Recovery effort catches up on slow starting Mayo

The effort that Mayo expended in clawing back a dreadful start ultimately cost them from taking any points from Saturday’s trip to the capital. That was the opinion of manager Kevin McStay after his side’s 1-17 to 1-15 defeat to Dublin on the opening night of the 2025 Allianz Football League – and first competitive road-test of Gaelic football’s new playing rules.

Mayo were four points behind inside a minute and trailed 1-6 to 0-2 after a quarter hour yet by half-time were two points ahead such was the scintillating nature of their second quarter display.

The reason for such improvement?

“Our work-rate, our tackle count and also we were more direct, we were moving at pace and moving the ball forward quite vertically at pace, and that was opening up big gaps,” said Kevin McStay afterwards.

“We got a terrific goal to give us real energy and at half-time we really felt the points were there for us and we went chasing them in the second-half, but it just wasn’t to be.” 

Mayo, in that first-half period, had blitzed Dublin for 1-7 without reply in just 13 minutes but scored only 0-8 in the other 57 minutes of playing time. And Kevin McStay was bothered by that.

“The big thing that hurt us was attack completion, it was the worst we’ve had for yonks, balls being fumbled, or into the goalie’s hands… you’re on the back foot, you’re essentially giving a turnover, and we did a lot of that tonight. But then we played a challenge last week and our completion was fantastic, so that’s the consistency that we’re looking for and every team is looking for – to stay at it for the full 70.

“The big takeaway for me is that the boys are in good shape for this time of year. There’s massive heart in the team, they drove on. We were probably a little bit short overall in terms of getting the two points because our start just left us with a fair bit to do. That second quarter took up a fair bit of energy out of us,” admitted the Mayo boss.

Management gave first senior starts to Davitt Neary and Fenton Kelly (the latter having appeared once as a sub in 2024) and there were debuts off the bench too for Cian McHale and Sean Morahan, while another relative newcomer, Conor Reid, supplied Mayo’s goal.

McStay expressed satisfaction at how the fresh faces acquitted themselves and disagreed with the notion that some of the new rules might persuade managers to only pick a certain style of player.

“We want good footballers, the best footballers, the most skillful footballers. The highest quality footballers were good in the old game and they’re going to be the best players in the new game too.

“I didn’t think the rules had a big bearing, I just think it was a decent game of football, reasonably open. There were good parts and bad parts. The tap and go was probably the big takeaway,” expressed Kevin McStay, pleased, too, with how goalkeeper Colm Reape performed his ‘12th man’ duties inside the opposition’s half, now that teams are forced to keep three players in either half at all times.

“The guy you can commit most generously and who won’t frighten the life out of you is your ‘keeper, and I thought [Colm’s] overall game was really, really good. He scored one point and his interventions were very good in terms of coming into the line, so we’re trying to develop every aspect of it.” 

Whether Reape alone was to blame or whether it was as much due to a lack of movement outfield, Dublin had scored heavily off Mayo’s own kick-outs in the first quarter. And with every ‘keeper now forced to at least kick beyond the new 40-metre arc, it has all of a sudden placed great emphasis again on midfielders.

“There’s going to be very little clean catching,” predicts Kevin McStay. “It’s going to be the breaking ball, the stuff on the floor is going to decide it. It’s trying to dictate that the opposition goalie goes long, that’s the first job, and once he goes long you have to go after it.” 

The kick-out is also one of the reasons why, he believes, there were so few frees conceded on Saturday night by either side. Out of 2-32 scored by both teams combined, only 0-2 came from placed balls.

“If you’re conceding frees it’s double edged because you’ve to take the kick-out and they’ve a minute to get set for that kick-out so they’re nearly definitely going to force you long, and then you’re into a contest, you’re into a 50-50. So everyone’s looking at trying to keep the concession of frees as low as possible.” 

An obvious difference between the teams on Saturday was Mayo’s willingness to create and take on two-point opportunities and Dublin’s near blank refusal to do the same. Fergal Boland alone had three first-half attempts from outside the arc, scoring one, and Ryan O’Donoghue had one attempt in either half, including Mayo’s last kick of the game which would have secured a draw had it not sailed right of the posts. The home side, in contrast, had just one long-range shot for the entire match.

It wasn’t an instruction to his players, said Kevin McStay, to shoot for two points but “something you feel your way through”.

“We’ll have to have a look at where those shots came from. I’d say once or twice we might have forced that two pointer, in that we brought the ball out ourselves, certainly near the end when we were trying to get the draw. But generally we got the ball into the hands of good shooters and it just didn’t happen for us tonight. The two points is not simple.” 

Mayo return to action next weekend with a home game against Connacht rivals Galway, who commenced their Division 1 campaign with a 1-12 to 0-9 revenge win against All-Ireland champions Armagh. Originally fixed for 3.45pm next Sunday, February 2, damage to the floodlights at Hastings Insurance MacHale Park caused by Storm Éowyn has forced the GAA to bring forward the throw-in time. The referee is Noel Mooney from Cavan.