The darkest hour is still to come for Mayo

This I didn’t see coming. And this is as bad as Longford 2010.

We could beat Tyrone, we could beat Donegal, but what would that tell us? A team on an upward trajectory or a team blowing in the wind?

Ourselves and Cavan are conjoined in a sepia-tinted way. Between their 1948 All-Ireland win against Mayo and their last, against Meath in 1952, we won our last two crowns. Four titles split between us inside a five year spell. And whilst in the last 35 years we moved up the ladder and they essentially trod water, Sunday in Castlebar saw their level and ours meet once more. How reflective that result of both teams’ All-Ireland ambitions I’ll leave to the bookies. Cavan, though, will enjoy their outing.

A game played in blinding heat with no hooter essentially giving two fingers to the followers. No TV either, nor even subscription access. Maybe that’s a good thing; our initial humiliation was confined to the radio. Just like in the old days.

I sat in the sun, Midwest as my eyes and ears, a folded newspaper on my lap with a sheet of paper and biro in hand. The Business Post had an article on Real Madrid and Senior Perez outlining Real Madrid’s book debt of €1.05 billion. The Senor in 2019 upgraded the Bernabeu with an initial €575 million loan, then two further instalments of €225 million and in 2023 a further €370 million. It costs the club €66 million a year to service the debt. And it ends in 2053.

Big clubs, big counties, no one is exempt from market forces. The start of the match was so flat that I wrote my notes on said article. Here’s a flavour of my short hand: ‘Cavan R Donoghue@14… no hooter… 5k crowd… AOS in for throw up… first two Mayo kickouts over the line’. Then the biro started to skid off the page, perhaps the heat waxing it.

Midwest and Martin Carney are perfect on a day like this. They picked up the mood early, Martin struggling to be supportive of us even though he tried his best. Martin, in fairness, has always backed the county, sees light where many of us don’t, but here on Midwest on Sunday his sighs and frustration couldn’t be contained.

We went to the 27th minute before we scored from play. You don’t have to be a top-rated analyst to read the tealeaves there. That’s a poor return. We missed on the 30th minute, so Michael D told us, and Martin sighed. So did I. Both concurred that the MacHale Park atmosphere was ‘flat’. It flowed from the radio. Then, like a burst of morse code from a secret agent long thought lost behind the enemy lines, Stephen Coen tapped out a brace of scores. We weren’t dead… yet. Half-time and a 0-7 to 0-4 lead probably reflected the on-field fare.

The second-half statistics are damning. We scored five points between the start and the 67th minute. Cavan scored 1-14. Those figures tell the what matters. That we tacked on a goal and a few points in the dead zone is irrelevant. In fairness, Coen kicked two more points in that half but that’s not his job.

If I look at my notes, starting in the 36th minute I see Cavan incrementally climbing up the scoresheet and us locked in a bad weather front. A minute into the second-half they are level, 1-4 to 0-7, and by the 54th minute that had extended to 1-12 to 0-11. That’s a bad gap in boiling heat and pressure cooker expectations. By the 72nd minute it was 1-17 to our 0-12. Murder ball stuff. No bad luck, no f****d by fate today, just a bad but defining beating.

We kind of took a sneaky satisfaction at the Dubs going to Salthill on Saturday and shading Galway by a point. And the truth is that Galway, because of their group, are probably on as sticky a qualifying bat as we are – but that’s where the similarities end. Whilst Galway got shaded by a Sky Blue shirt, we got a bloody nose from the Breffni Blues. Even if Galway hit the rocks – and it’s a big if – there won’t be much in it. Can we head North by North West over the next two matches and honestly say Mayo football, on the pitch at least, is in a better place?

I see – and it pains me to say this – nothing to suggest that we actually have a plan. Hands up here, I was supportive, no, actually wanted Kevin McStay to get his chance. I’m not sure I’ve been watching a McStay team in action for a long time. I see a team that’s not the sum of what it should be. Subs coming in that fit the views of the many and varied social media content that follows Mayo.

I acknowledge that I could be wrong here – perhaps we are playing with the full deck available to us. I just don’t know. Maybe those that are in the extended panel are the best of what we have and perhaps like this current spell of glorious weather in May, our sunshine days went from 2011 to 2021, a very long heatwave that we basked in, set as a bar and are now floundering under it.

I feel for the players and the management team going forward now. Everybody has an opinion on Mayo. When we reached heights that matched the Dubs, Kerry, Cork and Galway of recent vintage, we never got the credit we deserved. The broader media, RTÉ etc., only saw the flaws in our ointment despite often running All-Ireland winning teams to the last wire. But when a Mayo team loses to what’s seen as a team not rated, suddenly that team and their victory takes on a meaningful and reverent hue.

Eugene McGee spent a life time looking down on us only to suddenly decide in 2010 that, yes, after all Mayo are a big team. Why? His native Longford beat us, their high point before sinking back into oblivion since that day fifteen years ago. We recovered from that day and contested six All-Ireland finals in the same time frame.

No, we aren’t anywhere near that bar this week, nor will we until this season ends. After that, let’s stand back and decide, the clubs taking the lead. Let’s decide what version of the County Mayo we want both on and off the pitch because believe it or not, both are inextricably connected and both have seen warmer weather.

The pressure is off, expectation is gone now. But that was evident for some time. Sometimes a person needs to wallow in the mud for a while and feel what’s it like to be down there, mocked, derided and the centre of a storm. What comes out of that can surprise.

There is a line that says the darkest is hour is before the dawn. We haven’t reached it yet. Our graph line since 2023 has been quarter-final, preliminary quarter-final. Our slim aim for the next two matches is to repeat last season’s preliminary quarter-final.

For a county that bar 2018, reached every All-Ireland semi-final from 2011 to 2021, this is off the cliff face stuff. The only way is up. The question is, who and how?