The curious case of League Fatigue

There is a bad dose going around at the moment, and if you were a Mayo supporter among the 9,373 in attendance at MacHale Park last Sunday, you might have caught the latest strain.

It is not Mayo Fever, it is quite the opposite of that. Nor is it Covid-19, we pray to God. The deadly strain weaving its way through the grounds like Shane McGuigan through the heart of the Mayo defence is National Football League Fatigue 2024, let’s call it NFL-F-24 for short.

The primary symptom, quite obviously, is a general lack of interest in Mayo’s progress in the National Football League but it is the underlying symptoms you need to be wary of. Most notably, it is a feeling of indifference or in worse cases, disdain, towards Mayo potentially reaching the latter stages of this competition that they won last year.

NFL-F-24 was particularly prevalent in the air around Castlebar last Sunday and it has been for a few weeks but it could really be felt on St Patrick’s Day. Walking up sunny McHale Road about an hour before throw-in, there was a noticeably serious shortage of sinners about the place and the atmosphere was deathly quiet. It was hard to believe that only a couple of hours ago, there was such life about that famous old road for the parade.

There was a bit more life up at the turnstiles but not what one would expect for a sunny day in March, a bank holiday Sunday, St Patrick’s Day and all. In the gates and down the back of the stand, it remained eerily quiet. Did they not advertise this game or something? Have the GAA finally priced the everyday family out of attendance? With over 9,000 in attendance, it was hardly a ghost town but there was a very noticeable lull about the place. There was a very Derry-heavy presence as well but the exact ratio of Mayo:Derry supporters is pretty incalculable.

The Roscommon game a few weeks ago had a similar attendance of 9,160 but you could put that down to the game being on a cold, wet, miserable Saturday evening where the thought of an open fire and television coverage seemed a preferable option to whipping out the thermal long johns. This game had no such excuse given the lovely day that was in it, you would have expected the crowd to hit the 12 or 13,000 mark. How is it that only 213 more people filed into MacHale Park on a sunnier Sunday, with the majority off work the following day and a lot of people still in town post-parade?

Parades in other towns were mostly staged at a time that would have given ample opportunity to get to MacHale Park on time for the 3.45pm throw-in. Ballina and Ballaghaderreen’s parades both kicked off at 2.30pm parade and it would have been tight to make it on time but you would have landed in on time for Jordan Flynn’s ninth-minute goal, surely. Even with no parades, there was a feeling that everyone would have stayed at home, already inflicted with the NFL-F-24.

You could argue that Mayo had little to play for on Sunday and this kept supporters at home but that was simply not true at this moment in time. Further to this point, over 10,000 patrons packed in to see Monaghan take on a second-string Mayo team in round 7 of the league last year when Mayo had already qualified for the National League final.

Victory against the Oak Leaf county would have seen Mayo move level with Derry and ahead of them and Dublin on head-to-head and a passage to a third successive National League final was laid out before us but of course, the NFL-F-24 prevents us from entertaining that possibility.

What strikes me is that a lot of this apathetic energy seems to be trickling from the pitch to the supporters. A team would never go out and try to lose a game on purpose, Kevin McStay said as much in his post-match reaction, but at this stage, it feels like a badly hidden secret we're supposed to be all in on. A big game of nudge, nudge, wink, wink, ara sure look, it's only the League.

Are we really so above having a crack at the National Football League title? It looked like a fine ambition to strive towards after beating Galway and Dublin early on but then David Clifford snatched the result from us against Kerry. The Tyrone game was a disaster and then suddenly, the League began to look burdensome and we all started having nightmares of the defeat to Roscommon that came after winning the League last year, which epidemiologists tell us occurs in 92% of NFL-F-24 cases. Then the nudging and the winking started up.

We shouldn't see ourselves as being above the League. The Division One table is currently quite a good indicator of where everyone is at. Derry, Dublin and Kerry in first, second and third place are currently the best three teams in the country and will likely be the ones contending for honours come July or August or whenever the All-Ireland Final takes place this year.

Tyrone, Mayo and Galway, in fourth, fifth and sixth, will lead the chasing pack but are unlikely to compete with those heavy-hitters. So, are we really so above winning the National Football League again? It is not some Mickey Mouse trophy like the FA Cup in the eyes of most Liverpool fans around 6pm on Sunday. Being competitive in such a competition can only be a good thing, especially for a squad still transitioning from its previous era.

Then there is the New York problem to contend with. The scheduling is a nightmare, that point is conceded. No one fancies a trip to Croke Park before a sojourn to New York but let’s face the facts. New York should really give Mayo no trouble, even if a jet-lagged second-string panel is sent to take care of business in the Bronx. That we could all be so willing to accept a nothing burger campaign in the League when there is such a softball opening to the Championship is daftness.

That doesn’t matter now because the permutations that would need to occur for Mayo to be in the final of the National League are possible but almost beyond imagining. Personally, this writer hopes it unfolds that way. That we put an ungodly amount of points up against Monaghan in Clones and that Tyrone and Galway give Dublin and Kerry an awful hammering. I say let us have another crack at Derry in the league final now that we have unlocked the secret to winning almost any game of Gaelic football. Apparently, all it takes is having Ryan O’Donoghue lump balls in towards the square all day, who would have known? Now, if only ROD could service ROD with this incredible range passing, then we’d be unstoppable.

It is no harm to want to see your team win silverware. God knows that as a Tottenham Hotspur supporter, it is a very deprived life I lead. A League Final, almost a statistical impossibility but still, would be the shot in the arm that we need. It sounds almost like a vaccine. A jab to cure even the deadliest case of National Football League Fatigue.