Snatching defeat from the jaws of a draw

“They’re not the best at what they do, they’re the only ones that do what they do”. The words uttered in 1978 by music promoter Bill Greham about The Grateful Dead before a concert in San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom.

After a pulsating Sunday against hot favourites Donegal, only Mayo could lose the match in the manner that they lost it. Hence I’m grasping at Bill Greham’s summation of The Grateful Dead to make sense of Mayo, on Sunday and if truth be told, before it too.

This piece can be broken into three parts. Part one was last Sunday’s display. Unbeaten in the Hyde since 2001, Mayo didn’t fear Donegal. They went toe to toe with them. The earlier Monaghan versus Down match had thrown up a score of 2-27 to 1-26, a perfect example of how the new rules have opened up the game. We were up next and the half-time score of 0-09 to 0-06 in favour of Donegal reflected a more old fashioned game, possession based, back and over, reluctance to take on a shot. The closeness of the scoring kept the interest up. Donegal at one stage went nineteen minutes without a score, Mayo seventeen.

However, that first-half showed ultimately why Donegal would win. In Michael Murphy, they had a football conductor and maestro on the pitch. We didn’t. That folks was the difference in the end. When Donegal were striving to hit the high musical notes Murphy was there to improvise, never once missing a beat in that first-half against the tricky wind.

Looking back, we might regret not getting the likes of Conor Dawson on the ball or encouraging him to shoot earlier and more often.

We played well in the second-half or was it that Donegal didn’t? I’m not sure. But we can only do what we were allowed to do. Donegal didn’t cut loose but crucially, neither did we. We kept each other at arm’s length. Tight, tense and thrilling. Finally, Murphy made a mistake and it ended up in their net. But. He recovered again to chaperone them back into midstream.

In football terms, we died with our boots on. Some have referenced that we were carried out on our shields. Alas, it’s not for the first time.

Whilst Murphy’s only blunder led to a Mayo goal, we had a number of turnovers that should have led to Donegal goals. Luck that mocked us at the end also favoured us in the game, like where a desperate flick of our previously absent goalkeeper’s white boot gave away a 45 and not a goal.

Michael Murphy’s name featured everywhere; block, fetch, score, pass, run, putting the kettle on. That’s what winning teams breed, real and visible leaders. To conclude this first part, the match itself, we did enough to win, even draw. But we didn’t. Was it because we didn’t have a Murphy, because everywhere else we matched them?

Part two focuses on lessons learned. Or lessons never learned. A year ago against Dublin in the Hyde, believe it or not, having gone ahead at the death, all Mayo had to do was manage the closing seconds. Cue a Cluxton kickout out to the wing, Ciaran Kilkenny’s hands quickly passing to a flying Jack McCaffrey then Cormac Costello and an equalising point. A simple foul on the initial kickout might have saved us going out a week later to dead-in-the-water Derry.

Go back to 2001, Hyde Park again, and we lead by two at the death against Roscommon. Only a goal can save them. They get it, Stephen Lohan firing into the corner of the net where the unlucky to be sent-off Ray Connelly should have been standing. The goal came from us fannying around. A ball going out of play was palmed back into action by us but to a Roscommon man. The end result is described two lines up.

Dublin versus Mayo, the 2017 All-Ireland final, and only seconds left. The Dubs are leading after a lucky free at end and the referee looks at his watch. Cue kickout. Suddenly every Mayo defender is dragged to the ground and the kickout goes over the sideline. We were goosed, cheated even, but winning teams know what must be done to gain those inches, win those big cups. Did anyone on the pitch last Sunday think, as Shaun Patton lined up his kickout and the hooter about to sound, about a year ago on the same turf against Dublin, about engaging the gears leading to the brain. ‘Donegal must not be allowed to win this kickout. Foul them if needed. Protect the f****** result and put us through. Remember what happened last year!’ No.

Do we actually deserve sympathy or should we get a kick in the arse? I have lost count the amount of matches we have blown from winning positions, from not having the smarts to see the deal out. We are masters at finding a toe or finger to blow off come the right set of circumstances. Or are we? Is there something noble and honest in our makeup that prevents us from reaching into the bag of dark arts?

Thirdly, all focus will now be on the Cavan loss. That would be wrong. Cavan go through with a minus point difference of -29, we are out with a +2 difference, but that’s the rules, the head to heads do that. True, as Tomás Ó Sé stated, Mayo are better than many of the teams now going into the actual knockouts, possibly Cork, Louth, Down and whisper it, Dublin. Cavan, whether we like it or not, were better than us when it mattered. But is that too simplistic? Was the Cavan match the one where the sticking plaster that has covered our downward trajectory since 2021 was finally ripped off?

This current Mayo iteration started in a bright blaze. Slaloming through the 2023 National Football League, winning the title, getting turned over by a bullish Roscommon then gaslighting Kerry in Killarney before wobbling against Louth, then Cork, beating a tired Galway and getting hammered by Dublin. That 2023 season saw us reach the quarter-finals proper. The next season, 2024, the trajectory was flat. We failed to fire in the league, lost, unluckily, to Galway in the Connacht final, went on to beat Cavan and the Rossies before blowing a result against Dubs and losing on penalties to a bust Derry in a preliminary quarter-final.

This year, whether we liked it or not, was/is a referendum on the current set-up. Meekly losing a league final to Kerry with championship wins recorded against Leitrim and Sligo before losing another Connacht final to Galway, then to Cavan, a resurrection against Tyrone and burial by Donegal. We don’t even make the last twelve.

Unfortunately the graph is downward but as Sunday’s result and display shows, the difference between us and other teams isn’t that wide. It’s the crazy oscillation that kills us. For every sunny day in Killarney against Kerry we have a Cork in Limerick. For very glory day in Omagh we have a Cavan in Castlebar. For every draw against the Dubs we have a shocker against Louth. Between 2011 and 2021 we mixed almost boring consistency with grit, between 2016 and 2021 an uncanny knock of turning most sides over. Now we spin wildly between Cavan and a Kerry, Tyrone and a Cork, Dublin and a Louth, even recently struggling against Leitrim but Sunday suit stuff against Galway.

Where to now? You tell me. As Bill Greham stated about The Grateful Dead, ‘They’re not the best at what they do, they’re the only ones that do what they do’. How true of Mayo, the last of the romantics.