Twenty’s plenty but Durcan injury takes sheen off Mayo win
Mayo’s Sam Callinan manages to hold onto the ball as Cavan’s Oisin Brady attempts to block his path.
Rarely has a championship win been greeted so subduedly by Mayo supporters. The game itself hadn’t been much to write home about but when the full-time whistle blew and Mayo captain Paddy Durcan lay in a crumpled heap writhing in agony, it was as though someone had taken a pin to an already half deflated balloon.
Durcan had only been on the pitch 15 minutes or so, returning from an injury much less serious than this one appears to be. The Castlebar Mitchels man was on a solo jaunt up the field doing little more than killing time but with few or no options ahead of him, he turned in a fashion that caused his leg to jar. Durcan’s beating of fists against the turf – as around him young Mayo supporters streamed onto the pitch at the sounding of referee David Coldrick’s final whistle – indicated his pain and perhaps a realisation too, that there may be no quick return from this one.
Scoring 20 times in Round 1 of the All-Ireland Championship for the second year running (they scored 1-19 against Kerry in 2023), Mayo were every bit deserving of their nine points victory over Cavan and yet had given their fans very little to get excited about. Indeed there was a challenge match feel to the proceedings in sunny Castlebar on Saturday, with the visitors (who had somehow managed to take Tyrone to extra-time in the Ulster SFC and lose only by a single point) scoring a paltry 1-2 from play compared to Mayo’s 0-16. The home side’s other four points were derived from frees by Ryan O’Donoghue who was fouled for every one of them.
The Mayo team showed three changes to that which had begun the Connacht SFC final defeat to Galway, with Darren McHale starting his first championship match since the 2021 All-Ireland SFC semi-final win against Dublin and the O’Connor brothers, Diarmuid and Cillian, appearing together at throw-in for the first time since the 2022 quarter-final exit to Kerry. Cillian, who replaced Aidan O’Shea in the full-forward line, issued a statement by lasting the entire match and scoring four points from play, including three in the second-half.
It's understood O’Shea’s absence from the first XV was due to a training ground collision with Jordan Flynn that had left both players requiring medical treatment in the lead up to this match, although Flynn played the full game and O’Shea was introduced along with Paddy Durcan after 56 minutes.
By the sixth minute Cavan had registered three wides, which was as many as Mayo struck in the entire game, and by the 14th minute Mayo, despite playing into the breeze, were 0-5 to 0-0 ahead thanks to points by Darren McHale, Matthew Ruane, Eoghan McLaughlin, Cillian O’Connor and Ryan O’Donoghue. Ruane’s was a dipper that Cavan goalkeeper Gary O’Rourke helped over the bar but aside from that and a second-half point by Cillian O’Connor, which for a moment looked like it might nestle in the top right corner, Mayo barely threatened to raise a green flag.
Cavan’s opening point arrived via an Oisín Brady free in the 15th minute but the Breffni men, while dropping 14 players behind the ball at times, were struggling to contain Mayo’s excellent movement and fouls on O’Donoghue, in the 17th and 19th minutes, saw the Belmullet man extend his side’s lead to six points.
Midfielder Oisín Kiernan stylishly kicked Cavan’s first point from play from 45 metres in the 23rd minute but Matthew Ruane negated that, likewise Jack Carney replied to Brady’s second free of the match, to see Mayo lead 0-9 to 0-3 entering stoppage time.
Already Cavan boss Raymond Mulligan had made two substitutions – a la Galway’s Padraig Joyce against Mayo in the first-half of the provincial final – and one of those, Luke Fortune, had a hand in a move that drew a free converted by Oisín Brady, which combined with a point from play by Ciarán Brady, meant that the visitors, despite being outplayed for the majority of the half, trailed by just four points at the interval, 0-9 to 0-5.
The third quarter played out almost exactly as had the first, with Mayo outscoring Cavan by seven points to two, and the visitors guilty of more poor shooting which saw them hit four wides inside the opening 10 minutes of the second-half. Their other first-half sub, Tiarnán Madden, did pop over a point on the back of Mayo ‘keeper Colm Reape losing possession 40 metres from his own goal, but scores by Ryan O’Donoghue, a free, Cillian O’Connor, Stephen Coen, Matthew Ruane, his third, and sub Conor Loftus saw Mayo lead 0-14 to 0-6 before Oisín Brady ended a 14-minute scoreless spell by Cavan by slotting his fourth free.
The same player had been unlucky not to score a goal too, when fisting Cormac O’Reilly’s skyscraper inches past the butt of the post, and Diarmuid O’Connor was on the line to prevent Pádraig Faulkner from bundling the ball to the net in the 58th minute, but Cavan, after further points by O’Donoghue and McHale had sent Mayo nine clear, were to finally raise the pulses of the travelling army with a 59th minute major. Fortune and O’Reilly, who had made a big impact since his third quarter introduction, had combined to set-up wing-back Conor Brady for a shot at goal which Mayo corner-forward Ryan O’Donoghue, of all players, managed to block. The ball, however, span across the goal-mouth and landed to James Smith who, named at midfield but operating at full-forward throughout, drilled past Reape, thus narrowing Cavan’s arrears to six points.
The Mayo reply was instant though, as Cillian O’Connor pointed off a pass from the newly introduced Aidan O’Shea, while Sam Callinan’s powerful break from defence resulted in O’Donoghue’s third from play.
Callinan would end the game in the sin-bin for taking out Cavan corner-back Cian Reilly during a Mayo attack but the Ballin man’s absence was inconsequential; Brady’s fifth free was Cavan’s final point and was negated by O’Donoghue before sub Bob Tuohy’s pass enabled O’Connor to raise the final white and in the process become Mayo’s top scorer of the day from play.
A Mayo win against Roscommon at Dr Hyde Park in Round 2 would guarantee qualification from Group 2, with the remaining match against Dublin then likely to determine if qualification is to the last eight or last twelve.
