Sunday’s game is a tightrope for both sides

There are days in Gaelic football when a team plays so well it feels like they’ve been touched by the hand of God – moving with purpose and precision and divine grace. And then there are days when Mayo play well. When they’re not so much inspired as possessed. And you suspect it’s the hand of the devil at work – the ball moves like it has a mind of its own, players pop up in places where they've no business being and choreography becomes chaos.

That sense of beautiful insanity was witnessed in Croke Park back in 2017 when Mayo chewed up a strong Roscommon side, inflicting a 22-point defeat on their neighbours with surgical cruelty. Roscommon, then managed by Kevin McStay, walked into a massacre conducted in slow motion, a week after they had barely stumbled to a draw against the Connacht champions.

That was the enigma that was Rochford’s Mayo at the time. You could scout them ad nauseam. But you could never predict what team would turn up. One week, they played like a team on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The following week, they looked like a band of outlaws galloping towards an All-Ireland title with fire in their eyes and a war plan nobody else could read.

Mayo didn’t build form under Rochford. In those summers, nothing was steady. Everything was streaky and strange. And in Omagh in the last round, following a loss to Cavan in Castlebar, it felt like the Rochford Way had returned. Just when you wondered if that beautiful madness had been boxed up and put away for good, it resurfaced to save Mayo's season.

As McStay was convalescing, Rochford was back in the hot seat, and Mayo looked like a team let off the leash. What followed wasn’t just a victory over Tyrone; it was the exorcism of a meekness that had haunted them thus far in the championship.

When the tannoy crackled into life at Healy Park, you’d swear the announcer had taken a bang to the head – Rory Brickenden, Sean Morahan, Conal Dawson and Bob Tuohy were all named to start after hardly kicking a ball all year. Paddy Durcan, returning for his first start in over twelve months, played like he’d been buried with a grudge and dug up just in time to make the throw-in.

Tactically, it was pure Rochford.

Even when a monster Niall Morgan two-point free reeled Tyrone back to within a point, and it was beginning to look like Mayo may run out of gas, the visitor refused to flinch. They fired over scores like they were merely tossing logs on a fire. From that Morgan free, Mayo outscored the hosts 1-6 to 0-3 It was chaotic and inspired with just a hint of lunacy. It was a return to the Mayo that was never short on entertainment. And it's the type of football that will be required to overcome a Jim McGuiness side built on structure and discipline.

His teams move like clockwork – hard running, hard tackling, hard to break down. You don’t beat them by out-planning them. Because nobody does that better than the Glenties oracle. You beat Donegal by making them uncomfortable, by dragging them into a game for which they didn’t rehearse. And if there’s one man in the country who knows how to do that, it’s the man who used to sit on the Donegal sideline with a glint in his eye while menacingly plotting the next move beside Declan Bonner.

Rochford doesn’t deal in spreadsheets and patterns. He deals in moods. His teams don’t unfold; they erupt. And that, more than anything, is what will unnerve McGuinness. Because there’s nothing a man of system fears more than the absence of system. There's nothing so troubling as standing on the sideline and not knowing who, or what, is coming at you next.

The game is a tightrope for both sides. Donegal are humming. Mayo are humming. Donegal have found a new level of confidence in the off-season. Mayo did likewise in Omagh. But both sides also know that one bad day in Roscommon could mean the end of the road. No trip to Croke Park. No quarter-final. Not even a preliminary quarter-final. Nothing but regrets and club training on a Tuesday night.

Away from the drama in Tyrone, you can imagine Kevin McStay was watching with a bittersweet smile. He will have been immensely proud of his side, no doubt. But it must have stung a little, too. Managers don’t mind the team doing well in their absence; they just prefer if it doesn’t look quite so lively without them.

But for now, McStay has more important things on his mind. His recovery takes precedence. But even as he rests, he’ll have recognised the value in a performance like that, not just for the team but for the county as a whole. Mayo needed a shake. And in Rochford, they got a man who doesn’t so much tweak a team as rewire its entire nervous system. It was his imprint all over Omagh – the wild team selection, the ferocious energy, the defiance.

But there’s nothing to say McStay can’t bring his own brand of electricity when he returns. In truth, he already has. The league title in his first year in charge wasn’t some fluke – it was a side re-energised and tearing into the year under a new voice. McStay can still lift this team again. He’s done it before.

And Mayo may need that second injection. If they get past Donegal, the road will only get more challenging as the path turns towards Croke Park. It will take the perfect blend chaos and calm to get through what lies ahead. And having both men in the room might just be what gives them a chance.

For now, Rochford’s approach is the order of the day – unpredictable, unruly and just coherent enough to work. And after a stop on the hard shoulder, the Mayo bandwagon may just be back on the road again.