‘I play a lot of chess,’ Pádraig O’Hora on avoiding Mayo’s match analysis

In the near six weeks since Mayo stumbled and then fell at their first championship hurdle – the always likely tricky one that was their Connacht quarter-final loss to Roscommon – every little match detail has been analysed going forward and in reverse.

The kickouts lost and the turnovers that should have been won, and, perhaps most of all, how Roscommon managed to get in for two goals and Mayo none.

Acknowledging the use and value in that for some, Pádraig O’Hora has a different approach, the Mayo defender preferring not to dwell on anything in the past.

“I play a lot of chess, and would analyse every single game I’ve ever played, arguing with myself,” he says. “But personally I don’t think it [the game] needs to be dwelled on. I don’t spend any time doing that, or watching. For management I’m sure there is. If I’d a choice of an hour of analysis or an hour of kicking ball I’d take an hour of kicking ball. I’d be more interested in the skills than rewatching games.”

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O’Hora has always been a little different in other ways: the 30-year-old father of three made his senior Mayo debut in 2020 after drifting away to concentrate on other aspects of his life yet his commitment now is absolute. He works in the mental health sector of Youth Justice in Ballina, happy and content to juggle all his commitments, knowing where the priority must be.

“It’s not a sport, it’s a lifestyle, it is your life. While Mayo football is being played it is at the top list of priorities, and that’s if you have work, family or whatever, you have to understand the football comes first. For these few months that’s the way it is otherwise you wouldn’t be able to keep up.”

He is well read on the narrative around their defeat to Roscommon, coming a week after Mayo’s league final success over Galway in Croke Park, a tricky hurdle and switch.

“Some people were saying they didn’t want to win the league, stuff like that. In regards to our camp it wasn’t the case. It was the case of let’s go out to win every game, win the league and we did, successfully. And in fairness we switched very quickly to focus on the next game. Sometimes as a player you can feel when things are a little bit off. You can be in a warm-up, before a game, and you kind of know something is a little bit off. And I never felt that in the build-up to the Roscommon game.

“Even in training sometimes you might say ‘we’re just not at the pace’. But that was never really there. The lead-in to Roscommon was very professional, very smart. And the game didn’t go our way for whatever reason. Roscommon deservedly won that game, and I wouldn’t make any excuse from a Mayo perspective at all.”

So six weeks on comes the next championship hurdle, Mayo travelling to Killarney on Saturday to face Munster and All-Ireland champions Kerry in the first-round game of the Group One round-robin – a Kerry team who haven’t lost a championship match in Killarney since 1995, and have never lost a championship match to Mayo under current manager Jack O’Connor.

O’Hora’s league playing time was limited to a few late cameos, including the last 60 seconds against Galway, the ankle surgery required just before Christmas providing time to dwell between other matters.

“It was hard. You go through all the phases of it. One day you want to give it up, don’t think you’ll ever make it back, you’ll never recover. Some days you think you’ll never be able to play football again! Your mind goes to some wild places some times, doesn’t it?

“Then other days you think it’s only around the corner. It’s a funny old run of an injury, but I think everyone goes through that, these ups and downs, ebbs and flows. Look, you get back eventually ... a mate of mine said to me, it’s the ethos of our community group, ‘keep doing the right things for the right reasons and you’ll end up in the right place’.

“That is essentially it, just keep plugging away. But it’s a challenge. Anyone who says it isn’t a challenge I’d like to get into their mind.

“Everything is back on track but it’s definitely been a race, to catch up nearly. You don’t just walk back into that. It just took me a little bit longer to get back into that game pace, game tempo. There really are two or three guys per position, fighting. There’s a couple of guys all right who are rock solid, have nailed it down, but besides that really and truly everyone is fighting [for a place].”