The one saving grace for Mayo might be that almost nobody saw their defeat to Cavan on Sunday. It wasn’t on RTÉ, it wasn’t on GAA+, the official attendance at Castlebar was just 7,387 – a miserable crowd, in every sense of the word. And plenty of them were gone before the final whistle.
That’s not how it works though. Particularly not in Mayo. Nick Hornby’s contention in his classic book Fever Pitch rings 100 per cent true here – listening to your team play on the radio always makes things worse in your imagination than it is in reality.
It’s one thing Mayo losing to Cavan for the first time since 1948 and for the first time at home. It’s another when your people are already predisposed to think the worst anyway.
Mayo people will tell anyone who’ll listen that this has been coming. The casual observer will point to the fact that they’ve been in the final of the league and the Connacht Championship this season already. And when the casual observer does so within earshot of the Mayo supporter, the casual observer will be told to get stuffed. Sure they made the league final by accident. Sure they struggled to beat Leitrim in the Connacht semi-final.
No, whatever about Kevin McStay and his management team’s hold over the actual Mayo dressingroom – and to be fair, there has been no suggestion of unrest or unhappiness there – the wider dressingroom within the county has gradually been ebbing away over the past three years. Even allowing for the slightly unglamorous fixture, getting less than 8,000 into MacHale Park for the opening game of the All-Ireland series tells its own story.
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On specifics, there are a few main problems. For one, at a brass tacks level, Mayo don’t score enough. If this was a problem that might not necessarily have been fatal under the old rules, it’s going to catch up with you eventually under the new ones.
Whatever work Mayo have done behind closed doors on creating and taking two-point chances, it hasn’t translated to the arena
There had to be a limited future in the fact that Mayo finished top of Division One in the league despite being the lowest scorers in it. They got to the Connacht final without kicking a single two-pointer. They tried for eight of them against Galway in Castlebar a fortnight ago but only landed two.
There’s an old NFL maxim – you’re either coaching it or you’re allowing it. Whatever work Mayo have done behind closed doors on creating and taking two-point chances, it hasn’t translated to the arena. They have played four games in this championship so far and in none of them have they raised more orange flags than the opposition. Only one of those games was against Division One opposition.
Which leads neatly on to the second major grumble Mayo people have about their team, that they’re altogether too passive and too careful in possession. The contrast between their steady, sensible build-up play on Sunday and the flying support running of Cavan in transition was stark.
Ray Galligan deserves major credit for lighting a fire under his charges after they limped meekly out of Ulster against Tyrone. Funny enough, maybe the only Sam Maguire county whose support base was as down in the mouth about their own prospects as Mayo was Cavan. But they came to Castlebar to play at championship pace, full of direct running and at least some element of risk-taking.
Mayo, as has been their way for long stretches this season, were far more methodical and one-paced. For whatever reason, they often look like they haven’t fully embraced the new game. For a county that thrived in creating chaos within the suffocating strictures of the old rules, they look hesitant to submit to any form of it now.
McStay and his brains trust look to have decided that all the years of chaos and carnival were ultimately not the answer
That needn’t be fatal, of course. As the weeks go by, more and more teams are finding ways to keep the ball for longer and longer. Everyone is so conditioned to possession football by now and Mayo don’t owe you exciting transitions and glorious kick-passes into the big man on the edge of the square any more than Donegal or Armagh or Louth do.
But the thing that made Mayo special over the past decade and a half was always that feeling that when the needle went into the red, they could go to places where other teams would simply wilt. If a game was going a million miles an hour, it was the other crowd who tried to slow it down and gain some measure of control over the whole thing. Now it is Mayo who do that.
Which would be fine – if they were winning. McStay and his brains trust look to have decided that all the years of chaos and carnival were ultimately not the answer and that if they are going to reach the top of the mountain, they’ll have to do it in a much steadier, more structured manner.
It makes some logical sense, certainly. But when you’re losing at home in front of a tiny crowd to a lower division team, it smacks of overthinking.
