If this turns out to be the year that Mayo finally win the big one, there will be a deep irony in them making it to September without a game to echo down the ages.
How many days have we walked out of Croke Park after a Mayo game with the makings of a 10-verse ballad laying strewn across the turf? This time, they got out the gap with barely the basis of a thrown-together limerick behind them.
There was a young team from Tipperary. They were beaten. Next.
Mayo put Tipp away by 2-13 to 0-14. They did it by playing very well for precisely nine minutes of the 70-odd, during which they outscored Liam Kearns’s team by 1-7 to 0-1 in the run-up to half-time.
Otherwise they were leaden and patchy for long periods and would certainly have had a worrisome time of it against a more seasoned side.
For 24 minutes in the first half, they scored just two points, neither of them from play. For 18 minutes in the second half, they didn’t score at all. They gave away nine points from frees, the biggest total they’ve coughed up down that route since Kerry managed 2-5 in the 2014 All-Ireland semi-final replay in Limerick.
Bottom line, they’re in the final thanks to a display that would all but rule them out of winning it if they repeat it on September 18th. When that’s enough to grant safe passage into the summer’s last game, you grab your things and keep walking before someone calls you back.
“You could call it underwhelming,” agreed Keith Higgins afterwards. “But at the same time semi-finals are there for winning. At this stage we don’t care if we win the greatest game we’ve ever played or if we win the worst one we’ve ever played. We just have to win them, simple as that, like. It’s different, but the result is all that matters. It’s clichéd but it’s true.”
His manager was equally sanguine about everything but the numbers on the board at the end. Stephen Rochford has done the least that last winter’s putsch demanded of him, ushered Mayo back into another final.
It will be their third in five years, their fifth since 2004. Only two teams in the history have been to six All-Ireland semi-finals in a row without an All-Ireland title to show for it at the end. Yesterday was about getting a chance not to become the third.
“Tipperary were a tough, tough team,” said Rochford. “They had scored a goal in every game this year and that included two against Kerry. There was no case of saying we would come in here and win this game at 80 per cent and then come back for a final. Absolutely no way.
“We have huge respect for Tipperary and the manner in which they had beaten Galway certainly had our antennae up. That quarter before the end of the first-half where we drove on and scored 1-7 to a point from them and showed a ruthlessness that we want in the group, that was pleasing. We need the performance to be better in the All-Ireland final and be it Kerry or Dublin, I’m sure they’ll bring it out in us.”
For Tipperary, the end was timorous enough but no more so than you’d forgive in a Division Three team.
They played with vim in the early stages but couldn’t take enough advantage of it on the scoreboard.
They lost Robbie Kiely to a black card in the first half and Bill Maher to a red in the second and both men were losses. They coughed up a good Jason Doherty goal to a turnover and a jammy Conor O’Shea one to a couple of scuffed shots. (Yes, a couple of them – that’s how jammy it was.)
When it was over, Kearns brought them into a huddle in the middle of pitch and told them to look around.
“I said to them: ‘This is your stage, this is where you need to be, this is where you’ve got to come back to.’ I told them I was really proud of them. And that’s the truth.
“The second half, I said, ‘I was as proud of ye as any game ye’ve played.’ Because we could have laid down. We were six points down, had problems at the back. We’d been beaten in the middle of the field, beaten up for 10 minutes before half-time.
“We made a promise to each other in the dressing room that we weren’t going to lie down. And they didn’t lie down. Not even to the very end when they went down to 14 men. I told them to come back here again. Don’t let this be the end.”
Fine words. Mayo have said them plenty of times. Rochford’s side have given themselves a shot at the end they seek. Can’t ask for more than that.
