A summer's evening among the Mayo faithful is one well spent
Declan Bogue
IN HEALY PARK, Omagh, a working journalist has their pick of two very different options.
You can go across the pitch from the main stand and take your place in the rather futuristic setting of their elevated, purpose-built media facility.
There is ample elbow room. Power points abound. Occasionally, occasionally, there is the chance of sandwiches. There’s a convenient jacks.
There’s a snag though. The sun sets over the main stand, so you find yourself squinting out of the greenhouse.
That’s not the end of the snag list.
The team dugouts are on the far side of the pitch – quite unusual for a GAA ground where the media are usually accommodated in the back of a main stand.
And worst of all, it is sound-proofed. Not entirely, but you cannot hear stadium announcements and figuring out the substitutions can be taxing.
There may be comfort and convenience, but it feels like you are watching an intercounty game from underwater.
Like a lot of things, Covid sorted out the problems we never knew we had.
Back then, the grounds staff erected some makeshift press benches with a steel frame and a six-inch plank. They brought power to the area and connected up some extension leads.
It was meant to be a temporary measure to help with social distancing. But it soon caught on with journalists who wanted the full-fat game experience.
The temporary erection is now a permanent arrangement. There may be little room to set your various pieces of tech, and you could end up with a mouthful if you nudged your laptop over the cliff edge and into a frustrated Tyrone fan.
But it makes you feel like you’re at a game. And with Mayo coming to town, you wanted that good stuff hooked into your veins.
A few years back, I had to schlep my way to Dublin to meet the big cheeses of the 42. I sat across a table from three Tech bros handling the ageing process well, and was asked what pieces I might pitch in the middle of a championship season. One was to sit among the Mayo fans for a game when the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Bushy eyebrows went northwards. They were picking up what I was laying down. They like-a-da-lingo. They offered me the job.
I thought nothing more of the idea. Tomorrow’s another day. Packed it away with the rest of the arrows in the Quiver.
Well, today is the day. The big idea gets burned.
Could the stakes have been higher? Hardly. Mayo were staring at a May exit from the All-Ireland football championship. Not mathematically, but with a final game against Donegal looming, consecutive defeats to Galway, Cavan and Tyrone wasn’t going to do anything much for the confidence.
But they jumped into an early lead of 0-4 to 0-1. Ben McDonnell got Tyrone’s second point but the pattern of the game was set.
When Tyrone goalkeeper Niall Morgan had a kickout, he found Mayo goalkeeper Colm Reape clogging up the left wing, his favoured to spot to land a kick. The runs offered to him were lacking in conviction. He was forced to hoof it in the direction of Conn Kilpatrick but Mayo had rediscovered their Mayo-ness.
They swamped and bullied Tyrone. They were aggressive and decisive.
The crowd fed off it. After a tentative opening ten minutes when they didn’t know if they were going to commit or not – they’ve been stung so many times – they got going properly, mirroring the effort of their team.
Naturally, this being Mayo, they did not make life simple for themselves. Tyrone launched a comeback. By the 53rd minute they were a single point adrift.
Just the right time to unleash the subs and watch them drag the home side over the line. But the substitutions had a completely different effect on each side. Tyrone visibly wilted. Their subs were forced into mistakes and panicking. Mayo’s were assured, hungry and ravenous.
The sight of Davitt Neary chasing down a Morgan short kickout to Tyrone’s Shea O’Hare summed it up. O’Hare is a young player making his way, but his 80% run to the ball wasn’t enough for Neary’s eyeballs-out effort and Neary stole in for the steal, before setting up Paddy Durcan for a point.
Afterwards, the supporters took over the pitch. They lingered and basked and bathed and wrung all they could out of a good day following their boys. In the stand long after the crowd had cleared out, Rob Murphy and John Gunnigan of the Mayo Football Podcast were still gassing away, pulling in people in their orbit to talk about Mayo and, bloody hell, Mayo football, eh?
All of this, and barely a mention of Kevin McStay, presumably at home recuperating.
There’s an old Brendan Rodgers yarn holds he said that football management was like standing in a river of shit. When you were appointed to a role, it was already running ankle-high.
The trick is to make sure it doesn’t get shoulder-high.
You know something, it’s one thing for Brendan Rodgers to say that as he reclines in his top manager comforts, with self-portraits on the wall and his property portfolio propping up the kitchen table – valued at 102 properties ten years ago during a divorce settlement.
It’s quite another for the managers that live among their communities, living to every gulpin at the shop giving them advice. Kevin McStay may be living in Roscommon for many years, but I’d say he has had his fill of guff from experts all the same this year.
And his eager assistant Stephen Rochford hadn’t even stood in the river only to find it was actually waist high with a strong current, before his first game back in charge even threw-in. On the sidelines for GAA+, the hirsute Padraig O’Hora said that we could expect nothing different from Mayo as Rochford was the man set up the team, the selection and tactics.
He even went as far as to suggest that there should be a player’s coup. Woah, mamma! There can never be enough drama for some.
He knows better than all of us, of course. But he was also wrong as well as Mayo’s emotional arousal and controlled aggression was in a sweet spot.
The pressures managers and players face are amplified in this system. Witness Jim McGuinness, with a face that usually moves less than an Easter Island Maoi statue, marching down the line in Breffni Park to get in the face of Cavan manager Ray Galligan.
Chased back down the line in quick time, the only other time we can remember McGuinness getting on like this was in a qualifier game against Laois when he was given a powerful shove on the sideline by manager Justin McNulty. That game also followed a defeat to a Malachy O’Rourke team.
In Celtic Park, Derry produced their best performance of the year in winning, then throwing away, then rescuing a draw against Galway. The panic of the last few moments felt like proper championship.
All of this and we can only afford a cursory whizz through the majesty of Rian O’Neill, the courage of Adam Crimmins and his block on Tommy Durnin to seal a famous home win for Down, the scalding temperature of Celtic Park and how ferociously Derry played. On and on and on.
Whatever about the way it is presented and who can qualify, nobody can deny that it has been a crazy ride. In the 16 games of the round-robin, nine of them have been wins for the travelling team and two draws.
The concluding round will be one of the great Gaelic football weekends of the calendar, with suspense and desperation in equal measure.
After many years of tinkering, it’s difficult to argue that we haven’t arrived at a very solid method of running off a championship, only to sack it off for 2026.
The 42
