Colin Sheridan: Mayo's McStay seems unburdened by legacy trauma
UNBURDENED: If McStay is worried about Mayo’s status in the following pack, his comments last week suggest otherwise. Confidence is quite a Scandinavian concept in Mayo.
You have to hand it to Kevin McStay. It’s the dead of winter, that period of purgatory between Christmas and the start of the National Football League, and, with the exception of some Sigerson Cup action and the All-Ireland club finals, there is little to be excited about as a Gaelic Football fan, especially if you’re from Mayo.
Yet, last week, in the bowels of the stadium formerly known as MacHale Park, the former Ballina Stephenites man held court for all who were willing to listen. As some counties shut the door completely on the press, and most others treat the fourth estate with Orwellian levels of suspicion, McStay deserves credit for doing an obvious thing very, very well - communicating with fans and journalists. Perhaps it’s his experience as an analyst with RTÉ, perhaps it’s just his personality, but his consistency in communicating outward is admirable. It won’t win them anything, but it at least feeds the hungry beast that is the Mayo public.
The problem for McStay is his comms strategy has arguably been the most impressive aspect of his tenure so far. The method and manner of Mayo’s exit from last summer’s football championship added to a burgeoning sense of fatigue within the county that their decade of - how to put it - relevance is over. Their National League title should have been a feather in McStay’s cap in his rookie season as manager. Instead, tired championship defeats to Roscommon, Cork and Dublin provided compelling evidence that the long arc of a once-dominant team was in decline.
Uncertain of themselves and lacking a coherent game plan, Mayo looked ponderous and uncertain when it mattered. A barnstorming win in Killarney over Kerry was an anomaly. The rest, it has to be said, was pretty awful. In comparison to his successor, James Horan opted for the classic Bill Belichick “less is more” approach when it came to talking to the media, and while that frustrated many, Horan’s results bought him the credit to pretty much do as he wished. He clearly didn’t enjoy being in front of the mic as much as McStay does, so - for all our giving out - we should at least understand his hesitance to further complicate his life by talking when he didn’t want to.
Long before he assumed command in Castlebar, McStay made little secret of his desire to manage this team, and, given the squad he inherited from Horan — ageing, but still with a kick — the bottom line of his elevator pitch to the Mayo County board was surely to win an All-Ireland. No talk of rebuilds or retrofits. His backroom team - stacked like a shed of turf - screamed ambition. His post-appointment overtures were commensurate with a man determined to go one step further than his predecessor and win it all. Kevin McStay was talking the talk. Winning the league - though a little underwhelming for Mayo after so long trying to win an All-Ireland - was filed under ‘proof of progress’. Then, against his old friend Roscommon, the wheels came off. All four of them.
Still, McStay talked. He talks when they win. He talks when they lose. While his first season projected flagrant onfield inconsistency, he was at least consistently willing to talk about it. Last week, with nothing but the future to look forward to, he was talking again.
“You look at the squad of players we have. We’ve been in five grade one national finals in each of the last five years, two All-Irelands and three leagues, and we won two of them. So, who is to debate that we’re not in the mix, on a day when we are well organised, we’re competitive, we’re on top of the game plan and we’re ready to rock. We can be competitive with anybody; we absolutely know that.”
The evidence of last summer suggests otherwise. Still, talking your team up is better than no talk at all, right?
While few of the stars that defined that decade of relevance remain, by McStay’s reckoning, the gap between the top teams hasn’t been this narrow in a dozen years. Champions Dublin are an understandably lesser version of their history making six-in-a-row iteration. Challengers Kerry are undoubtedly the next best thing, but still lack the aura of champions. Derry, Galway and Donegal are all interesting propositions without yet proving themselves to be serious contenders. Mayo have long traded off the reputation of being able to beat any team on a given day (except, of course, on the final day); last season, events in Killarney aside, they looked incapable of even beating themselves.
If McStay is worried about Mayo’s status in the following pack, his comments last week suggest otherwise. Confidence is quite a Scandinavian concept in Mayo. Be confident, yes, but let no man know how confident you are lest you be accused of being arrogant, or worse still, from Galway.
The Mayo manager seems unburdened by such legacy trauma. As refreshing as his talk is, the only currency that matters is how deep into summer he can bring his Mayo team. Sophomore seasons are often the most difficult. There’s another trend for him to buck.
Depending on your pop-culture predilections, you may know Albuquerque to be famous for either the breakfast burrito or Breaking Bad. Now, you can add playground of Irish sprint sensation Rhashidat Adeleke to that list, as the Dubliner broke another pair of Irish indoor records this past weekend with her first two individual races of 2024.
Albuquerque has been a happy hunting ground for Adeleke in her recent past as a student athlete in the NCAA circuit. Her most recent efforts at Saturday's Dr Martin Luther King Invitational saw her win and finish second in the 60m dash and 200m sprint respectively. While it’s still unclear whether Adeleke will come across the Atlantic to Glasgow for the World Indoor Championships in March, her fine early season form will only add to the very justified hype that will follow her to the Paris Olympics this August.
Adeleke has indicated that she does intend on competing at the European Championships in Rome in June, which will serve as a delicious appetizer to the main course in France some 50 days later. What is certain is that every race she runs will be scrutinised by experts and armchair enthusiasts alike. That many of her warm-up races between this and then will happen in an alternate time zone in the dead of night in towns like Albuquerque will do little to diffuse the excitement the impressive Adeleke generates every time she laces up her spikes.
Still only 21, her potential seems infinite, yet the depth and quality of competitions she will face at the 400m in Paris means nothing is guaranteed. Notwithstanding that, watching a prospect blossom into a bona fide superstar is a rare and wonderful thing. At this rate, treading lightly upon her dreams will be a very difficult ask.
Like him or loathe him, it's easy to make a case that English football has been the lesser since José Mário dos Santos Mourinho said adeus to Tottenham Hotspur and the Premier League a little under three years ago. His recent dismissal from AS Roma has many speculating he will return with flagging Newcastle as a possible destination.
Replacing the bland Eddie Howe with the walking soap opera that is Mourinho seems like a counter-intuitively daft thing to do, and so one can only hope the Saudi ownership do it. The Midas touch may have deserted The Special One a long time ago, but his ability to entertain and infuriate has never been in doubt. It’s time to bring him back.
A tip of the cap to the defending All Ireland champions Dublin, who used their platform and profile to call for a ceasefire in Gaza ahead of their LGFA National League game against Kerry at Parnell Park on Saturday night. Kudos, too, to their manager Mick Bohan who spoke so eloquently about his players' decision to make the statement. It may seem like a modest gesture of solidarity, but from such small acorns, great trees grow. Whether any men’s teams choose to do the same - and how Croke Park chooses to react - will be interesting.
