Watching the New York v Sligo game on the weekend reminded me of the time there was a shooting in Gaelic Park. This must have been around 10 or 15 years ago at least. Nobody was too badly hurt or anything. If I remember rightly, the headline in the paper over there was something like “Gunplay at Gaelic Park”. Gunplay!
Anyway, I didn’t need the newspaper to hear about it. Somebody always knows somebody so the story came back from fellas who were there in the clubhouse bar when it happened. After the initial panic at the gunshots, it didn’t take too long for everything to calm down and for the place to get back to normal.
The NYPD arrived to arrest the lad in question and to take witness statements and secure the area and the whole bit. By all accounts, there were a couple of fellas from Listowel sitting at the bar and after a while they got impatient at the fact that their night was being interrupted.
“Come here to me,” one of them says to the cop. “There’s no need to be going to all this fuss. Everybody knows what happened. That fella there shot that fella there and that’s all there is to it. Everybody saw it. So could ye get with it? We’re having a pint here. . . ”
Never mind the gunplay, serious business is serious business.
It’s April and we’re down to serious business already. There’s two huge games this weekend – Mayo have Galway in Castlebar and Donegal play Armagh in Ballybofey. It’s going to take a bit of getting used to that these massive matches are on this early in the year. The kids have six weeks of school left, the cold is still in the air, there’s plenty of rain around most days.
In Kerry, we’re feeling good about life. I ran into Jack O’Connor in Denny Street in Tralee the week after the league final and he was full of chat – which is how you know we’re feeling good. Jack wouldn’t be anywhere near the main street in Tralee the Wednesday after a league final if Kerry had been beaten.
We know we have a promising team and that we should be up there challenging for Sam Maguire when the time comes. But maybe it’s the time of year and maybe it’s the fact that the league final was such a blow-out – it’s still to feel like it’s really championship yet. There’s a fair bit of phony war to be fought before it starts to really matter.
I think you’ll find that a bit on Sunday. There’ll be big talk all week about local rivalries and everything being on the line and whatnot. But when it comes right down to it, all four of these teams should probably make it to the All-Ireland quarter-final by one route or another. An Ulster title would be a big deal for Armagh I suppose but for the rest of them, the provincial ship has sailed long ago. Throw in a bit of weather and the unusual time of year and I will be surprised if we see many classics in the early rounds.
Conspiracy theories
There was a bit of that to the league final. It didn’t look to me like Mayo were overly annoyed by losing it the way they did. Either Pádraig O’Hora lost a bet to James Horan or Mayo had no real interest in showing everyone what they will do about David Clifford later in the year. One way or the other, you don’t need to be into conspiracy theories to get the feeling that Mayo didn’t want to give it the full rattle so close to the Galway game.
Put it this way. There are two ways to lose a football match by 15 points. One is if the other crowd are 15 points better than you – nobody thinks that is the case here. The other is if you give up. All other things being equal, you can’t lose by that much without at least half of your team throwing their hat at it.
Mayo don’t do giving up. Say whatever else you want about them, it’s the last thing they do when they’re serious about a match . It could be a league game, an FBD game or an All-Ireland final – when they decide they’re going for it, they never leave you wondering what they think about a game. But they visibly gave up the last day – go back and watch how many scores Kerry got in the second half without being tackled if you want to see proof.
Contrast that with their attitude to the game in Tralee three weeks earlier. I was there in the crowd and compared to the league final, it was chalk and cheese. Mayo should have won that game – they wired into Kerry at every opportunity and it was only a few bad shots here and there that cost them the win. You can’t tell me they had the same attitude in the final but just happened to lose by a point a man.
Galway are a different story. They threw their hat at the game in the final round of the league against Roscommon alright but they went full-on to try and win the final. You only had to watch Pádraic Joyce talking afterwards to see how annoyed they were at having thrown it away in the closing stages.
Joyce never leaves you in doubt when he’s annoyed. He starts talking like a fella at the Ballinasloe Horse Fair. His words start to come out of the side of his mouth and his sentences get shorter and quicker and snappier. You don’t need to be told twice that he’s put out by it all.
And you could see why. Their game against Roscommon was fairly open so it should have suited them. Paul Conroy has developed into a really fine scoring midfielder and this was his kind of game and he thrived. In fairness, plenty of the Galway forwards did their bit, including Shane Walsh off their bench. That side of the game is something Galway know they’re good at. They scored 0-22, which should be good enough to win any game in Croke Park.
Defensive leaders
But they lost because they don’t have a leader in defence. Go through the real contenders for the championship and look at their defensive leaders. Pádraig Hampsey and Ronan McNamee in Tyrone. James McCarthy and Jonny Cooper in Dublin. Gavin White looks to be coming good in Kerry. Lee Keegan and Oisín Mullin in Mayo. The type of dependable, physical leaders that Galway just don’t have.
Or even someone like Aidan O’Shea. People throw all sorts of nonsense at Aidan O’Shea but what wouldn’t Galway give for someone like him? Someone who will do all the dirty work, take all the hits, cover off that central channel and put in tackles and turnovers and all the rest of it. Never mind Galway, Kerry would take Aidan O’Shea in a heartbeat.
Joyce doesn’t have anyone like him and it’s unlikely he has suddenly found one in the three weeks since the league final. So Galway have to go with what they have this Sunday. They don’t have a bad record in Castlebar recently so they won’t have any big fear of going there. And even when life is bad in Galway football, they always think they have a shot against Mayo.
But my feeling is that if Mayo are able to put out any sort of halfway full-strength team, they should have too much for Galway. Giving Cillian O’Connor a run in the league final when the game was long over was purely a matter of getting minutes into his legs. It was like running Tiger Roll in a hurdle race to sharpen him up for the Grand National. It meant nothing on the day but it will stand to him further down the line.
The big thing for Mayo here is that a win would buy them a bit of breathing space. The winners play Leitrim a fortnight later and then there’s a three-week build-up to the Connacht final. They’re still down a few bodies but you’d imagine that the majority of them would be able to make it back in time for the last weekend in May.
So there’s next to no chance of Mayo going in here half-hearted. Even if they weren’t playing the old enemy, there’s no doubt that winning the Connacht title is the best route to take through the summer. Whoever loses on Sunday has six weeks to wait until the first round of the qualifiers.
That’s going to be torture for whoever has to do it. They’ll effectively be starting a whole new season on the first weekend in June. And then playing five games in seven weeks to win the All-Ireland. Good luck with that.
I’d say Horan wants no part of that scenario. Mayo are seasoned warriors who know their way around every sort of championship at this stage. Even most of their youngest players have played in two All-Ireland finals at this stage. They’re at home, they have a cause, and they are up against a Galway team who lack the defensive presence needed at the top level.
Mayo to win. Galway to kick their heels until June. The serious business to start eventually.
