Mayo, God help them! They'll never learn
Declan Bogue
BEFORE WE GET straight into the events of Wednesday night, let’s rewind a little to a bit more Mayo history.
Even allowing that this is Mayo, and Gaelic football life seems a carousel of self-pity lasting 70-odd years, the All-Ireland final defeat to Tyrone in 2021 has been identified as The Day The Music Died.
While this county have long been the messy bitch and feckless bastard who deal with their issues by drawing attention upon themselves, one person perfectly placed everything into perspective.
It had to fall to Kevin McStay, writing in the Irish Times, to decipher the black box recorder. He brought us to a time when Cathal McShane shanked a free wide on 50 minutes, with a total of 27 minutes left to the finish.
“Mayo missed a penalty, kicked eight further wides, two others shot into the goalkeeper’s hands, had crazy turnovers and fell into a pattern of awful decision making,” he wrote.
He stopped short of calling it a meltdown, but then he launched a stern defence of the Mayo management and players, in particular Aidan O’Shea. He looked deep into the crevices and shouted down wells, wondering how the county have never been able to shape or fashion a production line of classy inside forwards.
And then he pointed to the future. Things will change. Nothing stays the same.
On Monday night, in the latest episode of Hell For Leather, RTÉ’s glossy production on Gaelic football, there he was again talking about Mayo’s failure in the 1989 All-Ireland final and the emotion behind it all as Dermot Flanagan choked up and Willie Joe Padden ‘ah shucked’.
He then asked what people wanted: that Mayo should just go away and never play football again? That they wouldn’t challenge again?
This is the thing about McStay and Mayo. Perhaps it was the logical Army man in him, more likely it was a gift granted to him by his exile in Roscommon town; he never bought into the hysterics around Mayo football.
Eventually, the hysterics came for him. We will come back to that in a minute.
Just because he didn’t join in the mass weeping didn’t mean he didn’t care.
There is a tale that he shared during his years writing a column with The Mayo News. One time he was on a transatlantic flight to America and soon realised he was sitting close by another Mayo football fanatic.
Within minutes, they were in the aisle and budging over occasionally for the ‘scuse mes’ on the way to the toilet. They discussed Mayo football, the characters involved, the structures and supports, analysed every player, got into the weeds, dived deep, all those things.
Right up to the point when the captain of the plane announced that all passengers should immediately return to their seats to strap in for the descent to the airport. They had spent the entire flight talking football and barely felt the time go by.
Back to the hysterics. On Wednesday night, the Mayo county board issued a statement. In three different fonts, sizes and colours, you were informed before you read the first paragraph that the ‘Mayo Senior Football Management are Relieved from their Roles’.
It then went on to detail how the county management meeting was held in Castlebar and how the decision was made ‘to relieve Kevin McStay and his management team from their roles with the Mayo Senior football team’ – and this is where it goes from over-zealous to just spiteful – ‘with immediate effect’.
A cursory line or two of thanks, and no mention of his recent health issues which flared up while on Mayo duty and forced him to withdraw ahead of the visit to Tyrone in the group stages.
Words are everything. The Mayo county board either sought to use them to hurt, or to show someone who’s boss. Either way, they have come out of it looking somewhere on a scale of crass to insensitive.
Dunno if you’ve heard, but Mayo have been in the news a bit recently. It might have done no harm to make sure their press release was gold-standard.
The GAA is an association that regularly brings in Public Relations Officers of each county for peer group meetings to help drive standards and learn from each other. Guess this won’t be making any future presentation.
There is no way McStay and his set-up wanted to quit as Mayo management, even allowing for his health scare in the middle of the championship.
And sure, Mayo are entitled to have whoever they want in charge of them. They could point to results that they could fashion into a narrative of diminishing returns. But a last-play defeat in a Connacht final? Getting to two league finals and winning one?
Was it that bad? Was it really?
What’s noticeable since the announcement is just how former Mayo players such as Lee Keegan and members of the press have reacted.
You won’t get far in the intercounty world if you are a sweetheart all the time, but there was something old-school about McStay that a lot of people in the media respected.
In this game, you have a lot of face-to-face time with managers. Some are clearly contemptuous that they have to go through with it, their Main Character Energy affronted. Others are fake-humble bullshit artists with false charms and automatic laughs, too enthusiastic and without feeling.
A great deal of them, still, are fundamentally decent and live in the real world. McStay is one.
Perhaps, as reported in The Connacht Telegraph, McStay and his management team did not want to shuffle off nicely and make life nice and handy for the Mayo county board. More power to them.
But they were still owed more respect from their own county.
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