Dillon asks kids to deliver at Croker
The new Connacht champions have lost five straight games at headquarters since defeating Dublin with a point to spare in an epic All-Ireland semi-final in 2006, and those losses have come in both league and championship.
Meath had their number with three points to spare in the last eight in 2009 and Tyrone edged a fourth round qualifier by a point a year earlier. Donegal and Cork have bettered them in Allianz FL finals while Dublin dispatched James Horan’s side in a league tie earlier this year.
“All we’re looking to do is win a big game in Croke Park,” said Dillon.
“It depends on who we get in the draw but there is a lot of confidence in the group. James has brought in a lot of fresh faces and a lot is unknown about them. You would be hoping they have a huge game in them for Croke Park.”
Mayo’s transformation from London escapees to provincial kingpins in seven weeks has been remarkable but so too has the change in personnel from the starting team which last claimed the Nestor Cup in 2009.
Just a third of the starting 15 that beat Galway in Pearse Stadium 24 months ago lined up for the pre-match parade in Dr Hyde Park last Sunday and only three more survivors from 2009 could make the bench.
Mayo lined out with a new goalkeeper, just one of the same defenders, an entirely new midfield and with only Dillon returning to the attacking ranks. It is a breathtaking turnover, even when allowance is made for injuries and retirements.
One of the new breed against the Rossies was 19-year-old Cillian O’Connor from Ballintubber, who put to bed many snide remarks about Mayo free-takers in recent years with a display of accuracy and nerve amid the Hyde maelstrom.
The fare from open play may not have been up to much but his shoot-out with Donie Shine was a fascinating sub-plot and few would have backed the Mayo man to be the one left standing after those two had emptied their barrels.
Not that O’Connor was lacking in practice prior to the game. Though a Ballintubber colleague of Dillon’s, who has been Mayo’s main source of scores from dead balls in recent times, the younger man has been taking his fair share of kicks with the club.
“There were three or four of us practising them all year, regardless of who was taking them all year, so there was a few of us ready,” said O’Connor. “When I was told I was taking them it was a bit of extra pressure. Some days you might only get two or three frees and another day you might get 10.
“This time there was a good few and it made a big difference. I knew there might be a small bit of talk about the frees, but you just have to block it out. I’d been practicing them often and you know yourself that you’re going to be comfortable on them. You just have to block out the crowd. It’s just like any other game.
“That breeze caused a lot of trouble for them and us. When the first one went over it gave me a bit of confidence and when we went in at half time I knew that I’d have a massive wind behind me for the rest of them and, thankfully, most of them went over.”
O’Connor aside, Mayo had much to be positive about with exceptional performances from old heads and inexperienced newcomers or, in the case of 27-year-old Richie Feeney, who is playing in his first championship, someone who is both.
The criticisms of Connacht football abounded in the wake of Mayo’s two-point win, but O’Connor is of the belief that a win against a confident Roscommon side on home soil is not to be sneezed at.
“Any time you come to Hyde Park to play Roscommon you are going to be in a battle and we were prepared for that,” he said. “In the second half it was in the melting pot until the last kick. We just got the scores at the right time and one or two of theirs went wide. It was inches that decided it.”
Inches... and frees.
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