Colin Sheridan: Whatever happened, Kevin McStay has Mayo finely tuned
FINE JOB DONE: Mayo manager Kevin McStay. Pic: ©INPHO/Ryan Byrne
Congratulations, reader, for you know something I do not. If youâre a regular patron or a loved one, you could argue itâs been forever thus, but, possession of the pen being nine tenths of the law etc, you should back the hell up. Please appreciate that I am writing this from a position of absolute ignorance.Â
This is a piece about Sunday's Allianz Football League final between Galway and Mayo, an article about something that has already happened, written before it ever happened. This is not an ill-timed preview or a fraudulently constructed review, no, this is some next-level, meta content. The sports-writing equivalent of âIf youâre reading this, Iâm already deadâ.
Iâm presumably not dead, but, what is, is this year's national football league, with barely any time for its victors to crack open an ale and bask in its afterglow, and certainly no time for the losers to sit shiva with the defeat. I donât know who won, but Iâm fairly sure of some narratives that will endure beyond the outcome.Â
The first is that Mayo came into this spring better conditioned than Jennifer Aniston's hair. There are a couple of reasons for this, and at the top of the pile was surely Kevin McStay's understanding that if good things are going to happen for his team, they likely have to happen fast. His is not a complete renovation of an already attractive, but dated property. Rather an extension, the addition of a sun-room, or some of that expensive pea gravel you put in your drive-way.
He has no time for a five-year plan. The team he inherited were broken, but not broken enough to be taken apart and put back together again. The season now is too short to allow star players go walk the Camino de Santiago after Easter, before coming back profoundly enlightened and ready for a late summer tilt at Sam. All the more reason that they came into this league tuned like a Fazioli piano while their main rivals - Galway and Kerry - slowly battled their late summer hangovers.
Itâs a ballsy, if completely understandable strategy. Win Sunday and Mayo go into next weekendâs championship opener against Roscommon riding a wave of momentum that could carry them to a provincial championship, before taking a breath. Lose - and, depending on the manner of the loss, too much air may exit the balloon.Â
Sure, they could take a defeat against the Rossies - or even Galway - again - the week after - and still regroup and make a run, but it would require a change of direction that may be a little beyond them. Itâs why I didnât want to see renaissance man Aidan OâShea playing Sunday. I knowâŠI know, itâs fairly counter-intuitive to bench the one guy whose spring form has epitomised Mayoâs new-look, expansive style of play, but what I want for Aidan OâShea is not what other people want for Aidan OâShea or probably not what Aidan OâShea wants for himself.Â
I donât - for instance - want him swinging frees over with his newly discovered wand of a left foot. Yes, I want him kicking and scoring, but more than that, Iâd rather he bottle whatever self-belief heâs happened upon and let it ferment âtill June. Exposing him once to Sean Kelly in Croke Park will be enough this year. Even if OâShea won the battle Sunday, it gives Padraic Joyce ample time to figure out how to win the war. Mayo, ever the people-pleasers, mightâve been better served Sunday by holding something big in reserve.
As for Sean Kelly? To the opposition he is like a dose of sinusitis. Low-level relentless. He resides in the upper recesses of your nostril and causes headaches so unshakeable you just try and live with. To Galway, he is Vitamin D. He is the sun. Without him, the grass wouldnât grow. Annoyingly for the rest of us, like Michael Donnellan and Declan Meehan before him, it seems he also possesses an anti-heroic humility, like heâd rather hop fully clothed into the Corrib than acknowledge he is in fact a footballer at all, never mind one of the best in the country.
Of all Kellyâs many abilities, his acumen to figure things out in real time is right up there. As Tom Wilkinson said to George Clooney in the movie Michael Clayton, âthe last place you want to see me is in courtâ. I could imagine Kelly muttering something similar to OâShea coming off the field Sunday.
Whatever the outcome, once everyone stayed healthy and out of the referee's notebook, Sundayâs game will have served as an intriguing companion piece for two teams with real hopes of fighting for the real thing later this summer. It may even have been the first installment in an epic trilogy.
For 82 years, Augusta National's relationship with women's golf was akin to my own with actress Rosario Dawson - non-existent. In fact, there was more chance of me sharing a late-night curry-cheese-chip off Eyre Square with Ms Dawson than there was finding a female member in the locker room of the jewel in Golf's misogynistic crown.Â
All that changed in 2012, not utterly, but just enough for the southern institution to end its staunch resistance against modernity and extend a welcome to its first female members in the guise of one time Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and investor/philanthropist Darla Moore. That procedural pivot only occurred after a period of uncomfortable time in the international spotlight, during which the International Olympic Committee examined whether golf - through Augustaâs prism - was worthy of being included in the Olympic Games, specifically by asking if it was a sport âpracticed without discrimination with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play".Â
Considering it took Augusta until 1990 to admit its first member of colour, Ron Townsend, who was âplucked from the executive ranks", as Golf Digest put it at the time, âas the solution to Augusta Nationalâs membership problemâ. Mr Townsend's history making turn only followed another sorry episode - the Shoal Creek controversy - when prior to the PGA Championship of the same year, Shoal founder Hall Thompson defiantly declared the club would not be pressured to accept African-American members.Â
Water under Rae's Creek, you might say, as last Saturday night - if you were lucky - you may have caught the closing drama of the fourth staging of the annual Augusta National Women's Amateur on Sky Golf, which saw Rose Zhang, the world's leading amateur, survive a back nine collapse worthy of any Masters Sunday, to win a play-off against South Korea's Jenny Bae. Was it novel to watch brilliant women golfers play on the hallowed turf of Augusta? Or, does the contrived novelty only amplify the ridiculousness of the original sin of exclusion? Either way, a brilliant curtain-raiser to this week's US Masters. Put it in your viewing diary for next year.
It says a lot about Jack Grealishâs quality as a footballer, not to mention the self-effacing charm of his personality, that some eight years after he ârejectedâ Ireland, he enjoys a popularity almost entirely at odds with the Manchester City team he plays for.Â
City are unpopular for a myriad of reasons, being brilliant chief amongst them, but their display against Liverpool on Saturday was utterly beguiling, and Grealish - so often at the periphery - was the conductor of an orchestra humming an irresistible aria. His rejection of Eire long forgotten, you couldnât be happy for a fella who - in full flow - plays with the joy of a kid.
With the NBA playoffs looming, the Boston Celtics are hotter than wasabi at the moment, with their 41 point demolition on the road to conference rivals Milwaukee the clearest indication evidence yet that, when it comes to buying success in the NBA, the assembly of so called âsuper teams'' will likely always fade in the face of teams with a shared history.Â
As the Brooklyn Nets experiment - Durant, Kyrie and Harden - imploded quicker than it was put together, Boston - with stars Jason Tatum and Jaylen Brown - have grown year on year, the on-court chemistry as obvious as the green in their shorts. This year's play-offs promise to be one for the ages.
