Uncertain times for Mayo amid player rumblings 

It would seem a case of 80 days around the world for Mayo football at present, for that’s the number of days (Tuesday, September 10) that have passed since the senior team exited the 2024 All-Ireland SFC with one question now on everyone’s lips – just who will manage the team in 2025?

On the face of it, it seems an unnecessary and unfair question; Mayo has a manager in place, only two years into an agreed four year term and who, as best we have it, has expressed every desire to continue. But when club delegates who you hope, nay expect, obtain their information from more clued-up sources than barstool whisperers, begin making statements at official county board meetings about unhappy players, a lost dressing-room and dissatisfaction around selectors and coaches, then you begin to wonder if this could yet become another one of those less ordinary Mayo autumns.

It’s 20 years ago since Jose Morinho told the world he was ‘a special one’ when appointed manager of Chelsea and while Kevin McStay displayed no such arrogance upon his unveiling as Mayo boss, his chairman Seamus Tuohy wasn’t shy in stating that he thought “we’ve achieved something really special for Mayo football”, and that “we are confident we have chosen the best person for the job”.

Yet the silence has been deafening from Tuohy and the rest of the Mayo GAA executive with regard to support for Kevin McStay or his management team since the penalty shootout defeat to Derry on June 22 and specifically, since the announcement on July 24 that a full review of the senior team’s 2024 campaign was going to be held. Nor did the top table say or do much at last week’s monthly meeting to quell the narrative of the delegates, that the situation was anything but rosy between the players and management.

That “no senior player had come to him with concerns about the management” was about as much as Seamus Tuohy could muster by way of a defence of the present situation.

A review is in itself nothing unusual – most inter-county teams will undertake some introspective work with their county officials at the end of every year – but two things that stand out about Mayo’s are the length this one is taking and also, the impact that the players’ input appears to have had. In truth, it’s probable the length is due to the input because the indications are that these end-of-year questionnaires have fired some heavy artillery in the direction of management and have given cause for much consideration.

Whose idea or at whose request it was that the members of the Mayo senior football panel be afforded the opportunity to give their feedback and opinions to the review committee is unclear, so too whether this is something that happens at the end of every season. And if not, then why now exactly?

But no more than the absence of public backing for the management from elected officers of Mayo GAA thus far, where has been the support for McStay and co from the players themselves, since the comments of delegates were first put into the public domain last Thursday?

If it’s incorrect that ‘the players are up in arms’ and ‘not happy’ with the current regime, as was reported, than you’d think it important the players would come out quickly and say so and back their manager. And you’d think it important, too, if they don’t.

It’s worth remembering, however, that this is a management team which in assistant manager Stephen Rochford and Donie Buckley, contains two men who were central to Mayo getting closer than ever before to ending its All-Ireland hoodoo in 2016 and ’17, and who this year, together with McStay, Damien Mulligan and Joe Canney, saw their team play seven championship matches and lose only one in regulation time, to Galway. But detractors will suggest that that Connacht Final was just one of several examples this year where the team displayed an inability to close out tight games from winning positions, as like against Dubin and Derry, neither of whom it should be said beat Mayo during regulation time.

“Until we are a little more ruthless and clinical and can stretch out our leads when we should stretch them out, we give everybody a chance to catch up with us. So maybe there’s the work on,” said Kevin McStay post Derry.

“The best teams, the best players kick those points in those clutch moments and maybe we’re not quite there yet, we don’t quite have that level,” he admitted. “But we believe we have the potential to get there, and [the players] are hugely committed to playing for Mayo and I know the effort to practice that skill and get better, that won’t be the issue.” So what will be? That now seems the most pertinent question.

Is it that outsiders Armagh beating Galway in a quite average All-Ireland SFC final this year has spooked some into believing the Sam Maguire Cup is bang within Mayo’s reach but for a tweak at the top?

Unfortunate only to draw an All-Ireland SFC semi-final wasn’t good enough to keep Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly in a job in 2015, so McStay and his backroom must surely sense they are in uncertain territory now, especially since just about the only assurance given by Mayo GAA chairman Seamus Tuohy has been that the review is “expected” to be completed before next month’s county board meeting. There’s not much assurance there.

The mechanics of how all this plays out are far from simple.