Paul Rouse: Making the case for Mayo
LOOKING UP: Mayo manager Andy Moran. Pic: INPHO/James Crombie
It is very difficult to find anyone who thinks Mayo will win next Sunday.
Kerry have a greater collection of footballers and are the more skilful team. They have the best player on the field and a supporting cast of the highest quality. They also have multiple options from the bench, which may have up to five All Stars sitting on it.
Their manager is a proven winner (including twice previously over Mayo in finals) and their management team as a whole has a depth of experience and achievement that is stunning.
Those are all straightforward facts.
And these facts are accompanied by the widespread presumption that they have been building nicely over the past six weeks and will deliver their best performance of the season in the final.
There are presumptions that are founded on very little, but this is not one of them. Key players are back from injury and against both Tyrone and Dublin, Kerry got a score every time they needed one.
They have generations of habit of doing that.
Further, their best performance last year was in the final against Donegal. They were physically relentless; maybe ruthless is a better word. And they tactically, technically and skilfully destroyed their opponents.
All of this amounts to a formidable case for a Kerry victory that could grow into a comfortable one; indeed, there are quite a few people who believe it will be a rout.
And yet, there is an alternative world where this does not come to pass.
The presumption of Kerry peaking in the final when it really matters is still a presumption – and what if that presumption proves to be unfounded?
What if Kerry continue to mix the brilliant with the ordinary and allow long stretches of another game to pass by while stuck in a lower gear?
The answer to that question then turns to the relative merits of their opponents. In short, how good are Mayo? Do they have the horses? Can it be expected that a team which relies so heavily on two teenage corner forwards will win on the biggest day?
The beating given to Galway’s young hurlers by a seasoned Limerick team last Sunday cast that particular issue into a stark light.
Again, the general view seems to be that Mayo have only beaten one Division 1 team (Monaghan) on the way to the final and that the defeats to Roscommon and Tyrone earlier in the season revealed in full technicolour the scale of their limitations.
When placed on top of the repeated defeats in finals across more than a decade, there is a logical end in prospect here. And that logical end suggests that a heavy win for Kerry is a much more likely result than any sort of a win for Mayo.
Again, there is previous to this. Back in 2006, after Mayo beat Dublin in the All-Ireland semi-final and qualified to meet Kerry, who were already in the final (having beaten Cork by six points in their own semi-final, just six weeks after Cork had defeated them in the Munster Final).
In the minutes, after the Mayo defeat of Dublin, a group of teenagers walked out of a bar in Kenmare chanting: “34 All-Irelands, 34 Irelands, La-la-la, La-la-la; 34 All-Irelands, 34 Irelands, La-la-la, La-la-la”. The message was clear: Kerry would be adding a 34th All-Ireland a few weeks later.
The thing is, for all the belief that Kerry will win, there is not the same sense of inevitability in the air on this occasion; dismissing Mayo out of hand is a mistake.
So, here are a few reasons, tentatively put and in no particular order or importance, as to why Mayo can win:
Kerry are the most successful county in the history of Gaelic games. To win 39 All-Irelands is exceptional. But Kerry have also lost 24 times in All-Ireland finals. That is also more than any other county. Some of those defeats were in matches where they were hot favourites or supposedly the far better team.
Most recently, (and perhaps most painfully, as it turned out), they lost to Dublin in a final in 2011 that they had firmly in control. The basic point is that the evidence of history can be cut in different directions. And the most important cut is that, in the end, the past only matters if you let it matter, if you carry it as a weight, if you see yourselves as doomed to inevitable defeat. In the alternative, you could choose to harness it in a particular way. For instance, the reality for this group of Kerry players is the pressure they operate under, the expectation of success, the perception that their victory is a sporting certainty. What happens if the game gets away from them and the spectre looms of them being the first ever group of Kerry players to lose an All-Ireland final to Mayo?
ar: Why should it not be Mayo who turn in their best performance of the year? They have improved game-on-game since coming to Croke Park. Why should they not improve again? The core of their team played as young men in the 2020 or 2021 finals. They were not ready then. Now they are seasoned. The players who have joined them are potentially very good. The team has a bench with options.
The sense of anguish and expectation, of deep longing, of fervent passionate investment, that hung over the team from 2012 onwards is not now as suffocating. It is not that there is not desire; rather that the emotional atmosphere has been tempered. There is space in all of that to find the freedom to perform.
In the minutes before the ball was thrown in for last year’s All-Ireland final, it was clear that Kerry were bristling with energy. They looked lighter, entirely on-it, perfectly pitched. They sustained this from whistle to whistle against a Donegal team whom they made look jaded.
This year, Mayo looked really fit and strong against both Louth and Cork. If that impression is real, if they can arrive on Sunday with a controlled ferocity and explosive speed, it will be interesting to see how those Kerry players who have missed a lot of training and matches endure. The difference between both teams narrows an awful lot if Mayo can edge the athletic battle in key positions.
In the new game, ten minutes of brilliance can go a long way to shaping the outcome. It was imagined in the early stages of the rule changes that the dominant teams would crush their weaker opponents by unprecedented numbers. The opposite has happened. The lesson is to keep pushing, that no game is truly gone until it is actually gone, that two-point kickers can get on a roll which overturn results that seemed certain.
Under the old rules, it would have been exceptionally difficult to see Kerry losing this contest; under the current rules, momentum may not be everything, but if you can ride it at the right time, then almost everything is possible.
And so, the likelihood is that Kerry will win, but there is most certainly a way that can be upset.
In short, Mayo need to win one 70-minute game, which throws in next Sunday at 3.30pm. Everything else – past, present and future – is irrelevant.
