Colin Sheridan: Promise of redemption remains at the heart of Mayo underdog story
Spare a thought for Mayo’s Cillian O’Connor this week. Perhaps the county’s greatest footballer of all time faces the ignominy of watching his team win an All-Ireland — their first in 70 years — without him. Should they, he will be mentioned lots. From the steps of the Hogan Stand to the homecoming in the mall in Castlebar, he will be cited by team-mates and management as a seminal part of the group.
“Without him, we wouldn’t be here.”
All of what’s said will most probably be true, but, O’Connor being O’Connor, it will likely matter little. For over 10 seasons he has been Mayo’s most potent attacker. Arrogant yet understated. Classy yet grumpy and stubborn, he has been the antithesis of what people had come to expect from Mayo, a team who have consistently proven themselves inconsistent when it mattered most. Instead, O’Connor became their metronome.
Without him, they were supposed to flounder.
Instead, they find themselves on the brink of glory. This week, Cillian O’Connor is the bloke walking by the window of a fancy restaurant, who spots his beautiful ex laughing in the company of a Hollywood hunk. He may have done a lot to get her there, but she’s moving on without him. Is there a worse feeling in life?
O’Connor, much like his manager and clubmate James Horan, has always come across as the unsentimental type. Injury is a part of sporting life, just as breakups are, but for Mayo to win any standalone Championship game of football (not to mention an All-Ireland final), without a player shortlisted for Footballer of the Year last season, will only enhance the magnitude of their achievement.
Like going a man down mid-game, losing a talisman can sometimes have a galvanising effect on a team if the conditions are right for others to step up.
In Mayo’s case, Ryan O’Donoghue from Belmullet has not so much lived up to the hype surrounding his talent, as spectacularly surpassed it. So too Tommy Conroy, who could have easily used the absence of O’Connor as an excuse to take another year to learn. Against Dublin in particular, both players filled his shoes admirably. There was steel and stubbornness in what they did. It had O’Connor written all over it.
Perhaps the player to blossom most in his absence, however, has been goalkeeper Robbie Hennelly. Should the thousands of Mayo supporter whatsapp groups ever be subject to retrospective FOI requests, they would make for uncomfortable reading for both the Breaffy man and those fans who have often directed their ire at him.
His reputation as a shot-stopper has never been in question, but a certain nervousness has always greeted his selection in big games for Mayo. Questionable decision making has, at times, obscured his abilities as both a top-class goalkeeper and a leader within a group who, over the course of the last decade, has become the envy of everyone but Dublin in terms of cohesion and togetherness.
In the aftermath of Hennelly’s game-saving intervention at the death against Dublin, Andy Moran — speaking on his podcast with Tommy Ronney and Paddy Andrews on Newstalk — said of Hennelly: “Robbie is the best team-mate I’ve ever had. He carries the dressing room...For him to go through what he has gone through the last few years has been exceptionally tough for us as a group because he means so much to the group”.
In this instance, Moran was speaking to Hennelly’s spiritual leadership of a dressing room that has had its fair share of strong characters, Moran amongst them.
But, while that leadership will be vital next Saturday night, it will be the tangibles that’ll matter most to Mayo.
Hennelly’s kickouts were brave and near perfectly executed against Dublin. Tyrone being Tyrone, they will have their homework done. Hennelly may well need to survive the odd mistake to ensure he provides his team the foundations they will require for victory. Solidity will matter more than moments of magic. His accuracy from placed balls was a huge positive in the absence of O’Connor.
Free-taking goalkeepers are a paradoxical phenomenon in football. Rory Beggan, Tyrone’s Niall Morgan, and Hennelly are amongst the best strikers of the ball there is in the game. When the strategy works, it’s fine, but there is something particularly demoralising in watching a keeper make the 70-yard dash forward, execute a laborious preamble, only for him to duck-hook the resulting kick into oblivion.
Lord knows what goes through their head on the run back to his posts. It’s one thing a forward missing a kick, his shame quickly lost in the next play, it’s quite another the whole world tut-tutting at the foolishness of a goalkeeper’s misguided hubris in believing he could do what his attackers could not.
If Hennelly nails his first kick against Tyrone, it sends a message that any foul within 60 yards of goal is punishable. If he doesn’t, Tyrone may be emboldened to give him more and more opportunities to diminish his confidence. It happens in basketball where the best players are fouled deliberately, just so the opposition watches them crumble at the free throw line.
Mayo need to be ready for this. No team will burrow inside their heads like Tyrone. Hennelly especially, needs to withstand whatever mind-games they have ready for him.
Maybe O’Connor can help. This is a player whose application to kicking and game preparation is arguably without peer in Mayo. O’Connor has been known to practice with headphones on to replicate intimidation from Hill 16. Hennelly may require interrogation training from the Army Ranger Wing to be ready for Saturday. Whatever he needs, I’m sure O’Connor would help him get it.
The Ballintubber man will not be alone in watching with his loafers on next weekend.
Last season saw the departure of Keith Higgins, Donal Vaughan, David Clarke, Seamus O’Shea, Tom Parsons and Chris Barrett. It led many to justifiably believe that Mayo were too short of quality and experience to challenge this summer. Almost unfathomably, the opposite has been true. It will be an odd weekend for those players, each of them forensically familiar with practically every detail of the itinerary their now former colleagues will go through.
The battle rhythm of the week; the light sessions, the travel arrangements, the hotel, the rooming plan. It’s unlikely they miss the drudgery of wet Tuesday nights running splits in Bekan under lights, but this weekend will surely carry at least a hint of regret.
Their potential conflict - however minor - only adds another layer of intrigue to what will be another fascinating chapter in the Mayo story. Here is a tale littered with romance, relationships ended or postponed due to snapped Achilles tendons and retirements, an underdog story with the promise of redemption for a goalie long misunderstood by those he serves.
Sally Rooney may be the county’s greatest living storyteller, but we need not look too far to find Mayo’s most intriguing characters. They will be writ large in Croke Park next Saturday night, no fiction required. Beautiful world, where are you indeed...
