Relying on Ryan for revenge on the Rossies

As soon as Mayo was drawn opposite Roscommon in the 2023 football championship draw, Davy Burke's team were fixated on one fixture. Pre-season was irrelevant. The league was irrelevant. At that point, the rest of the Connacht championship was irrelevant. Mayo was the carrot dangling at the end of the stick.

At that point Roscommon hadn't played their rivals in the Connacht championship since an up-and-coming Mayo side bullied their opponents and emerged with a six-point win during the pandemic. The lack of a home crowd had a detrimental effect on Roscommon that day as a Mayo side in transition proceeded to yet another Connacht final. And they did so without having to deal with much of a fight from their hosts. That will have hurt Roscommon, a county that takes pride in pulling Mayo down from dizzying heights.

Since that 2020 fixture, Roscommon had been craving another crack at Mayo, this time with the energy of a feverish crowd to pull on. The draw delivered and added spice had been injected into the fixture in the form of the new Mayo manager Kevin McStay, a former Roscommon manager who had helped them win their first provincial championship since 2010 back in 2017. The tie was beautifully poised for an ambush.

Speaking to the media after last year's win in a squally MacHale Park, Burke didn't hide the fact that his side had been planning to raise their Jolly Roger above Mayo's home ground for months.

"When I met Donie Smith first in November he told me they’d be ready for Easter Sunday," the Roscommon manager said. "They had it marked in the calendar a long way out."

It turned out to be a tactical masterclass from the young manager’s outfit as they strangled Mayo's then high-flying attack who could still smell the confetti cannon smoke following their league final win over Galway a week earlier. Roscommon plugged the centre of their own defence, leaving a listless Mayo to forage for half opportunities elsewhere. At no point across the 70 minutes of play did the visitors appear confused or unsteady – that’s the result of months of preparation dedicated to one date in the calendar. Roscommon ultimately ran out four-point winners, but for most of the second-half it was as if they had built walls and turrets across the Castlebar pitch.

Mayo were miles off the pace. That may be down to fatigue following their league final in Croke Park seven days earlier. It could also be said that inclement weather didn't play to Mayo's strengths. In truth though, they simply didn't seem to know Roscommon as much as Roscommon knew them. Burke's men knew everything about them – how they like to transition, the angles from which their forwards like to shoot, the timing of their bowel movements.

Though Roscommon currently boast the bragging rights, there's little to suggest the same time and effort won't go into stifling Mayo again this weekend in Hyde Park. The tactics however may not need to be quite so elaborate this time around. For Mayo's success has become heavily dependent on opponents' ability to shut down the influence of one man – Ryan O'Donoghue.

The Belmullet man's importance in the Mayo team is never questioned, yet his name is rarely uttered among the very top echelon of forwards in the country. That he isn't mentioned in the same category as David Clifford, Darragh Canavan, Con O'Callaghan and Shane McGuigan is an inexplicable injustice.

Mayo remain one of the best sides in the country and O'Donoghue is as imperative to the success of his team as any of the aforementioned. In fact, there's an argument to be made that he's more important, particularly given many of his fellow Mayo forwards are struggling to reach the heights they have previously.

Without their star corner-forward this spring, Mayo would likely have been looking ahead to Division Two football in 2025. Sure, he's not as flashy as some of his contemporaries. But he brings a deadly efficiency to the game, having grown into a splendidly dependable footballer. Any weaknesses remain unknown. Above all else, no player works harder than the 25-year-old All Star.

In the championship opener against New York earlier this month, O'Donoghue scored 1-13. And that tally only told so much of his individual story on the day. He zipped around Gaelic Park like he was in a battery commercial and produced scores from nothing when the Americans seemed to have clogged their defence with bodies.

The ball inevitably found its way into the forward's hands when a goal chance eventually developed. That didn't happen by chance. And he has developed into a player that doesn't miss such opportunities. He struck just at the right moment too – until that point the game had been a cagey affair and New York had been successfully dragging the favourites into a tussle.

The great forwards consistently produce influential moments in both the major and minor games. They're as likely to pull their side out of the fire against a minnow as snatching a winner against a heavyweight. O'Donoghue's scrapbook of these moments has been gradually filling up over the last 18 months.

So finding a way to neutralise O’Donoghue goes a long way to halting Mayo's progress. In last year's game against Roscommon, O'Donoghue only scored two points, both of which came from placed balls. Mayo were starved of ideas as a result. When O'Donoghue finds his voice, on the other hand, Mayo prospers. In the side's historic win against Kerry last summer, the corner-forward scored five and, like a hare in a meadow, was impossible to pin down on a day when Mayo should have won by more.

Roscommon will be acutely aware of this reality heading into the weekend. As was the case last year, they'll likely have had an eye on him since the draw was first made last October, working off the assumption that Mayo would have enough to ease past New York in their championship opener.

At this stage, O'Donoghue is used to the special attention. But sooner rather than later, he'll need more help in the forward line or Mayo will be harshly punished. And Roscommon have proven time and again that they will grasp any opportunity to hand down such a punishment.