Just as hundreds of Mayo fans engulfed their triumphant players on the sun-drenched pitch at Pearse Stadium, the heavens suddenly opened, sending dozens scampering back off again to find shelter.
It was all so very Mayo. You can never quite predict how anything is going to play out, though you can safely assume it will be entertaining. For the fourth time in five years now they have knocked Galway out of the championship.
Just a week after conspiring to find another inventive way of making life hard for themselves by throwing away a comfortable lead against Cork, Mayo came to the back yard of their neighbours and dumped one of the All-Ireland favourites out of the competition.
“It is disappointing today and it’s just very hard to stomach,” said a dejected Pádraic Joyce afterwards.
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“Just very disappointing, that’s just the bottom line. There’s no point in trying to gloss over it. We won Connacht, lost the league final, wasn’t a bad year for us – but being knocked out of the championship before the quarterfinals is a poor season overall.
“Mayo were probably a bit better than us today, but we just missed too much. Even last week in Armagh, we shouldn’t have been in the position to be playing here today. But we are, and we’re out of the championship now, and it’s a bitter pill to swallow.”
This is the biggest win of Kevin McStay’s reign so far and sees Mayo included in Monday morning’s All-Ireland quarter-final draw, which will pit them against one of Dublin, Armagh or Derry.
“There’s lots of room for improvement and we’ll try and eek out that improvement this week when we get back to Mayo, but for now the golden ticket was the passage to Dublin next week,” said the Mayo manager.
Galway, with the aid of a significant match-influencing wind, led 0-8 to 0-3 at half-time but Mayo were able to capitalise on the breeze after the break and David McBrien’s 43rd-minute goal was the defining score of the contest.
The Tribesmen huffed and puffed for a green flag late on as they peppered the Mayo goalmouth but from the chaos of that injury-time barrage the visitors emerged still standing. Few teams handle chaos quite like Mayo.
“The conditions were difficult, it was a good gut-check for us right down to the end,” said McStay. “There was a lot of pin-balling going on in the last minute.”
For Galway, the winter will be full of regrets. They shouldn’t really have found themselves in this battle to the death with Mayo, but in the space of seven days their entire season unravelled.
“We’ve no one to blame only ourselves,” stated Joyce. “We didn’t win the game last week or draw the game, you have to accept it and move from on it and that’s all we can do.”
Damien Comer and Seán Kelly didn’t look fully fit either against Mayo, with the former not returning to the field after half-time. Without Comer, Galway are not the same force. Kelly’s surges forward are also a key component to their game.
Shane Walsh failed to hit the heights he is capable of at any stage this season and on Sunday the All Star forward did not score from play. But at the other end of the field many of Mayo’s experienced warriors showed there is still plenty of fire in the belly.
Cillian O’Connor came off the bench and scored with his first touch, Kevin McLoughlin’s appearance in the starting team seemed to blindside Galway early on while Aidan O’Shea stomped around Pearse Stadium making a nuisance of himself.
Paddy Durcan popped over two points and played a central role in creating McBrien’s goal, but Diarmuid O’Connor stood above them all with a towering display of leadership, full of hunger and purpose and dogged resilience.
Mayo were the last team to book their place in Monday’s draw, following wins for Cork, Monaghan and Tyrone on Saturday. The four preliminary quarter-final winners will face one of the four quarter-finalists – Dublin, Kerry, Derry, Armagh.
The draw will take place at 8.30am on RTÉ Radio 1. Repeat pairings from the group stages of the All-Ireland series will be avoided so fixtures that can’t happen include: Kerry v Cork, Kerry v Mayo, Armagh v Tyrone, and Derry v Monaghan.
The four quarterfinals will be played at Croke Park next weekend, with two games on Saturday and two on Sunday. The fixtures will be confirmed on Monday afternoon.
One fallout from the weekend’s results has been Aidan O’Rourke’s decision to stand down as Donegal manager.
Elsewhere, Meath and Down both won their Tailteann Cup semi-finals to qualify for this year’s decider. The game will be a repeat of the 1991 All-Ireland decider between the counties.
But of all the teams in action over the weekend, it is hard not to feel Mayo were the biggest winners. Their never-ending quest for Sam Maguire goes on.
“I’m not sure we need intensity at training this week, a lot of it will be about recovery and doing the right things,” said McStay.
“But they are so experienced as a group, they will know exactly what is required this week, I won’t have to be telling them too much. This will be a good lift for us as a group, I’m sure of it.”
And nobody will want to draw them on Monday morning.
