Mayo’s approach lacking 2020 vision

Although it wasn’t widely identified as a trend — more reported as a series of unrelated events — an intriguing development in 2017 was the signing by the managers of the country’s top four football teams to stay on until 2020, writes Kieran Shannon.

While their priority would be to remain as competitive as possible in the immediate campaign, Jim Gavin, Stephen Rochford, Éamonn Fitzmaurice, and Mickey Harte were also to be mindful of the longer view.

As well as leading the most dominant senior team in each of their respective provinces, they all had at least one crack underage team coming on stream: In the cases of Tyrone, Mayo, and Dublin, it was the past three U21 All-Ireland champions, while in Kerry’s case, it was the past four minor champions. At some point, players from those sides would need to reinforce or even become the core of the senior team.