Reasons for optimism but Mayo set for biggest test yet this season

If any single statistic demonstrates the amount of transition the Mayo senior football team has undergone in recent seasons, perhaps it’s that when Mayo picked up two league points on their last but one visit to Kerry, they used 10 players all of whom have since retired. But what makes for even more stark reading is that of the 20 players who featured for the Green and Red in that 1-10 to 0-11 victory in Tralee’s Austin Stack Park back in March 2019, only three – Aidan O’Shea, Stephen Coen and Fergal Boland – have seen minutes in Mayo’s opening two games of this Allianz Football League campaign. And none of that is to also factor in the change of management since then, with Kevin McStay no doubt hoping his side can next Saturday (7.30pm in Tralee) replicate their results over the Kingdom in both league and championship last season, in what was his maiden year in charge.

There’s every reason for Mayo to pack some confidence into their overnight bags for this journey south – and for more reason than their opening two wins against Galway and Dublin in this defence of their Division 1 title. Their modern-day record in visiting Kerry would probably be the envy of any other team in the country; of the last eight league encounters on Kingdom soil, Mayo have won five and drawn one. And even the two defeats were only by one point (2022) and two points (2009).

Nor can we forget Mayo’s handsome five points victory over Kerry in Killarney in Round 1 of the All-Ireland SFC last year. How supporters would lap it up should Mayo come any way close to replicating that display or indeed the performance earlier that season where they beat Jack O’Connor’s team by seven points in Castlebar.

That game, like next Saturday’s, was a third-round Division 1 fixture, and took place on February 18 as opposed to this one on February 17, so it will be interesting how the outcome will be viewed in that prism: the difference being that last year Kerry were on the back of winning an All-Ireland SFC Final as opposed to this year recuperating from an All-Ireland SFC Final defeat, with Mayo again expected to have a little more groundwork done.

There’s a fair old incentive for McStay’s men to extend their unbeaten run as it would all but secure their safety in the division and give four more games for management to toy with personnel, tactics and formations – given that everyone and their mother seems hellbent against the idea of Mayo actually trying to retain the second biggest trophy in Gaelic football.

The fact that Kerry have already lost under the floodlights of Tralee this season is another cause for some Mayo optimism, albeit there’s the not-so-insignificant matter of the Clifford brothers, David and team captain Paudí, being almost certain to play on Saturday whereas neither were involved in that first round loss to Mickey Harte’s Derry. The pair were sprung from the bench at half-time against Monaghan in Round 2, with Footballer of the Year David scoring a goal in what ended as a nine points win for Kerry against the team who had shocked Dublin in Croke Park only the week before.

Mayo have some heavy hitters of their own who have yet to make their seasonal reappearance but Kevin McStay has been non-committal about the timeline for the return of Matthew Ruane, Diarmuid O’Connor, Padraig O’Hora, Enda Hession and James Carr, so for now it’s a case of wait and see. But with Conor Reid and Eoghan McLaughlin both sustaining injuries in the first-half of Mayo’s victory over Dublin last Saturday week, it’s a certainty that there will be changes to the starting fifteen and to the substitutes bench. Reid and McLaughlin’s replacements on that occasion, Donnacha McHugh and Stephen Coen, performed impressively, with Coen even managing a first goal in his 106 league and championship appearances, so both players will fancy their chances of lining out for the anthem here.

There’s also the fact that two members of the Mayo defence, Sam Callinan and Rory Brickenden, are set to play in a Sigerson Cup final for UCD this Wednesday, just four days out from this Kerry showdown, which is being televised live by RTÉ.
It’s possible that Saturday’s clash could see a return to the match-day squad for Callinan’s Ballina Stephenites clubmate Frank Irwin, whose own involvement in the Sigerson Cup ended with University of Limerick’s semi-final exit to UCD. Irwin turned in a man-of-the-match display when kicking 0-3 in UL’s quarter-final win against DCU but has yet to feature in the 2024 Allianz Football League, despite starting at centre-forward for Mayo in January’s FBD League clash with London.

The question of who marks David Clifford – it would be a fascinating examination of David McBrien, who is more and more looking of Rolls Royce quality – will occupy the minds of management this week, so too whether to play Paul Towey, Tommy Conroy, or both, in a full-forward line where Aidan O’Shea lacks a real scoring threat and Ryan O’Donoghue shoulders too much of the burden.

Fergal Boland, from the half-forward line, has played a pivotal role in both Mayo’s league wins to date this season, and on his last visit to Tralee scored three points from play, even if Kerry snatched a 1-12 to 0-14 win in 2022. Something similar from the Aghamore man on Saturday and it might just inspire Mayo to the unlikeliest of starts to Division 1 – a trio of wins against the three teams who have contested the last two All-Ireland SFC finals.