Surreal final day leaves Mayo in bonus territory

Mayo GAA fans are well used to rollercoaster rides but last Sunday’s topsy-turvy events in the National League were of the most extreme white-knuckle variety… even by Mayo standards.

In the final ten minutes of a hitherto low-octane encounter against Donegal at MacHale Park, the fortunes of the home side swung wildly between relegation and a place in the Division One final, and ultimately the width of a crossbar decided Mayo’s fate. Had Hugh McFadden’s shot been a few inches lower, or had the rebound fallen to a Donegal hand or boot, Mayo would have been condemned to play Division Two football in 2026. Instead, the men in Green and Red will get to play their fourth Division 1 final in seven years against Kerry in Croke Park next Sunday.

It would have been fairly unjust had Mayo ended up in the drop-zone but that is exactly what has happened to Tyrone who are relegated with a better scoring difference than Mayo. Indeed, one of the remarkable features of this Division One campaign is that Mayo finished top of the table despite having the second worst scoring difference in the league. It is also highly likely that this is the first time in the near 100-year history of the league that a team has finished top of any division having conceded more than they scored.

Back in January, which actually seems a long time ago now, it was remarked that this year’s Division One campaign was going to be the most competitive in living memory and so it proved. With 14 points up for grabs, no team managed to get to even ten, leaving Mayo top of the table with nine and Tyrone relegated with seven.

Having been off the pace in the earlier rounds, Mayo have now strung together an unbeaten run of five games – four wins and a draw – to book a place in the Croke Park decider next Sunday. However, the real achievement is not the place in the league final; it is the fact that we have survived in such a competitive division having given our opponents a considerable head-start. Mayo were favourites for relegation after that drubbing to Galway in MacHale Park in early February and even a hard-fought victory over Tyrone in the next round failed to calm the nerves. Survival was the name of the game and anything else seemed an unlikely bonus.

Yet here we are in a league final against Kerry, the same opponent we faced in both 2022 and 2019. The most recent of those ended in a heavy defeat as the Kingdom claimed the first leg of the National League/All-Ireland double, while 2019 was one of the more memorable days in Croke Park as James Horan’s men finally claimed some national silverware at the end of a decade of heartache.

There will be mixed feelings in Mayo about this league final. We begin our championship campaign against Sligo a week later in MacHale Park, which means that our footballers will have had to play on four successive weekends. Two of those games will have required long journeys to Derry and Dublin, and while some will argue that Mayo should be able to account for a Division 3 team in their championship opener, nothing can be taken for granted either. Sligo posted a big score – albeit against a demoralised Leitrim – in their final league game and they will be quite happy that Mayo has been sent off on this unexpected detour.

For Mayo, however, the league final has to be seen in the context of where we were in those final ten minutes against Donegal. If the price of staying in Division One is a place in the league final then we will happily take it. Like Kerry, we couldn’t afford to lose last Sunday, and it is no coincidence that both teams have ended up in the final, while early frontrunners like Galway and Donegal have eased off in the final rounds, having secured their Division One status.

It is disappointing that Division One of the National Football League has been reduced to this sort of cat-and-mouse between teams that don’t want to be relegated but aren’t particularly keen on reaching the final either. However, as outlined here last week, it is hard to blame the likes of Donegal who are facing into a really tough Ulster Championship campaign in April, or Galway who have a trip to New York to organise in the week after the league final.

The condensed fixture list is the problem and it could easily be resolved by leaving two weeks between the league finals and the start of the championship. Why this is not done is a mystery, especially as there is plenty of scope to extend the All-Ireland series into the summer. The GAA has been brave in its embrace of a raft of new rules in Gaelic football and it needs to show similar courage by re-arranging the fixture lists for 2026. The lessons from this year’s Division One campaign need to instruct the centenary year of the National League. A place in a Division One final should be achieved on merit and not as an unintended consequence of avoiding relegation.

Historically, Mayo have had a special affinity with the National League, although much of that dates from the early years of the competition when the men in Green and Red won six successive Division One titles between 1933 and 1939 and a seventh in 1941. Eight years later, a new generation of players captured the county’s eighth league title and followed it up with All-Ireland victories in 1950 and ’51.

Our record in the competition was a lot more modest in the second half of the twentieth century with just two titles in 50 years – 1954 and 1970. In fact, we didn’t even reach a league final between 1978 and 2001 when we captured our eleventh title with victory over Galway. Since then, we have lost finals in 2007, 2010, 2012 and 2022, as well as the victories in 2019 and 2023.

Kerry may have also reached the final by accident but they will be keen to pick up some national silverware next Sunday. There was a time in the heyday of Mick O’Dwyer when Kerry treated the National League as a get-fit programme, but since the turn of the millennium, the Kingdom have viewed league finals as a useful barometer for the year ahead. Of the seven All-Ireland senior titles won by Kerry since 2000, four were preceded by victory in Division One league finals.

Mayo, on the other hand, have a dubious championship record in years where league honours have been claimed. We have to go all the way back to 1949 for the last time that Mayo followed up a league title with a Connacht championship, let alone an All-Ireland. Most recently, the victories in 2019 and 2023, were followed by shock defeats to Roscommon, so Kevin McStay will have no doubts about where his side’s priorities lie in the busy fortnight ahead.

However, a trip to Croke Park is a great opportunity for a young Mayo team that has blossomed as this league campaign has progressed. It will be an ideal opportunity to properly assess the progress that has been made during the recent five-game unbeaten run and it will also give younger players a run-out in GAA headquarters on the day of a national final.

Mayo are already in bonus territory so a win is not the be all and end all but a good performance is important. Kerry will be keen to reverse the result from MacHale Park earlier this year, and it is hard to see David Clifford having a more ineffective game than he did that day, but the sense is that Mayo have also improved in the intervening weeks and certainly are playing with more confidence.

When we played Dublin in Croke Park in January, there were mutterings in some quarters that it might be the only time Mayo would see GAA HQ in 2025, so it’s good to be back there already for a test against one of the favourites for the All-Ireland championship. How we perform will ultimately decide whether we are considered serious contenders for Sam Maguire but the evidence of the recent league displays suggest we will give a game to anyone this summer. And regardless of what happens next Sunday, we are still playing Division One football in 2026, and that is the most important outcome of all from a surreal final round of fixtures in the National League.