Fogarty Forum: Would Padraic Joyce have quit if Mayo hadn’t won All-Ireland?
TOUGH TO TAKE; Galway manager Padraic Joyce and selector John Concannon celebrate beating Mayo. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
The most successful Galway senior football manager in 22 years steps down less than six weeks after Mayo finally reached the summit. The irony is as lost as Galway’s season.
Four consecutive Connacht titles put all six of Padraic Joyce’s immediate predecessors in the shade. Kevin Walsh brought Galway to two Nestor Cups and had a more favourable championship record against Mayo than his old comrade Joyce – three wins and two defeats to Joyce’s three and three.
Current Cork coach Walsh was also competing against an arguably stronger Mayo side too but the threat that Mayo might jump ahead of Galway in the all-time provincial SFC roll of honour was allayed by Joyce’s run of titles.
Yet the feeling among the outgoing management is that they didn’t get the job done. Joyce was known to take exception to outside criticism, but he and his selectors would be exceptionally hard on themselves. If Joyce was frank at times speaking about players, he was as candid about himself.
And that’s what ultimately made his mind up last week. In June, he was fully intent on seeing out the two remaining years of his term, but something obviously changed in the meantime.
It wasn’t the players – the leadership group had given him their endorsement for 2027 – and it didn’t appear it had anything to do with his management team despite speculation.
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The only thing that may have altered his mind was the events of July 26 when Mayo completed their odyssey. For someone hailing from a hotbed of Galway football and who couldn’t beat Mayo enough, that event would have been cataclysmic.
It wasn’t that Joyce wasn’t up for the challenge, but the spectre of Mayo’s win would have followed the team into and through 2027. The pressure to keep up with the neighbours would have been weighty on the players. A new face at the helm will at least allow for more perspective and patience. Not much but enough for the group to breathe.
Mayo didn’t lay a glove on Galway in the championship but for another 10 months at least they are living rent-free between their ears. Some of the conversations in Galway beggar belief. One so-called expert recently put it to an official that the current game has no place for Rob Finnerty because he doesn’t press and tackle like Ryan O’Donoghue.
For Galway, Mayo’s success was personal but in farther fields there is evidence that it has impacting on how people think. Those that have been imbued with renewed belief, be it genuine or misguided, that they can emulate the champions.
On on Friday, former Monaghan manager Gabriel Bannigan spoke of two older players who had contacted the county board seeking he be replaced. “When I spoke to the county board last week, I asked about rest of the panel who are happy with the management, but with additions in the backroom team.
"The answer I got back on that was that those voices were not shouting loud enough.” Of course, Bannigan didn’t name names but his accusation at the very least puts the likes of Rory Beggan, Ryan Wylie, Conor McCarthy and Jack McCarron in the line-up.
Bannigan mentioned “these same characters tried everything possible to try and make sure that I didn’t go for the job or get the job”. It’s an age-old thing for those nearing the end of the tunnel to think the grass will be greener with another guide. There were elements of it in the manager heaves by the Waterford hurlers (2007, ’13), Galway hurlers (’15), Mayo footballers (’15) and Donegal footballers (’23).
Andy Moran, of course, had been part of Bannigan’s set-up last year. Had he given some of the stalwarts a taste of what they felt was missing this past season? Perhaps but Monaghan’s 2026 was one gritty effort in face of an extensive injury list that should have been cheered, not demeaned.
Mayo have so much to answer for because they have made so much seem possible. Never before have the All-Ireland champions been so imperfect in a results-sense. The last 100% campaign was Kerry’s in 2022 and they played five games in a qualifier format compared to the minimum seven now (Mayo played eight). Not since Dublin in 2023 has a team gone unbeaten in the championship.
Mayo became the first team to go all the way having lost twice. That only became feasible in 2018 when Tyrone almost did it and there have only been six championships when it could happen.
Nevertheless, they seem as human and touchable as they were excellent. They looked lost as an outfit in late April against Roscommon. They unburdened themselves of a county’s history of coming up short with a young team, averaging just over 24 years of age.
It’s the norm for teams to become dedicated followers of the champions. In the case of Mayo, their north star burns brighter. For Joyce, from close quarters that light might have been just too blinding to endure.
Coming after their momentous victory, there will be plenty to read about Mayo football in the coming months.
Writer Liam Horan casts his eye over football in the county having seen it in several guises as a journalist, senior footballers’ media liaison, strategic plan committee chairman and Ballinrobe GAA official. “I Can See it Still” is published by Mayo Books next month.
October will also see John Gunnigan chronicle his decades of devotion to Mayo football. “Keeping The Faith” details the years of pain endured before this season’s triumph as well as the creation of his website in 2007, which remains one of the finest GAA resources.
It is also believed Ray McManus’ Sportsfile have a photographic celebration of Mayo’s year in the making not to mention that the team will feature prominently in the company’s annual “A Season of Sundays”.
The Mayo players and management have a hectic schedule ahead. Aside from the ambitious plan for the Sam Maguire Cup to visit every school in the county, a number of them will be expected to attend the Mayo Association of Chicago dinner on September 26. While on October 17, a major fundraiser takes place in the plush Da Mikele Illagio venue in Queens, New York.
The PwC All Stars in the RDS on October 30 will be another night of celebration (nominations will be revealed the week after next) before the team holiday to The Caribbean. After that, it is expected their challenge game against Kerry in Saracens’ StoneX Stadium in London on November 28 will get the go-ahead, the day after Mayo London Association’s annual dinner event.
And that’s not to mention the Sam Maguire Cup will be part of the attraction in Santa’s grotto in Hastings Insurance MacHale Park for eight days in December. As if Mayo need a reason to be festive.
As mentioned elsewhere, every team will be dreaming big after what Mayo achieved and looking for the inches. Rian O’Neill may offer more than that as Kieran McGeeney muses over his Armagh panel for 2027.
Perhaps the 28-year-old is content just to play for Crossmaglen Rangers and if that’s the case, it will be all their gain. But what he demonstrated for his club in Sunday’s win over Clan na Gael when he scored five points and set up a plethora of scores that he has unfinished business at the highest level.
“He doesn’t need much work to get back to his best,” his club-mate and Armagh forward Cian McConville told on Sunday.
“You can see there, he’s phenomenal. He just sees things that people don’t see and it’s a dream to play with him because some of the balls he kicks in, the ball’s in your hands before you even know it.” Understandably, there were players who the Football Review Committee had in mind when they devised their rule changes. The two-pointer was made for O’Neill as he has shown in the games against Clan na Gael and Madden Raparees.
In their seven SFC games, Armagh kicked eight two-pointers from play. Would they have scored more with O’Neill in their ranks? They would have. Is it that simple? Yes, it is. His return to inter-county football would be as much as fillip for Armagh as the game itself.
john.fogarty@examiner.ie
