Why Mayo hate being liked
So it is with the National League football finals and finalists in recent years. Donegal in 2007, Derry in 2008 and even Kerry in 2009 found that getting to a league final and winning it can become the catalyst for a cycle of poor form which is very hard to arrest for the start of championship. Whether consciously or otherwise, teams that have won the last three league titles have emerged lethargic and leaden-footed on the other side.
Little wonder then, that John O’Mahony might have been reluctant during the week to oblige the sponsors and talk up tomorrow’s wrap to what has been an annual diminuendo at the end of each recent spring campaign.
O’Mahony is a peculiar and intriguing manager. At once an iconoclast and a throwback, he represents the best of traditional Mayo football in his idealistic approach to the game, yet he has quite justifiably spent the last year or so railing against slights and platitudes about his players’ make-up as footballers.
It’s easy for more decorated counties to like Mayo football and Mayo footballers. Since their re-emergence during O’Mahony’s first term in charge over 20 years ago, we have tended to view them with the same benign affection we afforded some of the great Irish bands of that era — many of whom blossomed spectacularly before eventually disappearing in obscurity again. Mayo are the Into Paradise, the Power of Dreams and the Whipping Boy of the GAA world. That they never emulated the U2s of this world somehow made them more enduringly popular and more palatable to us than Bono and the boys could ever wish to be.
This has particular resonance for Munster GAA people. When Cork weren’t beating Mayo in the All-Ireland final in 1989, walloping them in the 1993 semi-final and beating them once again in the 1999 semi-final, it was Kerry’s turn to colonise their memories in the 1997, 2004, and 2006 finals.
Out of caution and respect (and a genuine belief that the wheel eventually will turn) you’re very unlikely to hear any Cork or Kerry fan diss Mayo but when pressed, supporters in both counties will acknowledge that Mayo have been one of their favourite teams to play in Croke Park.
O’Mahony will know this too and while his current group of players shouldn’t be unduly burdened by the past, they are reported to be working very hard with team psychologist Gerry Hussey lately on breaking the cycle of defeat and changing the public perception of themselves as a team.
There’s a sense since early February that Mayo are indeed changing by unseen degrees. Watching from the terrace during their comprehensive defeat of Kerry in Austin Stack Park last month it was quite apparent that there was a steelier element to Mayo’s game that hadn’t been evident in quite some time.
One sketch in particular illuminates the central truth of people’s perceptions of Mayo football — after a minor incident between Andy Moran and Kerry wing back Adrian O’Connell, young Mayo defender Donal Vaughan (one of Mayo’s best performers this year) engaged in the darker arts of off the ball play and got away with it. Vaughan’s antics didn’t go unnoticed on the terrace but far from being enraged, the Kerry supporters were almost in state of disbelief that a Mayo player would behave in such a manner.
I imagine O’Mahony was privately pleased to see such audacity and black-heartedness from one of his players and it certainly wasn’t a one-off. There have been countless other such showings throughout the league.
Should Mayo win tomorrow’s Division One final, should they gather momentum throughout the summer and dare we say it — should 2010 eventually become The Year for their supporters — one wonders would we like them as much?
We all rejoiced when the Clare hurling team made their breakthrough a decade and a half ago. We didn’t like it so much however, when they started to project that sense of entitlement that comes with believing you’re as good as anyone else. Likewise when Armagh broke through the glass ceiling in 2002, the GAA community were quick to embrace them but after five seasons playing hard and aggressive and apologising to nobody, there were very few tears shed outside the Orchard when their powers began to wane in 2006. Come to think of it, Tyrone too, were a lot easier to like before they gate-crashed the party in 2003.!
Only a suspicion that there is a sting in their tail has stifled any morose delectation at their current predicament but there is sure to be an outbreak of tall poppy syndrome if Tyrone’s league woes continue into championship 2010.
Strangely, as we wait for the bonfire to take a good hold and as his team prepare for their first visit of 2010 to Croke Park, the challenge for O’Mahony and his Mayo team is to become as resented as every serious team has been since O’Mahony himself led a Galway team of enduring popularity to glory in 2001. With the memory of their last league final trip to Croke Park in 2007 still sticking in the gut, Mayo people will be acutely aware of the need to carry positive thoughts out of this latest visit to the big house.
Fellow visitors this weekend, Sligo, await in a championship opener six weeks hence and the importance of Mayo winning a first league title since that landmark year of 2001 won’t be lost on O’Mahony either.
