Mayo have seen this movie before. Spoiler alert — it stinks. The plot is derivative, the cast is underwhelming. There’s nothing in it to stop the audience making for the exits long before the end. All in all, critics are saying the franchise is really testing the public’s patience at this stage.
Echoes of the 2019 All-Ireland semi-final couldn’t have rung out louder here. The half-time score that day was Mayo 0-8 Dublin 0-6. The half-time score here was Mayo 0-8 Dublin 1-6. And then the third quarter exploded on them and it all went to hell.
If anything, you’d have said the current iteration had more cause to be hopeful than the one four years ago did, even despite being a goal worse off. Back then, the Dubs were in their late-phase pomp. They hadn’t lost a championship match in five years. They had minced everyone in the Super-8s. Precisely nobody was amazed when they catapulted out of half-time and killed Mayo off in the space of 11 minutes.
Dublin’s dominance was total in that period. Con O’Callaghan and James McCarthy combined to set Paul Mannion up for the point straight from the throw-in
Were we amazed when it happened again here? Probably not. But equally, precisely nobody was suggesting it was on the cards at the break. All the stats were more or less dead level — possession, shots, misses, even yellow cards. And then Dublin scored 1-3 in less than five minutes and nothing was level anymore.
Dublin’s dominance was total in that period. Con O’Callaghan and James McCarthy combined to set Paul Mannion up for the point straight from the throw-in. Colm Basquel burned David McBrien, cutting in from the Cusack Stand sideline for his third point of the day. Brian Fenton added another after Colm Reape was forced to go long with his kick-out.
The stadium was vibrating by now. Mayo couldn’t get out. Reape was kicking from the Hill 16 end and every time he put the ball on the tee, it must have felt like he was trying to do archery on a bouncy castle. Dublin didn’t so much push up on him as invade his very being.
“I’d say their press on our kick-out was very, very good,” said Kevin McStay afterwards. “We got a bit of joy, but not enough joy and it’s frightening when they press up on you. And again, I’d say that’s a rookie goalie. He’s a baby goalie in terms of championship and senior experience. But what he has done this year has been really good for Mayo, and he can be one of Mayo’s big ‘keepers in the next 10 years if he wants to be.”
The kill shot came when Sam Callinan, another Mayo player experiencing life in this sort of cauldron for the first time, tried to be a little too cute down by the endline. You can feasibly shield the ball from one attacker to let it go trundle out for a kick-out — you’re riding your luck when you try to shield it from two. Mannion got a toe in, Cormac Costello chipped it up and headed for goal, Basquel finished into an open net.
“Big games swing on a moment or two,” said McStay. “We’re still in it, we’re definitely breathing, we want to get a third quarter [push]. And then the goal we give away. You have to credit Dublin — look at the way they finished that goal. They just popped it across and a guy pushed it to an empty net. In that moment they were clinical, there was no chance that was going to be missed.
“We absolutely wanted to win our kick-out up high [in the third quarter]. We were going hard on that but the breaks just didn’t [come] … the Dubs were just really clean on that break and it seemed to go their way and they got more men in around it. That’s definitely a place we have to go back and improve on.
We have great lads around it that will think it through and figure it out, and we’ll get more experience
“We are not good enough at it yet, we are not up with the top teams in terms of our kick-out yet but we will be, I have no doubt we will. We have great lads around it that will think it through and figure it out, and we’ll get more experience. That’s my own view and we’ll be better for this.”
So much disappeared in such a short space of time for Mayo. It took them six minutes after the break to even get inside the Dublin 45, a move that ended with a killer wide from a Ryan O’Donoghue free. When Paul Mannion kicked a point of his right foot to push Dublin 2-10 to 0-8 clear, the clock read 43:12. Mayo hadn’t scored for a full 20 minutes either side of half-time.
