Mayo not ready for final push

It is common in the aftermath of All-Ireland success for victorious management and players to identify some obscure league game as a turning point on the road to glory.

Recalling a dogfight in the rain six months earlier, the wise man will nod and say, ‘That was the day we won the All-Ireland’ or, if he is feeling particularly satisfied with himself, ‘That was the day I knew we would win the All-Ireland’. The great thing about the national league is it can be whatever you want it to be.

Last Sunday Jim McGuinness addressed Donegal’s relegation as if it were a minor inconvenience, an irrelevance to the serious business of defending the All-Ireland.

In contrast, the talk from the Kerry camp was about how survival meant that disaster had been averted.

Had Donegal managed to keep their noses in front against Dublin and relegated Kerry to Division 2, you can be sure the message from the Kingdom after their victory in Omagh would have been modified accordingly.

In that scenario, the post-match self-examination would more than likely have been all about the morale-boosting win against Tyrone and the disaster of relegation would have been downgraded to a disappointment.

With the national league, it’s always a question of interpretation, and sometimes teams find meaning in league games that is not evident to the outsider.

Mayo’s sports psychologist Kieran Shannon has spoken about how crucial last year’s league semi-final victory was to the county’s sense of self-worth. Although it was sloppy play from Kerry that allowed their opponents back into the game that day, Mayo’s dogged display convinced Shannon and the Mayo players themselves that they had become a “proper championship team”.

Ever since their All-Ireland final defeat last September, Mayo people have been comforting themselves with the notion that they are just one or two players short of an All-Ireland winning team.

The sober hope that this year’s league campaign might unearth two more ball winning full forwards has sustained them all spring but apart from tantalising glimpses from Cathal Carolan, from a Mayo viewpoint, this year’s league can only be viewed as a qualified success.

There is very little evidence that they’ve managed to come to terms with the modern trend of massed defence and like many other teams, anytime they have come against such a system they haven’t really found a way of breaking it down.

The experiment of playing Barry Moran, or any man mountain, at full-forward, was successful for periods, but seems to have been abandoned on foot of a poor showing by Aidan O’Shea at the edge of the square in the latter stages of last September’s game against Donegal.

Instead Mayo’s approach this year is based on playing to their strengths, which appear to be attacking down the wings, playing at a high tempo and spreading the play as much as possible.

Of course it could be argued that they’ve had to play the entire seven games without two of their best forwards, Alan Dillon and Andy Moran, but the bold statement of full-back Ger Cafferkey in the immediate aftermath of their opening day win over Kerry — “No one is asking themselves can we push on. It’s a fact that we are going to push on” — hasn’t really been borne out.

Having said all that and despite the generous 2/1 odds from the bookies, I actually fancy Mayo to give the Dubs a right good rattle tomorrow.

For starters, Bernard Brogan is unlikely to score 1-10 as he did six weeks ago in Croke Park as Dublin made little of the sending off of Ger Brennan to keep Mayo comfortably at arms length.

Cafferkey was detailed to police Brogan that day and while James Horan suggested Cafferkey did very little wrong, laying much of the blame on the absence of pressure out the field, it will be interesting to see if he is asked to take up Brogan again.

Last year, after a poor showing against Michael Murphy in the league, James Horan decided he wasn’t the man for Murphy in the championship. He paid a heavy price for that decision.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Mayo’s end of season recovery has been the improvement of their discipline in the tackle. After conceding 0-7 from free kicks against Down just over a month ago, Mayo have refocused, conceding only 0-2 against Kildare, 0-3 against Donegal and 0-3 last weekend against Cork.

It was perhaps in the second half last Sunday in Páirc Uí Chaoimh that we got the clearest indication yet that Donie Buckley’s work is staring to produce results and the amount of times Mayo players were able to smother the man in possession without giving away a cheap free was noteworthy.

Indeed Mayo appear to have perfected the art of forcing a ball carrier into over-carrying and Dublin will have to be as slick as they’ve been all year to progress tomorrow.

Whether the Dubs prevail or not depends on Mayo and on referee Joe McQuillan’s interpretation of their play. In last year’s All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin McQuillan allowed Mayo engage in some disruptive play that ultimately paid dividends. Mayo have improved beyond measure in their tackling but McQuillan wouldn’t be human were his antennae not more finely tuned to the type of infringements he allowed to go unpunished last year.

On the basis that Mayo may have one eye on their May 19 date with Galway and might not want or need another day out in two weeks’ time, I take Dublin to win.

Of the teams lining out in the curtain-raiser tomorrow, Tyrone must be the most distracted, given that it is only six weeks to their match with Donegal, the most compelling fixture from this year’s provincial championships.

Kildare return to the scene of their drubbing at the hands of the Dubs a few weeks back and as with their opponents tomorrow, they arrive having lost a relatively meaningless game last weekend.

For all of the talk of renewal and regeneration in Tyrone since the start of the year, they were still reliant on the old stagers — Gormley, McMahon, Cavanagh and O’Neill — to carry the fight to Kerry in the second half six days ago.

In fact, Kildare’s young brigade have left a far greater impression on this year’s league than Tyrone’s and that in itself is encouraging for them.

It is perhaps significant to note that in the one and a half games Tyrone have lost this season against Munster opposition, the influence of Cavanagh and O’ Neill has been negated.

If Kildare can do the same tomorrow they could win, but it’s a big if. Tyrone to advance.