John Fogarty: Pragmatist Kevin McStay makes his mark
PRAGMATIST: Mayo senior football manager, Kevin McStay, watches on anxiously as his side get the better of Galway in Sunday's Division One League final in Croke Park on Sunday last. Pic: INPHO/Ryan Byrne
You trust he will, but Colm O’Rourke hasn’t yet caught up with the fact that a manager needs to act and think differently to a pundit.
Kevin McStay, on the other hand, realised some time ago that the more hectic job requires a persona.
Three years in bobbing Roscommon gave him an education in pragmatism. While he could wax lyrical about how football should be played in a studio, in his adopted county he cut his coat according to the cloth available to him.
Twelve months ago and having returned to the punditry role, we asked McStay along with former Dublin and Mayo stars Noelle Healy and Colm Boyle at RTÉ’s football championship launch about their thoughts on the advanced mark. He gave it both barrels.
“The offensive mark, aptly titled, it’s offensive. Horrible,” he said. “The goal chances are being stopped if a bad decision is being made by the catcher. He could have a two-on-one on inside but he’s so ready to call his mark he isn’t ready to play on immediately after it. So, it has actually led to a reduction in goal chances. I’m sure if you go back on the tapes, you would see that. It’s nearly hard to see any improvement.”
On Sunday, Ryan O’Donoghue scored two of those “horrible” marks as McStay’s Mayo beat Galway, who produced one via Robert Finnerty while Damien Comer sent another narrowly wide.
Backing up McStay’s point about a lack of goals (although Colm Reape had plenty do with it and O’Donoghue’s two marks would unlikely have developed into goals), there were none scored just as there was no green flag in last year’s All-Ireland final while Kerry kicked three marks.
Asked about the advanced mark in December 2019, then Kildare manager Jack O’Connor wasn’t impressed.
“The offensive mark may take the flow out of the game and slow up things so it will take a while to get up to speed and it may be tough on referees to begin with.”
Looking at the yards taken by O’Donoghue to make his second mark an easier kick into the Hill 16 goal, the rule still seems to be difficult for match officials but our main point here is O’Connor, like McStay, wasn’t going to be turn his nose up at something he could use.
In beating Galway last July, the mark was a vital tool.
“Whatever about the rule, it worked out alright for us on Sunday, that’s for sure,” said O’Connor a day after the final.
“David (Clifford) won a couple of great marks. When I spoke to him at the start of the year, I said, ‘David you’re 6ft 3in, 15 and half stone and it’s one of the weapons we’ll try and develop this year with you’.
“I’ve always liked that in an inside forward to be an aerial threat. Going back to Johnny Crowley in ’04 and (Kieran) Donaghy in ’06, it is a great weapon to have because it gives great direction to your play.”
Those were different times, though, especially 2006 when Kerry, having been without a goal in four Munster games, scored 11 in the next five as Donaghy moved to the edge of the square.
In their six-game winning championship of last year, they managed three goals and eight marks, Clifford converting five of them and Geaney three.
Across this year’s league, Mayo’s double act of O’Donoghue and O’Shea sent over six marks, three apiece.
Similar in height and weight to Clifford, the latter is the weapon McStay always promised to use were he to become Mayo manager.
Not only that and bookmarking a fine campaign for O’Shea where his long-range passing was as effective as his inside play, it was his kicks into O’Donoghue that initiated Sunday’s marks for Mayo.
The rule, let’s be clear, is an abomination. The logic behind it may have been genuine, an attempt to enshrine kick and catch into the rulebook, but it has been counterproductive, slowed up the game and rewarded either basic skills or ones that are alien to the game.
For his first mark on Sunday, O’Donoghue dived Australian Rules-style to complete O’Shea’s lofted pass that barely made the required 20 metres. The success of O’Shea’s inside kicking combined with Mayo’s success these last couple of months will most likely be held up by the rules advisory committee as a reason to retain the rule.
The rationale for the group proposing the rule be made permanent was a 6% increase in contested foot passes and a decrease in the ratio of hand-passing to foot transfers when the offensive mark was trialled in the 2019 Allianz League.
Fundamentally though, the body have championed an uncontested kick over the bar ahead of a contested one under it.
As for McStay, exploiting a rule he doesn’t agree with doesn’t make him a hypocrite but a manager.
As the British philosopher Bertrand Russell put it: “War does not determine who is right — only who is left.”
Apart from Ulster delivering the odd doozy, provincial football championships rarely start with a bang so some, but most definitely not all of the complaints about there being no build-up to the competitions are trite.
Still, the meeting of Mayo and Roscommon in Castlebar this weekend merits attention. Sitting in Kevin McStay’s press conference on Sunday, you were almost tempted to pepper him with questions about Roscommon to keep for a piece on the game later in the week.
It’s not as if Mayo will speak again to the media prior to the game and put themselves in the headlines any more than what they have done these last couple of days.
One gap weekend between the league and championship is all that’s required to promote the latter and really all the dying-on-the-vine provincial championships deserve.
Instead, it looks and feels as if the GAA can’t get through these 29 provincial football games over the next six weekends quick enough so that the real and new business can start.
How the Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC) finds the space is the question.
You can expect they will sound out Central Council again about doing away with the league finals.
Not so much as giving them a “told you so” as illustrating just how claustrophobic the season is if the league as it stands remains untouched.
Alternatively, they could take the easier option of addressing the schedule and start the league a week earlier in January but that could run into trouble with poor weather and perhaps detract from the All-Ireland club finals.
Pushing the start of the provincial championships into the third weekend in April would more than likely mean an August All-Ireland final, which is the way a growing number of GAA senior officials realise things are going.
Reason No 248 for the Allianz Hurling Leagues to be revised based on the split season was put forward by Offaly hurler Cillian Kiely following the county’s promotion to Division 1 on Sunday.
“It’s very unfair to have to be out five weeks in a row,” said Kiely to Midlands Radio after the Division 2A final win over Kildare.
“We’ve picked up a lot of injuries in the last month and now just six days before the McDonagh Cup.”
If Mayo are potential victims of their own league success in the championship, then Offaly are the hurling equivalent.
The victory in Portlaoise at the weekend was their fourth game in 21 days.
By the time they have a rest between Round 3 and 4 of the Joe McDonagh Cup, they will have played seven matches in 42 days. That’s an exhausting run of games for any team.
Is it any wonder manager Johnny Kelly has been looking for an overhaul of the inter-county hurling year by amalgamating the league and championship?
How can Offaly be expected to replicate their league triumph in the McDonagh Cup when the intense schedule is set up to stymie them?
Antrim in 2020 and Carlow two years before that have shown that both competitions can be won in the same year, but they didn’t have to endure the gauntlet Offaly have been presented with this year.
