which may have created an illusion that a provincial title isn’t that important when the principal aim is to lift the Sam Maguire Cup. Try telling that to Galway who have won six Connacht titles to Mayo’s two in the decade from 2016 to 2025 and are now on the cusp of a first five-in-a-row (for them) since 1960.

Mayo’s record in the Connacht Senior Championship during the past decade has been the worst it’s been in half a century. Not since the ten-year period from 1976 to 1985 have so few provincial titles been claimed by our senior team. Older readers will recall those dismal days of the 1970s when Mayo went an entire decade – 11 summers, in fact – without winning in Connacht before finally reclaiming the Nestor Cup in 1981. A second followed in 1985, a year that came to be regarded as a turning point in the fortunes of Mayo football after two memorable All-Ireland semi-finals against Dublin in Croke Park.

Those were the days when entry into the All-Ireland series was dependent on success in the provincial competitions so the incentive to win was much more urgent. The back door route may have diminished the do-or-die nature of provincial championships but the statistics of the past quarter of a century show that the best way to win an All-Ireland is to win in your own back yard earlier in the summer. Just seven of the All-Ireland champions in the past 25 years came via the back door, and Armagh in 2024 were the first to do it since Cork in 2010.

It’s no coincidence that James Horan’s Mayo were at their most potent when they were winning Connacht titles. Seven provincial championships were claimed between 2006 and 2015 – the most Mayo have ever claimed in a ten-year period. In the preceding decade (1996 to 2005), Mayo won four championships and the same number was also claimed between 1986 and 1995, so a return of two in the past ten years is quite dismal by modern standards. Consider that both of those championships were won in Covid times – one in an empty Pearse Stadium in the winter of 2020 and the other in a quarter-full Croke Park in the summer of 2021 – and you get a sense that Mayo could really do with success in the Connacht championship this summer. Younger Mayo fans need to see their side lift some championship silverware and it’s more realistic to set a target for provincial glory than an All-Ireland title that has eluded the county for 75 years.

It’s common enough for Mayo supporters to criticise Padraig Joyce, and even belittle his achievements in Galway, but one thing that cannot be denied is that he has restored his county’s supremacy in Connacht. When Joyce took charge in 2019, Mayo had won eight provincial titles in the 21st century to Galway’s seven; the figure now stands at 11 to 10 in Galway’s favour. It’s not a dramatic shift in the tectonic plates but it is nonetheless significant and reflects a trend going all the way back to 1951.

In the first half century of the provincial championship from 1902 to 1951, Mayo won 26 titles to Galway’s 16 (I am giving Mayo the 1910 championship, which has been incorrectly awarded to Galway – more on that in a future article), but in the 75 years since 1951, the share of Connacht titles has been 34 to 22 in Galway’s favour. Indeed, Roscommon with 15 in the past 75 years aren’t too far behind Mayo, so talk of All-Ireland titles seems a little misplaced when we are struggling to make a mark in our own bailiwick.

The obsession with national glory has become so all-consuming for some Mayo supporters that there is danger that the Connacht Championship is overlooked in the ‘grand’ scheme of things. Last year was a perfect example when a debate ensued over whether it was worth winning the provincial championship because an ‘easier’ group awaited the defeated team. Well, we saw how that one worked out.

Mayo needs to win this year’s Connacht Championship more than Roscommon or Galway. We cannot fall into the sort of rut that developed in the 1970s where one summer rolled into another and suddenly an entire decade had passed without provincial glory. The truth is that if we cannot beat Roscommon and Galway in our local championship, we have no place hankering after All-Ireland titles.

If Andy Moran is to win a provincial championship in his first year as banisteoir, he will have to do it the hard way. Moran won’t be complacent about next weekend’s opener against London because he was there in 2011 when James Horan almost came a cropper in his first championship game in charge. However, victory over London must be a given, and a home tie against Roscommon then awaits. It’s a Roscommon team that has high hopes of provincial glory, so much so that it was willing to sacrifice a place in the National League Division 1 Final by fielding a weakened team against Mayo just two weeks ago. Mayo will need to produce their best performance of Moran’s brief reign to overcome the Rossies and set up a possible showdown against Galway in Pearse Stadium.

Of course, there will be twists and turns along the way and we cannot presume anything, but Moran and his players should be gunning for a crack at Galway on the second weekend in May. Regaining the Connacht championship after a half-decade in the wilderness would be a real sign of meaningful progress, and it could become the stepping stone to greater things in the summer.

It’s inevitable that many Mayo supporters want to see their team competitive again on the national stage, and there is no reason that this group of players cannot make a significant dent on the All-Ireland series in 2026, but the best way to test that theory is to judge them on their performances in Connacht. With the notable exception of 2016 and 2017, when we had a battle-hardened, vastly experienced group of players, Mayo tends to be at their best when they have a Connacht title under their belts. I think that would be especially true for this young team, many of whom have yet to win a Connacht senior medal.

The next few weeks may be some of the most important in the recent history of the Mayo senior team and they could define Andy Moran’s reign as manager. It is completely unreasonable to expect Moran to achieve in his first season what every Mayo banisteoir since 1951 has failed to do – win an All-Ireland title – but restoring the county’s bragging rights in Connacht is a very realistic goal. And preventing the Tribesmen from completing a rare provincial five-in-a-row makes it an even more tantalising prospect.