Truths and eternal truths
This is what he wanted. Despite all the indignities of previous dealings with the Mayo county board, Kevin McStay has been facing the blustery chills of January and February as manager of his county.
The former RTÉ senior analyst is now on camera reacting to his team’s performance rather than clinically evaluating it for public consumption. It’s the second time he has exchanged the ivory tower for the dust of the arena, having managed Roscommon for three years up until 2018 – an exhausting experience that he initially thought would be his last intercounty involvement.
Two matches into the Allianz Football League season, the upside is that Mayo are unbeaten. More realistically, the two draws against Galway and Armagh could have gone the wrong way and objectively, the latter probably did after a good performance created a five-point lead that evaporated into the night air of the Box-It Athletic Grounds.
The new manager, though, is irrepressibly positive about the campaign to date.
“We could have done better – five up in the 67th minute – obviously! But we were losing to Galway with allotted injury time up and got the point there.
“We spoke to the players afterwards and their mood was lower than the management’s. Getting a draw in Armagh for us was the bottom line but many of the players have been around the top of the game long enough to be frustrated with losing that lead.
“For 30 minutes of that second half we played really good football in a very difficult environment, which is terrific. So far, our young full-back line has had to match up with Damien Comer, Rob Finnerty, Matthew Tierney, the Murtaghs in the FBD, Andrew Murnin, Rory Grugan and Rian O’Neill. That’s really good exposure.
“There are truths I can take from that. They mightn’t be eternal truths! But we as a management can say, ‘he’s doing fine on him’. ‘He’s going the right way’.”
Formation
There are themes in Kevin McStay’s life and football involvement. His father, also Kevin, was from Galway but having moved to Ballina, an architect of under-age development in the local club. It’s where his son learned to play.
In the later years of punditry, McStay would often refer to bon mots and aphorisms of his late father. Talking for this interview, he seamlessly drops in a reference to self-awareness: “To quote my beloved father, ‘It’s important you take your lack of talent seriously!’”
There was also the influence of institutions: school in St Jarlath’s Tuam, the Army, UCG. In his bitingly honest memoir, The Pressure Game, he details the typical drift of a young man growing up – pints and lack of engagement, in his own words: “Too much time was spent dreaming.”
He still managed to return to earth in order to secure a place in Cadet School, a hyper-competitive entry process. His reflection is positive.
“The Army made me. Certainly, it finished off the excellent work that so many good people in my life had begun.”
What was there, the Defence Forces built on and encouraged, according to Brig Gen Ger Aherne, who knows him both from Army days and club activity at St Brigid’s, in Roscommon where McStay has lived most of his adult life.
“He was a capable, competent and organised person. When he was presented with a problem, he was structured and incremental in how he addressed the solving of the problem.
“Kevin McStay couldn’t have emerged in his early 20s as a platoon commander without the raw materials as well as the education and formation necessary.”
Ten years ago he managed Brigid’s to an All-Ireland title, defeating along the way the two contemporary greatest sources of championships, Crossmaglen and Dublin – in that case Ballymun Kickhams.
“We had been knocking on the door with that team for a while,” remembers Aherne, “and he had a force of character that perhaps was needed to get us over the line”.
Wisdom of ages
It was well known that McStay had twice been overlooked in all senses of the word when he had looked for the Mayo manager’s position. That he might gather himself for another attempt hadn’t been known for certain but, having decided to wrap up his media career as an RTÉ pundit and columnist for The Irish Times, he was ready to go again.
He sees an overlap between practice and punditry.
“I’ve always been curious about that world as a pundit. Even though there’s a style of play that I might ideally hark back to, but I’m keenly aware of the modern game. I finished with Roscommon in 2018 and even in that time, things have moved on dramatically.
“Against Armagh, Ethan Rafferty caught the ball in a crucial part of the field. A goalkeeper now can be part of a team’s outfield and you have to reflect that in your own practice because it’s an extra man coming out, an instant overlap.”
First things first.
“The initial thing I wanted to do was build a really solid backroom team and I’m very happy with that group. Then, get a really good pre-season into the players with such a hectic schedule ahead over the next five months.”
He brought with him a heavyweight crew of Stephen Rochford, Donie Buckley, Liam McHale and Damien Mulligan. As he said at the time, “We’ve coached or managed 14 senior intercounty teams and coached or managed 169 senior intercounty championship matches, which is a lot.”
Interest in the position was intense with four candidates short-listed and interviewed.
Media focus on Mayo has never been slow to spot comic potential and the blizzard of CVs and backroom team trumpery was instantly designated “a circus”, as the county took its time to make the right decision.
It only gradually dawned on everyone that a deliberative process based on four credible management teams was actually a position of strength given that other Division One counties – half of whom had vacancies – were struggling to find anyone to take on the now virtually insane burden of intercounty involvement.
Mayo had the luxury of what was described as “a tough, rigorous process” and if those involved had all been around the block, that experience was both presented and ultimately accepted as proof of McStay’s insistence from day one that he wasn’t taking refuge in talk of transition and that this would be renovation and not rebuild.
He believes that he is now better equipped to do the job of managing Mayo than on either of his previous attempts at securing it. The environment may have “moved on dramatically”, but so has he.
“I’m retired from the Defence Forces a good while now and I was essentially spending my time between media work and a maths school I set up.
“I knew the Mayo scrutiny and The Sunday Game scrutiny but my advantage was that I had the time to give to it. Our children are reared – the twins in Australia and Emma teaching up in Dublin – and this is a time in our lives when we’re able to do it – Verona is very interested in the game and enjoys it.
“The big thing is that I have time to do it properly – to chat with players every week. I wouldn’t have that time otherwise.”
Kerry’s All-Ireland-winning manager Jack O’Connor made the very same point before last year’s final.
“It’s very time consuming but I’m in the lucky position that I’m retired and I have the time and the energy to put into it. But I literally can’t envisage somebody with a demanding full-time job doing this. I don’t think you’d be able to do either job properly.”
Fixtures to date have yielded two draws but in different circumstances – the opening night, against Galway, squeezed in as injury-time slammed shut and the second in Armagh, watching a five-point advantage burn in the closing minutes.
The new manager’s demeanour was cheery in both cases, a default setting for him but one that can come under pressure, as he knows from his time with Roscommon, from bad results and the toxic hum of social media criticism.
He retains equanimity, watching the patterns and judging the trials. In Armagh, he got the opportunity to test drive one of his firmly held theories that Aidan O’Shea’s best position in the team context is full forward. Preliminary results were encouraging.
“We’re not going to get too high or get too low. There’s a real sense of proportion. This is the league, a sustained couple of months of experiments, challenges and finding out about tactics and personnel.”
‘Ye find this funny,’ he was shouting. ‘Ye’ll always be losers.’
No less than any other Mayo footballer whose career began in the past 72 years, McStay paid his dues and came close. An under-21 All-Ireland winner with John O’Mahony’s 1983 team, he went on to win an All Star and in 1989 start in the county’s first senior All-Ireland final since 1951 – the point of departure for Mayo in the modern age.
It could well have broken even the most resilient spirits in football had it been known that this creditable defeat by Cork 34 years ago was merely the first step on a via dolorosa that would entail 11 All-Ireland final defeats, two in replays, with no alleviation.
He remembered in 2012 the then high-water mark of holding Dublin to a draw in a 1985 AlL-Ireland semi-final and how a row had broken out between those wanting to go back, as manager Liam O’Neill was insisting, and those who wanted to stay and “celebrate”.
“I did a piece with RTÉ and the bus went back to the hotel without me. PJ McGrath gave me a lift and he was thrilled. ‘We’re back in the big time, now,’ he was saying. You know, back to the 1950s.
“The team were looking at the video the following week. I remember Michael O’Hehir’s commentary as Pádraig Brogan was getting ready to come on: ‘the colleges star on the side-line…’. Liam O’Neill is giving him instructions, telling him where to go and who’s to switch where. But he goes on, straight to his position and tells nobody! It’s a while before all the changes eventually get made.
“Anyway, at the team meeting the whole team is roaring laughing at this and Dermot Flanagan just lost the head with us. So did Liam O’Neill. ‘Ye find this funny,’ he was shouting. ‘Ye’ll always be losers’.”
It was obviously not intended as a Old Testament curse even if it reads that way.
Gaps in the defence and resulting opportunities
There has been an even-handed reaction to the pre-season loss of 33 per cent of the championship backs. Lee Keegan’s retirement brought down the curtain on a career that is seen symbolic of the unyielding Mayo crusade of the past decade. Sadness, though, goes beyond the purely elegiac.
Keegan was an All Star 15 months ago and again nominated last year. Oisín Mullin, another All Star but at the other end of his career, was juggling the idea of returning to the AFL, where he had previously signed with Geelong before having second thoughts.
Like Keegan, he was spoken to at length about staying on but as the prospects in either case waxed and waned, McStay and his management kept the players updated before the finality of both departures settled.
“I didn’t set out to be zero and two!” he says “and in both cases I’m absolutely satisfied that I can say to Mayo supporters and Mayo people everywhere that we handled it as well as it could be handled. We left no stone unturned. Right until we didn’t have them, we thought they’d be back.
“We did a lot of preparation by ensuring the players were kept informed as to how things were going. They were satisfied. The manner in which we said our goodbyes was great. We tried everything but one young man wanted to live his life and explore opportunities and another had reached the end of his sporting life, and we totally respected that.”
There’s an awareness that the management conducted its optimistic business in public and that the withdrawal of both is perceived as a blow to the team but as neither was involved in the group this season, the disruption has been minimal.
“The minute they move on, we move on. Everyone in Mayo adores Lee Keegan and Oisín Mullin, and is so proud of them but they’re no longer in our group and players can see two gaps in the defence and the opportunities that come with that.
“Oisín was back on a break around Christmas when we had the charity match against Sligo and he came and had something to eat with us afterwards. I had to remind him to take himself off the WhatsApp group now that he’s gone!”
The beginning
This year’s league is unique. Never before has the spring competition been so closely aligned with a team’s championship prospects. The best route remains provincial success but thereafter every league point can potentially make a difference.
On Saturday evening, All-Ireland champions Kerry will be in town and another bumper attendance is expected. Regardless of brave new worlds, Mayo-Kerry sells itself but management will also be glad to measure where they are against the champions – regardless of how strong they travel.
McStay believes that it’s too early to draw hard and fast conclusions but so far there have been no shattering reverses.
“The next challenge is Kerry and after that Tyrone and the only flag in the middle distance is that first round against Roscommon. There’s no life for us after that. Everything else is dictated by that. We want to get into the round robin from a position of strength but that depends on how Mayo-Roscommon goes.”
He knows from the experience with Roscommon that management is a high-pressure environment, which can sometimes get to people – even him, as he found himself in frustration chucking a ball at match officials and hitting linesman Niall Cullen, followed by a 12-week suspension.
Crestfallen, he apologised for the lapse and a few weeks later departed the intercounty scene.
Five years later, he feels less pressure and pugnacity.
“I have a sense of what I can and can’t do. The things I’m not good at, I know and appreciate. The only criticism that ever hurts me is the criticism I know I deserve. There was a time when I’d read some horrible piece and I’d be jumping up and down, looking for an email address but the older I get, the mellower I become.”
He sets great store by the collegiality of the playing group.
“Something I really value from my military training. How are we getting on? Do we like each other’s company? We stayed in Monaghan before the last game, had a really nice weekend, did a good bit of work and got our point.
“Could it have been two? It could but had the match lasted another minute it might have been nothing.
“Where do we want to be? A team that can beat anyone on our day and a team that anyone else is delighted to beat. With two games played, everything’s still up for grabs so we’ll review it after four matches when we have the data and then we can make proper decisions on what’s next.”
“What’s next” – the great unknown that keeps Mayo going.
Modern Mayo managers
- 1987-91: John O’Mahony (Connacht champions, 1988 and ‘89; first All-Ireland final in 38 years, 1989, lost to Cork)
- 1991-92: Brian McDonald (Connacht champions 1992, lost All-Ireland semi-final to Donegal)
- 1992-94: Jack O’Shea (Connacht champions 1993, lost All-Ireland semi-final to Cork)
- 1994-95: Anthony Egan
- 1995-99: John Maughan (Connacht champions 1996, ‘97 and ‘99, lost All-Ireland finals to Meath, after replay, and Kerry and ‘99 semi-final to Cork)
- 1999-2002: Pat Holmes (League winners 2001)
- 2002-05: John Maughan (Connacht champions 2004 and lost All-Ireland final to Kerry)
- 2005-06: Mickey Moran (Connacht champions 2006 and lost All-Ireland final to Kerry)
- 2006-10: John O’Mahony (Connacht champions 2009, lost All-Ireland quarter-final to Meath)
- 2010-14: James Horan (Connacht champions 2011-14, lost 2012 and ‘13 All-Ireland finals to Donegal and Dublin and 2011 and ‘14 All-Ireland semi-finals to Kerry)
- 2014-15: Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly (Connacht champions 2015 and lost All-Ireland semi-final, after a replay, to Dublin
- 2015-18: Stephen Rochford (lost 2016, after a replay, and ‘17 All-Ireland finals, both to Dublin
- 2018-22: James Horan (Connacht champions 2020 and ‘21, lost All-Ireland finals to Dublin and Tyrone; league winners 2019 and later that year lost All-Ireland semi-final to Dublin)
Overall 1987-2022:
- Connacht titles: 17
- National Football League: 2
- All-Ireland semi-finals: 19
- All-Ireland finals: 11
