Colin Sheridan: Mayo football on the off-season agenda once more
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Mayo is in the spotlight even in the off season between players opting out of the senior squad to analysis of their finances. Picture: Ray McManus/Sportsfile
A GAA off-season would not be an off season at all unless there was a Mayo football story bouncing around the sky like a mesmerising murmuration of migrating birds. You don’t need to be embedded in the local community to have picked up on the rumours and counter-conjecture these last few weeks. First, there was talk of defections, legitimate as it happens, as future Hall of Famer Cillian O'Connor decided to take a knee in 2025. A 32-year-old scoring forward “opting out” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence amongst a fanbase recently browbeaten by curtailed summers, especially since scoring forwards in Mayo are as rare as mince pies on Christmas Eve. Once it was the hope that killed. Nowadays it's the hopelessness. With Dublin’s slow decline, All-Irelands have never been more winnable for any one of about eight teams. On recent evidence, you’d be hard pushed to include Mayo on any list. This despite a talent pool that should rival Armagh, Galway and Derry, and a management team that includes about four intercounty managers, and a stylist.
And that’s just the playing side of it. Yesterday, the Sunday Independent gave oxygen to the other rumours. The hearsay that has been passed around like snuff at a wake for quite some time, if we’re all being honest. Chief business writer at the Sunday Independent Ferghal O'Connor confirmed that “an analysis of Mayo GAA accounts over the last 11 years has shown a big post-covid jump in gate receipts,’ even, as O’Connor correctly points out, Mayo has “floundered on the pitch.” The reporting confirms that Tim O’Leary, a one-time benefactor of Mayo GAA, had reported his concerns to the revenue commissioner in early 2024.
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