Colin Sheridan: Cillian O'Connor still holds the baton for Mayo

Up to his devastating ACL injury twelve months ago, Cillian O'Connor had, over the course of a decade, defied the Mayo stereotype of producing temperamental un-manageable geniuses, to become a beautifully boring footballer. Boring in his brilliance.

“Hell is other people” 

- Jean Paul Satre, No Exit 

There’s an NPR podcast series - one arguably responsible for birthing all others - called This American Life. It is what I would call “luxury listening”. You listen to NPR and This American Life when you are on top of things; on top of your work, on top of your familial responsibilities. When you are looking after yourself and eating well and working out. It is the audio equivalent of reading the New Yorker and then going to dinner parties and sounding smarter because of it. The stories told are the opposite of essential; they are indulgent vignettes that tell of the ordinary lives of ordinary people that somehow become extraordinary in their ordinaryness. Recent episodes include “Off Course: Three people, and one animal, who know the path their lives will take until, suddenly, they don't” (a cliffhanger), and “Babysitting: A brother and sister decide to invent children to babysit, as an excuse to get out of their own house”.

A few years ago, they did one called “Music of the Night after Night after Night'' which told the stories of a small group of Broadway musicians who play the exact same music every single night—for decades—and how they’ve learned to make their peace with it (even if they can’t always make peace with each other). 

We are talking about elite - but invisible - musicians going to work in the pits on the Phantom of the Opera, where they play the exact same notes in the exact same order every day, some for 20 years.

Many jobs are like this, you’d argue, but nobody is drawn to music with the motivation of being an anonymous cog in a complex wheel where repetition is just as important as creativity. It always struck me that the same is often true in elite sport, and in the case of the musicians in the Phantom of the Opera and the Music of the Night After Night After Night, especially true for Mayo footballers.

Naturally many of the faces change, and some of the more talented faces are anything but anonymous, but the effort is consistent to the point of near tedium, a collective consciousness ingrained in footballers from Mayo from before they can walk. You don’t accept a role in the Mayo orchestra and see how it goes. You do so hoping you will become indispensable, even if it means surrendering yourself to the monotony of the greater good. 

As another marginally successful league campaign concluded yesterday with a victory/defeat over Kildare, one wonders where many of these players go in their minds to mind the drive to repeatedly hit the right notes, time and time again. Much like the Mayo footballers, the Phantom musicians were quite forthcoming in admitting they often perform below par. Peter Reit, a principal horn player (the orchestral equivalent of an attacking wing back, I think), told NPR “It's bound to happen sooner or later. I mean…the shows run for so long, every mistake that's possible to make has been made.” It sounds all too familiar. Ask any impartial analyst where exactly Mayo are a month out from championship, and they will likely combine a shoulder shrug with an eye roll, both dipped in a deep and meaningful sigh. This has been a league campaign that has been littered with the good (blooding of new players), the bad (incoherent attacking strategy), and the ugly (pretty much everything against Tyrone). Following last September's All-Ireland final loss, any straw poll taken immediately after would have lamented the lack of any depth on the bench as being one of the key areas to address during this league campaign. The emergence of Jack Carney and Adrian Orme, in particular will assuage some of the attacking concerns, but that too is offset by Tommy Conroy's absence, Kevin McLaughlin's struggle to find form and the uncertainty as to where the returning Jason Doherty actually is after two years sidelined through injury.

The old chestnut too of Aidan O’Shea’s best position was fertilised once again as he alternated between impact sub, midfield and centre-back over the last month. O’Shea as a player acts as an accidental metaphor for Mayo as a team, often mixing the sublime with the ridiculous in a calendar month. As maligned as he is much loved, he is too big a player and personality to be consigned to a bit-role, especially in the absence of the teams metronomic conductor, Cillian O’Connor, whose continued absence due to injury is perhaps the greatest cause for concern for a team at odds with its identity.

If O’Shea is the reluctant epitome of the Mayo enigma, O’Connor is its anthesis. Up to his devastating ACL injury twelve months ago, he had, over the course of a decade, defied the Mayo stereotype of producing temperamental un-manageable geniuses, to become a beautifully boring footballer. Boring in his brilliance. His stubbornness and surly onfield persona were a cold slap in the face to those who swooned over Mayo’s reputation as housewives favourite, only to eviscerate them for lack of spine when they fell short. Satre said "Hell is other people" because, as people, we are inherently unable to escape the judgment of everyone around us. Cillian O'Connor has long cared little for what outsiders think of him - a very un-Mayo quality - which makes his potential unavailability in the face of another championship season feel all the more acute.

Every orchestra needs its conductor, and Cillian O'Connor still holds the baton for Mayo.