Mayo in need of full overhaul

FREE the Rossport Five posters were visible in Pearse Stadium yesterday. Maybe the Mayo team and management were coming out in sympathy when they made a hasty exit from their dressing rooms without speaking to the assembled media.

Centre half-back James Nallen, late getting into the dressing room in the first place, was thus left to carry the can while the others sat in the bus.

Nallen talked about it "being a poor game, and a bad result for us."

Galway's ability to convert more of their chances stood to them, he said, and he agreed that the match was a disappointing spectacle.

This defeat is likely to have long-term implications for Mayo. The groundswell of opinion favouring giving John O'Mahony a crack at the job is growing apace.

Whenever the backdoor run comes to an end, further surgery will be required on the team. David Heaney has endured too many difficult days at full-back over the past two seasons to inspire confidence, while the frailties of the attack have been laid bare once too often.

Just how many times can John Maughan go to the well? Neither team had an abundance of resources to play with yesterday, but Peter Ford used his better to produce a winning display. The ongoing failure to give Austin O'Malley a run despite his league heroics last year will lead to a bitter post-mortem in Mayo.

To be fair, the Shane Fitzmaurice experiment worked well.

But Mayo's need for a complete overhaul is glaring, and, despite some official resistance, the public clamour is likely to lead to a knock on O'Mahony's door.

Or Free The Ballaghaderreen One, as the posters say.