Mayo’s forgotten man Alan Dillon emerges from the shadows

Forty two. The number of championship minutes Alan Dillon saw in the Connacht championship last season.

Zero. The amount of action he saw in the subsequent All-Ireland series.

To say the Ballintubber man was underused when it came to Croke Park would be an understatement. No Mayo player since 2004 has performed better on the All-Ireland semi-final stage than him but on the two occasions against Dublin he was left kicking his heels. When he seemed the obvious candidate to help turn the game, Noel Connelly and Pat Holmes thought otherwise.

It hurt. More than Dillon is willing to admit here, but the tell-tale signs are obvious. “For a lot of people, I’m still alive,” he smiles about his start against Tyrone, his first championship start since the All-Ireland semi-final replay against Kerry in 2014.

“I haven’t gone away.”

For the work he put in last year, the return for it when things mattered most was nowhere near enough. “It was difficult. I will make no arguments on that. I was still contributing at training, I was still asking questions of the starters.

“I still felt that this year I had something to offer. Hopefully, in the next 70 minutes against Tipperary I will have something to offer. The belief hasn’t changed, I’m getting older, the body isn’t probably the same as it was starting out. I have my individual goals and team goals just to get back. While you are at the latter end of the championship, it is always good at this time of the year. There is a good spirit in the camp and we are really looking forward to the challenge on Sunday.”

Showing up the failings of Tyrone’s sweeper system as he did in the All-Ireland quarter-final, Dillon more than indicated he still has a role.

Though, he has to accept he may not start the next day.

At the age of 34, it’s what he has come to understand.

“From being a starter over the past number of years to changing roles in terms of being an impact sub and being a non-starter is always difficult. You just have to stick to the process to try to convince yourself that you still have a part to play in the squad and in the team. It is not always easy but my end goal is to try to win a championship. Whatever part I play in 2016 is for the benefit of the team. You have to give that positive energy to ensure that you aren’t looking at just the individual. You are looking at the collective. The last day it went well for me. I got a bit of confidence from it but the next day I mightn’t start. I might play a role. That may get us into the All-Ireland final.”

It was Dillon’s experience that told him things weren’t right in losing to Galway back in June. “Some of the effort and some of the, I suppose, hard work wasn’t evident against Galway. I suppose some lads perceived that we’d just get through this game.

“We were probably in control for some periods of that game, but it’s a small line in terms of preparation — thinking that you’re in a good place and actually being in a good place. And I think that, psychologically, we were at home in Castlebar, thinking about a Connacht final with Galway ahead of us. And when the hard questions were asked in the second half, when Galway got level with us, we didn’t have the answer to fight back. All credit to Galway, they had us in their sights as sitting targets for six or seven weeks before that. And maybe we had taken our eye off the ball. In championship football you can be put on your arse very quickly, and we were on our arse without any questions to answer!”

Sunday marks an eighth All-Ireland semi-final for Dillon, a sixth in a row, but he knows they are only there to be won. “I suppose we don’t really value it (six-in-a-row) as an achievement until there’s silverware on the table. It’s just a constant process that we try and go up to Croke Park and win games — and win them with style as well as determination and skill. We don’t really look back and say, ‘Jesus, we’re here again’ … we want to get back, we haven’t been in the final since ‘13 so that’s the challenge now. We’re one step away but it’s going to take a big performance to get over Tipp and that’s all we’re focused on.”