Win as sweet to Galway as loss is bitter to Mayo

A strange old game, typical and untypical Mayo on show, a team not fully the sum of all its whole constituent parts. Not quite Aristotle but I hope you get my drift.

There was a backdrop of technicolour splashing around Castlebar. A huge attendance, the TV cameras picking out the colourful crowd, including a massive sign over the tunnel affirming the Mayo Diaspora connection, ‘Carey London’. Mayo and indeed Galway’s people are worldwide. Sunday saw the two sides battle for bragging rights.

The sports team will parse the match grammar for you, I’ll give you the drone in the sky view. Galway came in as hot favourites on a beautiful day but as Glasgow Celtic know well enough, despite being Scottish Premiership runaway leaders, that perpetual thorn called Rangers catches in their hair occasionally.

Despite a seventeen points difference between both teams, Rangers are unbeaten in four matches against Celtic this season. That’s rivals for you, that’s what history does; you have no choice but to face the biggest rival down. Or die.

Galway are our Rangers, the form book goes out the window. And for the first ten minutes on Sunday it did. Mayo chose to play into a stiff breeze and inside seven minutes had blitzed the visitors with 1-02. The Maroon looked pale. The bite was with Mayo, the bit between the teeth, but two two-pointers unstitched our hard worked 1-02 and we would go almost 27 minutes without a score.

Galway declared a 1-11 to 1-3 halftime lead and despite having a strong wind with us, I didn’t see much hope. But Mayo came out with attitude and clawed their way back, eventually levelling. Now was the time to turn the tide, stop the four-in-a-row march of Joyce Country.

Fate sometimes messes with you. A 61st minute kickout that wasn’t required from the golf bag saw us a man down and a handy free conceded. Not quite fatal but a large rip in our psyche. Our ability to find the trigger, pull it and shoot the foot was working well. A couple of spurned chances and a solid diving block on Paul Towey’s certain score hinted a darker hue to our hoped for colourful outcome would fill the sky. Peter Cooke, a Galway sub, seemed the glue that stitched Galway through last minute troubled waters. We had possession but passed back and over as the clock ticked. Finally the trigger was pulled and the shot, along with our dreams, drifted wide into the broad blue sky in the hills behind Castlebar.

So what were the inches that separated Mayo and Galway on Sunday? The first was Padraic Joyce and Galway’s willingness to learn a lesson and do something about it. In last year’s All-Ireland final, free-taker Rob Finnerty went off injured early. Combined with the off-form performances of Shane Walsh and Damien Comer, Joyce realised that half his forward line misfired to lose a winnable final by a single point. He decided to do something about it. Spread the load, shift the focus, lessen the reliance on injury prone lads, believe in the squad.

The narrative in Mayo was that the loss of Walsh and Comer would be fatal to Galway. That was a bad mistake. Galway and their manager had to find a way to win without the big names. Beating Mayo in Castlebar, in a tight game, in a Connacht final, to complete four-in-a-row, without the marquee forwards, leaves them in great shape going forward into the group stages. And no, they are not in the ‘Group of Death’. Meath or Louth, Clare, Monaghan and Down are in the Death Group; four teams that inhabit Divisions 2 and 3 with a rare trip to the top flight, none of them will trouble Sam this year. All Galway need is a single win, against Derry more than likely, to advance. Games against Dublin and Donegal or Armagh will stiffen the squad without the fear of jeopardy. No trap doors there. Cards still close to chests.

And as for ourselves, we prepare for either one of Armagh and Donegal, along with Tyrone and Cavan. Surely we will beat Cavan, thus making at least a preliminary quarter-final. Maybe that’s our maximum and yet parts of the whole sum suggest we should be better. Or at least be more ruthless in matches that matter. But something seems missing.

Tiny things cost us on Sunday. A diving block by a Galway defender, a few unforced misses, a careless kickout, a black card, a debatable concession of a penalty; all ingredients in many, many Mayo misfortunes for as long as I’ve followed them. We attract misfortune like a magnet. The bottom line is simple: we cannot afford this. Mistakes and misfortune are not related. Cut out the mistakes and the misfortune goes.

Joyce was forced to face up to having to find new forwards to replace his injury prone lads. If he was able to coax back class like Cooke, have patience and get McDaid fully fit, has the likes of Molloy and Hernon on the bench to spring, then the lesson from last year’s final loss will be learned. This year’s Connacht final win for them will be as sweet as that loss is bitter to us. Truthfully, I’m not sure how we will advance because I’m unable to read this current Mayo version. A team, once unleashed, can trouble the best but curiously, for most of the time, looks shackled and unfree.

Year three of the project now comes fully into focus. Will the real Mayo now stand up. We are running out of games. Like I said, inside that whole is a sum that if totalled properly might, as Padraig Joyce stated, have another meeting with Galway before the season is over. We know where Galway want to go. Are we going to join them?