All-Ireland Club JHC final: Mayfield aim to play it cool as excitement builds

It’s an age-old magic trick of management which Seamus Lawton hopes to reproduce in Croke Park today: how to treat Mayfield’s All-Ireland final like any other game, when everything around it is so new and different.

It’s the same game, with the same players chasing the same ball, but everything else is scaled up times ten. The journey is longer, the stadium bigger and the buzz around Cork’s northside louder than ever.

Even Croke Park’s green rug presents an amplified challenge. Mayfield made a trip to UL’s all-weather pitch last Saturday in a bid to replicate the conditions and have been making use of Mayfield United’s AstroTurf facility too. Two trains will carry their fans from Kent Station straight to Drumcondra, one of which will include the players. They’ll have their own carriage, though, and maintaining routine amid the excitement is Lawton’s mantra.