Kieran Shannon: Jim McGuinness the man to finish the job James Horan started
END OF THE JOURNEY: Former Mayo manager James Horan. Pic: INPHO/Dan Sheridan
For so long nobody gave them more juice than him but in the end they all ran out of juice, even him — and possibly even because of him.
Out of all the multiple players that James Horan helped inspire and transform into an All-Star, probably the one that most personified what he brought to Mayo was his fellow Ballintubber native and protégé, Cillian O’Connor.
Back in 2011 when Mayo’s summer also ended with a Croke Park loss to Kerry just short of double figures it wasn’t lost on Jack O’Connor and several of his players about how there had been something different about Mayo in their first year under their new manager.
“I think James Horan has brought a tougher edge to Mayo, certainly,” the Kerry manager told reporters after their semi-final win. “I never saw a Mayo team tackling like that before, in my time anyway.”
Although his team had earlier that summer played and beaten reigning All-Ireland champions Cork in the Munster final, Mayo had served up the “most physical game by far” his team had encountered that side of the All-Ireland final.
Paul Galvin was another struck and impressed by the defiance and aggressiveness of his opponents that day and for him one player, in particular, epitomised the new Mayo.
Midway through the second half and with the game slipping out of reach, their 19-year-old corner-forward chased down what seemed like a lost cause to win a ball and then break through a couple of Kerry defenders to fire a shot into the roof of the Kerry net.
Upon the final whistle, Galvin swapped jerseys with Cillian O’Connor.
“There was something about his body language that impressed me,” Galvin would say a few years later. “I get the feeling Cillian O’Connor behaves like a champion every day of the week.”
Last Sunday some of those who have succeeded Galvin in donning the Kerry jersey didn’t afford O’Connor such respect, at least not when the game was in progress.
Instead of O’Connor outscoring his direct marker from play like just about anyone he’d encountered previously, he was outscored three points to one by Tom O’Sullivan.
Just like Colm Cooper, the man he surpassed as the leading scorer in championship history, was left helplessly chasing Philly McMahon back the field in 2015, O’Connor was the scoring machine left suffering the indignity of being repeatedly left in his wake by a racehorse.
And after O’Sullivan’s third point Tadhg Morley wasn’t shy about getting in O’Connor’s face to remind him.
Under a different set-up, under a different manager, it needn’t have been that way. At the other end of the field whenever Oisín Mullin would bomb forward, Kerry’s talismanic forward, also coming off an injury, didn’t have to chase him back; instead, David Clifford was able to pass his man on to his brother Paudie or to Dara Moynihan or Seán O’Shea.
When Kevin McLoughlin was a late addition to the Mayo starting 15, more discerning Mayo followers presumed or at least hoped his role was to pick up O’Connor’s man to allow the county’s — and sport’s — highest scorer to stay up field and conserve his energy for what he does best. But McLoughlin’s wasn’t. And as a result O’Connor couldn’t.
He tried. Boy, like every Mayo player and management member, including Horan, he tried. But he was too tired. At least to score. Last Sunday has been categorised as one of those typically sorrowful Mayo defeats in the lineage of ’96 and whatever other year you choose to select where Mayo’s shooting proficiency and technique was dreadfully inadequate.
But a more nuanced study would show last Sunday was not of that genre. It wasn’t so much a matter or lack of technique — in the first-half multiple Mayo players kicked fine scores from range — or pressure or even shot selection but predominantly fatigue.
Because an O’Connor had to try to mark an O’Sullivan man to man, hound him, follow him, chase him. A few years ago he’d have been up to it. But not at his age, not after the Achilles injury and all the others he’d endured over the years. By the time he’d get up to within his usual shooting range and pull the trigger, the legs simply didn’t have enough left to fire it over.
It’s been a trend in Mayo’s last game in Croke Park the last three years: The 2020 final against Dublin, the 2021 decider against Tyrone, last weekend’s quarter-final against Kerry; you could throw in this year’s league final too.
Up to the 50th-minute mark, Mayo had scored respectably. But in the final 20 minutes plus added time of all those games, only once did Mayo score more than two points. And that was last year’s All-Ireland final when their shooting return during that period was less than 33%.
Their shooting became particularly ragged because too many of their players, especially up front, were simply too wrecked. What kept them competitive in most of those games, part of what kept them so competitive under Horan, would ultimately catch them, cost them, kill them. At the highest altitude, Horanball was simply unsustainable. The best teams had copped onto it.
To his credit, he recognised that. For his body of work through the years, even this second stint alone, even this year alone — reaching a league final blooding so many new young players — he would have had cause to get at least a year’s extension if not two had he sought it. But Horan had the decency as well as the intelligence to identify the players and county he gave so much to now need something and thus someone else.
The county will never be able to repay him. For how he revolutionised the county and its mindset during his first term and for what he achieved in his second stint, a return that was completely justified; if anything it enhanced his status and legend.
After Newbridge or Nowhere, a lot of commentators, including his once nemesis and later Sky Sports colleague Jim McGuinness, thought Mayo were subsequently on a road to nowhere. Finished. Instead he led them back to Croke Park every time, including two All-Ireland finals, not to mention winning a rare and precious national league title.
They got to have so many more brilliant, magical days that they thought were gone for a long time. The shame was that while he was at it, there should have been one more to round off and trump them all: September 11 2021.
What happens next will be a measure of the ambition and imagination of the county board. There is a narrative out there that the team and county will be going into a transitional phase, that there isn’t an All-Ireland in the team over the next few years, that the window has closed.
If the board believe that then they will go for an inside candidate. There is no shortage of respectable prospects. Ray Dempsey for his work with Knockmore and underage county teams. Kevin McStay has walked the walk winning All-Irelands with Brigid’s and provincial titles with Roscommon. Maurice Sheridan won this year’s Sigerson and coaches the county’s U20s.
But whoever the county board approach has to have the capacity to sell a Cillian O’Connor and indeed a Lee Keegan — who totally negated Paudie Clifford last Sunday — that they can come up with a style of play that can win the big one and that they can still flourish in. And the person to do that is most obviously an outsider.
The four remaining teams in the race for the All-Ireland have all been coached by someone who has won it before. Dr Cian O’Neill with Galway. Paddy Tally with Kerry. Dessie Farrell with Dublin. And Rory Gallagher with Donegal.
To be in Croke Park at the weekend and see how Gallagher has transformed Derry automatically triggered parallels with the Donegal project of a decade ago and the transformational work the Fermanagh man along with a certain Jim McGuinness did.
How they came up with a game plan that prompted a decent team into contenders, then champions. How before he infamously let Kevin Cassidy go he more importantly persuaded Cassidy to stay on; how he had a role and a system of play for him in which he’d thrive.
Maybe that dream soccer gig will still pop up for McGuinness. And maybe if he does return to football, it’ll be to his native county that he’ll return. But he’s already done that.
To do it with Mayo hasn’t been done by anyone since ’51. And it’s possible. There’s still the bones of a team there. There’s still something to work with. That is the legacy of Horan and it’s worth making a call to the most proven and outstanding candidate to honour and optimise it.
