Taking points is fine but what if the goals never come?
Mayo manager Kevin McStay has warned that some team will pay the price when his side hits its goal groove. Pictures: Sportsfile
No matter how bad things are, it’s reckoned they could always be worse.
As disappointing as losing to Galway last Sunday week was – for players and supporters alike – the manner of Mayo’s defeat paled in comparison to when the county was beaten by Galway at Pearse Stadium in the preliminary round of the 2007 Connacht SFC.
The reason for looking back upon that game is because like now, Mayo’s subsequent mission then was to get back on the horse with a home championship match against Cavan.
A Mayo team that had contested two of the previous three All-Ireland SFC finals, who were now managed by two-time All-Ireland winning boss John O’Mahony, who were hot off contesting that season’s National Football League Division 1 final and who could include in their ranks players who, by the end of their careers, would amass 13 GAA All-Star Awards, managed to score just two points from play in what ended as a 2-10 to 0-9 defeat to a Galway team managed by a Mayo man – Peter Ford.
And it wasn’t as though this was a world-beating Galway team – a defeat in the Connacht final in what remains Sligo’s only time to lift the Nestor Cup in almost 50 years, is testament to that fact, so too Galway’s subsequent exit from the All-Ireland Qualifiers at the hands of Meath.
The nine points Mayo scored (Conor Mortimer 0-6f, Alan Dillon 0-2 (1f), Andy Moran 0-1) was still more than what the team had managed against Galway only two years earlier, against at Pearse Stadium, when losing the Connacht SFC final by 0-10 to 0-8. So the Green and Red weren’t nearly so dreadful when pipped at the post by the Tribesmen earlier this month, albeit the manner in which they were beaten – overtaken in stoppage time – had a quite sickening feel about it. Mayo’s 15 points would have won three of the previous four championship between the teams and with seven different Mayo players scoring from play (compared to Galway’s four), there was a decent spread too – despite their nine very costly wides. What there wasn’t, however, was as much as one sniff of a threat to Connor Gleeson’s goal throughout the near 80 minutes of football played in sunny Salthill. In contrast, it had taken the spectacular and the sensational to prevent Galway from bursting Mayo’s net in both halves.
Speaking in Gaelic Park directly after his side had commenced this year’s Connacht SFC campaign with a routine victory over New York, Mayo manager Kevin McStay addressed the issue of goal chances not taken that day. Cillian O’Connor rifled home a second-half penalty and while Ryan O’Donoghue did fire past New York goalkeeper Joey Grace in the first-half, he had another attempt saved by Grace before half-time while the team captain Paddy Durcan hit the butt of the left post, and in the second-half Grace also saved close range efforts by Aidan O’Shea, Paul Towey and Sam Callinan.
“We have to be better in front of the goal and that’s our number one work-on, to tidy up our play,” conceded the manager. “But we’re generating these goal chances very regularly so I’m not going to get sleepless nights over that. Once we’re generating them and we’re getting into position, I’m happy. One of the days we’re going to stick them in the net and then it’s God help somebody.”
It's been God help nobody yet, although it was Roscommon’s own wastefulness – having created better and more goal chances – that resulted in their defeat to Mayo in the Connacht semi-final. But the ease with which both Roscommon and Galway managed to prise open the Mayo defence should not have come as much of a surprise given that against New York, the opposition’s centre-forward Frank O’Reilly and full-back (and captain) Jamie Boyle each raised green flags just eight minutes apart in the third quarter when in five previous championship meetings between the teams, the Exiles had only ever scored one goal.
“We’ll have a bit of an inquest and see how they came about,” assured McStay afterwards, and yet on other days either or both of Roscommon’s Enda Smith and Eoin McCormack, and Galway’s Damien Comer and John Maher, could have rattled Mayo’s onion bag, whereas the record book will somehow show that Mayo, against their two big rivals, kept clean sheets in the 2024 Connacht SFC. But to borrow a line from the previous page and James Laffey’s wonderfully insightful assessment of Mayo’s present situation, “There are lies, damned lies and statistics, or as Mark Twain eloquently put it: ‘Facts are stubborn, statistics are more pliable’.”
So how’s this for a fact: since their five goals against Leitrim in 2021, only once in the sixteen championship matches since have Mayo scored two goals from play – that when, after Oisin Mullin’s opener, Jordan Flynn lobbed goalkeeper Aaron O’Neill from out the field during a 2-13 to 0-14 victory over Kildare in the 2022 All-Ireland Round 2 Qualifier at Croke Park. Conversely, Mayo have conceded two goals from play four times over the same period.
Perhaps if you had the time to examine how many times the likes of Dublin and Kerry have scored at least two goals from play over the course of their last sixteen championship matches, it would go some way to explaining just why Mayo have slipped to 16/1 (sixth favourites) to win this year’s All-Ireland SFC and why the 11/2 odds for them to even reach the final are the same as those offered on Derry to lift Sam Maguire. Dublin are 6/4 and Kerry are 5/2.
On the back of those two measly points from play against Galway in 2007, Mayo at least returned to the pitch and hit Cavan for 1-19 in MacHale Park on a day that marked Pearse Hanley’s first and penultimate match as a Mayo senior footballer. Something as emphatic will be sought on Saturday, if only to remind Roscommon that we’ll be coming for them in Round 2 as well.
