Another September leaves more questions than answers swirling through the atmosphere of heartbreak and defiance and wistfulness in old Mayo. Last Sunday’s All-Ireland final merely presented them with a new way of experiencing the lasting hollowness. It doesn’t matter whether they are destroyed in an All-Ireland final or lose it by a single point.

The theories and the questions and the rumours will circulate and the mystery of how they are to win this infernal competition remains as unknowable as ever.

But one thing is beyond dispute. Mayo could have won that game. It was there, awaiting a suitor. They lost by a point. Early in the first half, when the Mayo defence collapsed to neutralise a break by James McCarthy, they were awarded a free which was kicked straight to Diarmuid Connolly who snapped it over the bar. That was a giveaway point by Mayo.

And in the second half, after Michael Dara Macauley burst through to force a fine save from Rob Hennelly, the umpires awarded Dublin a 45 even though the ball clearly deflected off the midfielder before it crossed the end line. Stephen Cluxton pointed with his usual efficiency.

Cancel out those two scores and Mayo are All-Ireland champions. And Bernard Brogan has been roundly applauded for his economical finishing but my bet is if you talk with Hennelly and Ger Cafferkey they will be adamant the first goal should never happened: two-on-one for Mayo with a dropping ball into the square is just a bread-and-butter chore for defenders of their quality. Unless Dublin had LeBron James hanging about on the edge of the square, that ball should have been cleared.

Opinions
Like all losing managers – particularly those from Mayo – James Horan will have little difficulty in locating verbal and written opinion of what he should have done better and earlier and what not during the match. Freeman's substitution; Richie Feeney's non-appearance; not dealing with the heat-seeking missiles which Cluxton was launching towards the wings; not throwing a big man onto the edge of the square . . . the charges are coming thick and fast.

Horan will deal with them with that inscrutable smile of his. Had Mayo managed to stumble over the line on the right side of the scoreboard, then none of that stuff would be mentioned and all the focus would be on Dublin: how you can’t – as Alan Hansen once said – win anything with kids, how Jim Gavin made a mess of his substitutions, how the Dubs take the wrong options. But the Dubs got there and that the county board is confident of finding a shirt sponsor willing to pay €2.5 million tells would-be contenders all they need to know about the next 10 years.

But what of Mayo? In the build-up to this final, the common feeling about the team was they had done everything right all summer, setting a bossy tone with the lecture they delivered in Salthill. It is largely true. But even as Mayo were growing over the summer, there were some nagging questions trailing them. Only Alan Mulholland and the Galway players can say for sure how much that humiliation had to do with the performance of the home team. How happy were they with the goals they coughed up? Donal Vaughan’s wonderfully-timed sprints through the gaps in Galway’s defence illuminated Mayo’s play that day.

And they continued to be a feature of the Mayo game all summer. The trouble was that some team was always going to cut off those paths and check Vaughan’s runs. And that team happened to be Dublin on All-Ireland final day. Mayo’s expulsion of All-Ireland champions Donegal has been labelled as the performance of the summer.

Jim McGuinness’s comments about the schedule imposed on Donegal leaves the question as to the mental and physical state of the champions going into that game. As Mark McHugh said, even if Donegal were at operating at full tilt, it would have been hard to do anything about the quality and sustained aggression of the Mayo performance.

Nonetheless, the Mayo goals were troubling from a Mayo perspective. They were all, in their own way, gifts. There is a fair chance Eamon McGee is still stunned by the sheer impudence of Cillian O'Connor in snatching the football from his arms even as he sat on the ground. Mayo's second goal came from a Donegal error and another of those punishing runs by Vaughan and he also had the freedom of the playground for Mayo's third. Even the fourth goal came when Andy Moran's shot was saved by Paul Durcan but the ball deflected at an uncannily acute angle across the face of the goal and straight into O'Connor's hands. He finished into an empty net. The score was 4-12 to 0-4 then.

Clearest indication
It was through-the-looking-glass stuff; the clearest indication of all that what was happening had as much to do with Donegal as with Mayo. The difficulties Mayo would have in achieving their All-Ireland dream were never as clear as they were in that moment.The strangeness of the occasion begged the cold question: what happens when those goals don't come? Where will the scores come from in a close, claustrophobic match?

That answer was partly evident in what may, in retrospect, have been Mayo’s best performance, against Tyrone when they recovered from a ferocious start by the Ulster men and an early injury to O’Connor. But they were playing against a team that is still a work in progress .

With 63 minutes gone in last week’s All-Ireland final, Mayo trailed by 2-10 to 1-11. Just two points down! It was all to play for. The Mayo fans should have been going berserk. But there was an ominous, heavy quiet around the ground. It was as if they knew, as if the thousands were already beginning to make their peace with the fates. That can’t happen in future. Mayo fans are going to have to learn to be as loud and confident on All-Ireland final day as they are on Connacht final day.

I don’t think there can be any doubt the collective hope of a county and the psychic burden of previous of All-Ireland defeats inhibited Mayo a little. They had several superb individual performances but as a team, the drive-forward purpose and the shining coldness with which they had played all summer deserted them.

Dublin were liberated by playing in an All-Ireland final. They feel as if that is where they belong and that emboldened Ger Brennan to venture into the Mayo house and kick the huge right-footed point which signalled this wasn’t Mayo’s year. Mayo will go into next year as a top five team. They have a terrific manager and players monkish in their dedication. There is nothing to do but to go on – to fail, fail again, fail better. Someday soon, Mayo will reach an All-Ireland final and play out of their skins. Until then, the decades must be recited.