Kieran Shannon: Looks a lot like last year but this Mayo is different
CROKER READY: Mayo's Jordan Flynn and Stephen Coen celebrate Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/James Crombie
It’s now looking a whole lot like last year. Plenty of romance in the provinces followed by more shocks and spills and thrills mid-summer before at the business end teams invariably hit their natural ceiling, leaving the usual one man standing and towering over them all.
For Meath last year, read Louth this year. A team and a county energised and emboldened by a surprising win over Dublin only to then run into a county that resided in Croke Park for much of the previous decade and duly illustrated that gulf in final-four experience emphatically. Louth mustered just 0-15 in last weekend’s All-Ireland semi-final, precisely the same as Meath did in last year’s. In turn they shipped 3-26 to Mayo, even more than the 3-23 Meath leaked to Donegal 12 months ago.
Then on the other side of the draw you’ve had Kerry once again regather themselves from a heavy early-summer loss to navigate a string of proud previous champions, their most impressive showing being the dismantling of Kieran McGeeney’s Armagh in 15 stunning second-half minutes.
You know how last year’s final panned out. League finalists Kerry playing the team that finished third in that year’s Division 1, just as they will again this year, and reserving their best performance of the year for the final game of the year as has been their knack through the decades, especially on Jack O’Connor’s watch. In that sense Donegal 2025 was similar to the demolition of Mayo in 2004 and 2006 in his first stint.
So you’ll understand why some neutrals and the more fatalistic of Mayo supporters are wary of getting too excited about this final. It has hallmarks of a movie they’ve seen before and have no desire to watch again.
And yet, this could be different, right? There’s something different about this Mayo, yes? If the Knicks can end basketball’s greatest famine with their first NBA title in 53 years, then Mayo can end football’s with their first All-Ireland in 75 years, surely?
For starters there’ll be one significant difference between last year’s All-Ireland and this year’s. Mayo will not let Paudie Clifford run the show like he did against Donegal last year and against Dublin last weekend. This final could be many things. The one thing it will not be is the Paudie Clifford Final.
Nor are Mayo likely to capitulate like in 2004 and 2006. Not with these new rules and not with a coach who has readily embraced them. Even as shrewd a coach as Jim McGuinness has bemoaned a loss of control; Andy Moran in contrast has revelled in the chaos, most vividly in how much he has championed the two-pointer in contrast to his predecessor (last year Mayo converted just 15 shots from beyond the arc over 13 games; this year they’ve raised 43 over 14 games).
He is the first Mayo manager to have played in the tactical age, something that gives him an edge over previous sidelines Mayo have had on All-Ireland final day, to go with all the man-management lessons he’d have picked up from masters like Maughan and Horan.
Nor is he burdened or haunted by previous Mayo defeats. For one his own performances or roles in those defeats have afforded him some form of insulation. He was an unused sub in 2004 and 2006, then injured in 2012. In 2013 he reserved his best performance for the final, scoring 1-2 from play. Across both 2016 finals he scored 0-3 before in 2017 putting up 0-3 off Johnny Cooper and assisting Lee Keegan’s goal on his way to winning Player of the Year. On all those days he more than fulfilled whatever duties were asked of him.
And then there's his sheer optimism. Every time he and Mayo fell, he bounced back, stronger and wiser. Crucially he knows how Mayo lost those games, where they got it wrong, and crucially what they got right. In each of the four finals he played in, Mayo adhered to Beckett’s adage of failing better. In this final he’s facing a three-headed monster in O’Shea and the two Cliffords that the best of Ulster and even Dublin could not contain, but he was in the room when Stephen Rochford successfully plotted limiting the likes of Kilkenny, Connolly and O’Callaghan in their pomp.
This team plays in his spirit and his image. Even during his time with Leitrim under the old rules, it was striking how much he encouraged his players to kick the ball. So it is now with Mayo, especially with an inside trio like O’Donoghue, Beirne and Kobe, a rock star if football has ever had one in the 21st-century. Just as the boldness of JBM in ’73 and Jayo in ’95 inspired Cork and Dublin to end their respective famines, McDonald exudes a similar vibe.
Moran played on a fabulous team with some fine forwards: a two-time All-Star in Alan Dillon and another in Cillian O’Connor, still the sport’s highest-ever championship scorer. But they couldn’t burn you like this inside line can. From 2011 – when Mayo returned to Croke Park after another five-year stint without reaching All-Ireland semi-finals – to 2021, the county amassed 17 All-Stars from its backs, but just eight from its forwards. They have the quota of marquee forwards now.
More so, they are all available. Moran was probably at the height of his powers in 2012 only to suffer a cruciate injury in that year’s All-Ireland quarter-final. O’Connor was at his apex in 2021 only to suffer a similar injury in a league semi-final in Ennis. Of all the what-ifs Mayo have endured, O’Connor being unavailable for that final and the penalty against Tyrone is as big as any. This year there’s none of that. They even have Kobe still here and not in Australia.
For McDonald and his generation there is no Kerry hoodoo. Even the team’s most scarred players have few hang-ups about Kerry ever since the 2017 semi-final replay win, or some would even contend as far back as the 2012 league-semi-final extra-time win, also in Croke Park. Moran’s own rallying call and dismissal of the hype was not unlike the Limerick hurlers’ messaging following their 2018 semi-final win over Cork.
This current Kerry team do cause match-up challenges for Mayo. Since O’Connor’s return in 2022 Kerry have beaten Mayo in two league finals in Croke Park as well as an All-Ireland quarter-final, with the average winning margin being 10 points. When they met in the league this year in Killarney the gap was 13.
Mayo though are a totally different team now. They’re even different to what they were when stuttering past Monaghan in Clones six weeks ago. Every game since they’ve taken energy from the previous performance and grown with all the extra time on the training ground with Moran and Paddy Tally.
That’s another fascination about this fixture. Kerry’s coach Cian O’Neill was Mayo’s in 2012 back in Moran’s first year as team captain. Tally in turn was Kerry’s in 2022 when they masterminded a win over Mayo in James Horan’s last game over the county. O’Neill knows how Moran thinks. And Tally knows how Kerry and Jack think and go about prepping for Mayo.
Mayo have both the heads and football minds to take Kerry in this All-Ireland final. They haven’t always been able to say that before.
