Stephen Rochford needs dig out from Mayo players

It is difficult to tell exactly at what point players start to play for their manager as well as for their team. Players know immediately when everyone is pulling in the same direction, but it is that bit harder to figure it out from outside the group.

Looking at Mayo’s abject performance against Cork in their league opener in Páirc Uí Rinn last Sunday, you never got the sense that they were playing for any cause — either team or management.

I’m not for a minute suggesting that Mayo’s biggest opening-round defeat in almost a quarter century means that Stephen Rochford and his sideline team are already on uncertain ground, but if last week’s malaise continues, the din will grow louder, questions will become more pressing and faces will grow more worried looking.

It’s always the way with new management and with change in general. Within a group of over 30 players there will be a cohort who were quite happy under the old regime and who see no guarantee of development or continuity under new conditions.

Given what we know about the drawn-out nature of of Pat Holmes’ and Noel Connelly’s removal at the end of last season, we can only assume that there was a certain element in the Mayo panel who were reasonably happy with last year’s set-up. Not so happy that they could convince an ambitious group of sportsmen to persevere with their managers, but not so disillusioned that they couldn’t envisage progress under the old order.

In a way, the episode was indicative of the trajectory of Mayo’s journey since James Horan took the reins and reinvigorated the team five years ago. In their eagerness to forge ahead and break new ground, at times they have had to stop, reassess, double back and start again.

It’s been a tortuous time and the ultimate torture for this group, after so long on the road, would be to come full circle and find themselves back where it all began. Only now five years older.

While we’ve all given in to the urge to highlight where Mayo went astray at key times in big games over recent years, we haven’t been as willing to acknowledge that they didn’t do a whole lot wrong in those matches. It’s just that Donegal in 2012, Dublin in 2013, Kerry in 2014 and Dublin again last year did a little bit more that was right.

So, Mayo, once again, start a season with all kinds of advice ringing in their ears, but without the comfort of the sort of wisdom that only comes with ultimate victory. As they look for something extra that might finally bring them deliverance, that kind of uncertainty coupled with poor form could create the space where doubt creeps in again.

Obviously, the best way to get rid of any nagging doubts about the new order is to start performing well and winning games. It’s amazing how doubt seems to dissipate when training ground routines are validated on-field. The mild euphoria of coming out the right side of a bruising league match can make all nagging concerns disappear overnight.

It’s easy, in this context, to recall Éamonn Fitzmaurice’s early days in charge of the current bunch of Kerry players. A bad defeat away to Mayo in his opening game as manager was followed up by a truly dismal performance against Dublin on this weekend three years ago.

The fact that the Dublin defeat came in Killarney on the day after Fitzmaurice and his Finuge teammates had lost an All-Ireland Intermediate final in Croke Park would have been enough to have a less assured man shaking a fist at the heavens.

While Fitzmaurice remained characteristically inscrutable, the rest of us wondered when, if ever, he would get his team to play for him. It just didn’t sit right that a new manager, so raw and so vulnerable, could be so let down by his players.

In time, the player s responded to Fitzmaurice’s promptings and by the end of the league campaign they had won three games on the trot to survive in Division 1.

Less than 18 months later they were All-Ireland champions. Most players won their first medal that year and the bond with the management was clear for all to see.

Stephen Rochford is in a similar position this evening as Fitzmaurice was three years ago. Playing at home against Dublin, he could do with a good dig out from his players after the ineptitude of last weekend’s display in Cork.

After a relatively successful club management career, for much of the Mayo backroom this inter-county lark brings a new landscape for which there are no maps. The players, at least, have been there before and much of what happens between here and the end of the league will depend on their navigation skills.

This evening’s game should give us a good idea about what Mayo are likely to be at for the rest of the campaign.

A win would bring some peace of mind as they face into the three weeks of intensive training that they badly need to make up for the time and energy lost in the ousting of Holmes and Connelly.

Two league points would also afford some of those who started against Cork last weekend more breathing room to stake a claim for permanent inclusion before the league is out.

If Mayo lose this evening, however, the return of tried and trusted players will be hastened as survival in Division 1 becomes the short-term goal and long-term planning takes a backseat until the summer.

With so many players on club duty or injured, it was always unlikely that Mayo would win down in Cork last weekend. What came as a complete surprise was to see so many young Mayo tyros being beaten so regularly to breaking ball. The freetaking, too, was atrocious.

No such worries for Dublin, whose hunger for breaking ball remains undiminished and whose hard-running style will win them loads of scoreable free kicks at this time of year.

Paddy Andrews, who as one of the country’s best forwards last year was desperately unlucky not be given an All Star and a place in Team of the Year selections, is on fire at the moment.

You might think that a player with a few All-Ireland medals in the bag wouldn’t need the individual accolades but when you get to the level that Andrews has been at for a good 12 months now, the individual stuff becomes a motivation too.

His goal and four points last Saturday were taken with the cool assurance of a player on top of his game. All his scores were taken while the game was still a contest.

Cian O’Sullivan has brought the role of centre-back/sweeper to a new level and while Cluxton’s kickouts were to their usual high standard, he was aided both by a lack of concentration outfield from Kerry players and by the awesome pace and selfless commitment of those he targeted.

Mayo will know better than to leave their full-back line as exposed as Kerry did last weekend. They will know, given the difference in surfaces, that this evening’s game won’t be played at Croke Park pace. They will also know that they can’t be as slack as they were six days ago and that, even in the absence of key performers, they have enough leadership on the field to not drop their heads.

They will take encouragement from the two Kerry goal chances created from high diagonal balls to Donnchadh Walsh on seven minutes and to Tommy Walsh ten minutes later. It won’t escape them either that Jonny Cooper fouled a good bit more last week than he will later on in the year.

Knowing all that might be enough to catch Dublin out in early February, but I doubt Mayo have dispelled their own doubts yet.

With an away trip to Donegal at the end of the month, it isn’t going to get any easier.