TV View: Mayo bleed as Chekhov’s gun goes off in all directions
Just in case you were out sick the day it came up in college, the dictum states that if there’s a gun on the mantelpiece in the first act of the play then it must be fired by the third act.
It’s 15 minutes to throw-in and Marty Morrissey is on the sideline with John Maughan, Tomás Ó Sé and Alan Brogan. They’re discussing the changes made to both starting sides, one of which sees the younger Brogan being dropped for Paddy Andrews. Another entails a new man featuring between the sticks for Mayo. Rob Hennelly is in for David Clarke.
What John Maughan says is so uncontentious – it’ll be grand, basically – that I don’t bother scribbling down the precise wording. But you can see where this is going. Chekhov’s gun. It’ll be fired before the second half, never mind the third act, is very old.
Kudos here and now to Pat Spillane. He recycles the three reasons for tipping Dublin he gave before the drawn game and he turns out to be bang on the money. A better bench, a forward line that won’t be as bad again and a higher tempo game than Mayo’s with more scoring power to boot. Fair enough. Eminently fair and logical.
Colm O’Rourke professes himself to be a Doubting Thomas. Not until he sees Mayo win an All Ireland will he actually believe it, he announces. Also eminently fair and logical.
As for Joe Brolly, he seems to fancy Mayo. Really. He warns nonetheless about the possibility of “a giant hand picking up Aidan O’Shea when he’s through on goal”. Fanciful? This is Mayo, remember. Hardly any more fanciful than the notion of a team scoring two own-goals in the first half of an All-Ireland final. Hardly any more fanciful than the notion of an 11th hour goalie having a nightmare with his kick-outs, giving away a horrendous, match-changing penalty and being black-carded out of the action. Ooops. Looks like I’ve already fired that gun.
Off they go. Dublin start with four points on the trot. Mayo reply with four points on the trot. After a a very, very good first quarter, we get one of the great All-Ireland final goals. Aidan O’Shea’s change of direction. Lee Keegan’s surge forward. The finely weighted pass. The belter of a shot. Ger: “What a corker that was!” Martin: “He finished it ruthlessly!”
The closing minutes of the half bring skirmishes of varying tempestuousness and cards of varying hues. Is Maurice Deegan losing control? At the interval the panel decide Keegan’s and Jonny Cooper’s black cards were deserved but that John Small got away with a hand trip.
The lads still fancy Dublin. To underline the point Colm lists the cards they have yet to play. Macauley, O’Gara, Bastick, the younger Brogan. (He neglects to mention Cormac Costello.) Before they can get around to playing any of them, however, Hennelly makes a hash of a routine centre from the right, drops the ball, fouls Andrews, concedes a penalty and is dismissed. Chekhov’s gun goes on automatic mode and there’s Mayo blood everywhere.
What else can the lads do afterwards except go through the platitudes? Martin deems Mayo to have been “superb in defeat” with the air of a man who sounds as if he’s hating himself for doing so. Pat is so anxious not to patronise the losers that he is stuck for words. Almost. “Oh , I don’t know what to say.” Then we get the equivalent of the money shot as Marty collars Stephen Rochford and asks him, delicately and diplomatically, the question on the lips of an entire nation: what in the name of God were ye thinking of with the goalie? Rochford cites the way Dublin pushed up on David Clarke’s kickouts a fortnight ago and stresses it was “a calculated decision” to replace him.
It’s an exchange that reflects well on both men. Marty for not shying away but not using hobnailed boots, Rochford for manning up. No toys are thrown out of the pram in its making either. But oh, that gun. The echoes will resound in Mayo for the winter. No one here gets out alive.
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