League can be Mayo’s springboard to championship success

Former Mayo footballer Michael Moyles has supported James Horan’s open desire to win the league as they prepare for a second clash with Derry in seven days in Sunday’s Division 1 semi-final.

Last November, the manager said: “The best preparation for the All-Ireland championship would be a national title victory.

“I don’t think there’s anything better you could do in training that would help the team like that would.”

Moyles, a used sub in the county’s last National League success in 2001, said Horan is correct to be so bold in announcing his ambitions.

“The last four years, Mayo have reached the knockout stages of the league bar one season [2012]. You could say ‘it’s fine, we don’t need to win it’ but this year they’ve adopted a different mentality and it’s a good way to be setting out their stall.

“They’re out to win the league and if you look over the last four or five years, the likes of Dublin, Cork and Kerry have all followed up league successes with All-Ireland titles.

“It didn’t happen for us after we won the league in 2001 but then it was the county’s first league title for 20 or 30 years. We weren’t allowed to celebrate it either and it kind of passed without much notice. We didn’t make enough of it.”

Winning a first national crown in 13 years would certainly go some way to getting Mayo on the road to recovery from last September. Even if it was their second successive All-Ireland final defeat, Moyles can’t compare them with previous Mayo sides who also finished runners-up.

“Talking to some current Mayo players, they absolutely love playing in Croke Park. It used to be a big hoodoo for Mayo footballers but this current group is a different crop who like the fast ball and the running game.

“Falling at the final hurdle has meant the bridesmaid stigma is mentioned again, but if you look at the James Horan era they’ve won some massive games. In the three Championships, they beat the previous year’s All-Ireland winners [Cork in 2011, Dublin 2012 and Donegal last year].”

Moyles believes the constant criticism of the Mayo forward line lacking a star finisher is unwarranted when, from a scoring perspective, the team is a whole, not a sum of their parts.

“They’re very attack-minded as a team and Donie Buckley would have done a lot of work with them. They attack in droves, especially their wing backs, and that might explain why they’re conceding a lot of goals. I think you can see there’s a better spread of scorers among the Mayo players. You have one marquee forward and he can be targeted, either double-marked or sticking a sweeper in front of him.

“Mayo share the scoring load. Lee Keegan is coming up with two or three points in a game. The way football has gone, there are a lot more injuries and you can’t depend on just one player. For example, Cillian O’Connor could be ruled out but Mayo would still have a lot of scoring options.”