Kieran Shannon: Kevin McStay is now ready for the pressure game

MY TIME: Kevin McStay has been given his chance by Mayo.
Picture: Inpho/James Crombie

Finally he’s got it. And finally they got it right.

When Kevin McStay had previously volunteered his services and considerable talents to manage the Mayo senior football team, the county board didn’t merely overlook him but blackguard him.

A whole 27 years ago, the Ballina native attended a county board meeting that was supposed to be along the lines of the one last night, sure he’d be unveiled as the successor to Anthony Egan after being informed as much by county board figures. But as that meeting in the old Welcome Inn progressed, he noticed an edginess in the air. The item of the new county manager was constantly pushed further down the agenda. Then when it finally arose a delegate sitting behind him proposed that any appointment should be delayed. It was duly seconded. Unbeknownst to McStay until he was in his car home, there had been a sea-change. John Maughan was now the preferred choice and a few weeks later he was duly the successful one.

Eight years ago was even more farcical in both process and outcome. At least in September 1995 John Maughan had been the right appointment even if he hadn’t been appointed in the right way. In September 2014 McStay was the only candidate, the only man and the right man for the job. Yet when he met with a group of county board officers, his antennae again told him something was off.

“There was no sense of warmth in the room,” he’d write in his terrific, underrated 2019 autobiography The Pressure Game, “never mind some curiosity or excitement.” He had been bursting with data and ideas to “finish off James Horan’s brilliant body of work” and get Mayo over the line. They only saw hurdles and a different kind of line. And how much would all this cost? Instead they opted for a joint management team that included the vice chair’s brother.

This time there was no such conflict of interest – executive members hailing from the same club as some of the managerial candidates excused themselves from the process – or lack of transparency or even candidates. After twice finishing second in a one-man race, McStay this time emerged victorious in a strong field of four, its declaration made at another county board meeting in Castlebar, this time in MacHale Park, a mile or so across from the unwelcome inn where he was so embarrassed 27 years ago.

No one’s standing has been diminished in the process. If anything everyone’s has been enhanced – each candidate successful or not, the county board itself and the county’s too; clearly, gauging by the quality of applications and the thoroughness of processing them there’s a sense still in the county that there’s an All Ireland yet in these players, a mood that wasn’t as pervasive leaving Croke Park after the Kerry game. Although it has taken a full eight weeks since James Horan stepped down to appoint his successor, it has never been the circus that some have lazily dismissed it as. This time the county and McStay got a process that was all above board, all by the book.

When it broke early yesterday that Pat Flanagan was the new manager of Roscommon, it would have signalled to the trainspotters that the Mayo gig was McStay’s; Stephen Rochford, who had been Roscommon’s first preference for some time, would now be otherwise engaged as one of the Ballina man’s army of experienced coaches. But even then you had to read between the lines. The news itself didn’t leak.

In McStay Mayo have opted for experience over excitement; although the latter quality was initially attached to his own ticket with it featuring not one but two proven double acts in Rochford and Buckley as well as McStay and McHale, it was trumped on that measure by Raymond Dempsey’s literally all-star cast. Mike Solan’s ticket also had a tangible vibrancy and freshness to it but McStay crucially did score some marks on that count too with the inclusion of Damien Mulligan, coach to last year’s county finalists Belmullet, as part of his setup. As proven and respected as Rochford and Buckley are with a lot of these players, a purely retro old-boys reunion act wouldn’t cut it with them or the players Horan blooded.

Just who will coach what will be one of the fascinations and challenges of this operation but one McStay was undoubtedly quizzed upon and would have had (to have) a strong, detailed answer for, not least after the manner in which he and Fergie O’Donnell parted ways in Roscommon.

In the Pressure Game he spoke highly of Rochford’s tactical acumen in their head-to-head in the 2017 All Ireland quarter-final series of games; moving Lee Keegan to midfield onto Enda Smith completely stumped him. Privately many Mayo players of the last decade would have felt the ultimate dream team would have been a combination of Horan’s charisma, organisation and belief married with Rochford’s tactical adaptability and coaching chops; Horan was more a manager as good as he was a coach; Rochford more of a coach although he was twice an All-Ireland finalist manager. McStay, with his own powers of articulation and military-like organisation to go with all proven coaches he’s assembled around him, can now provide the best of both worlds. Horan for all his brilliance tended to find himself on the line surrounded by a lack of experience in contrast to his rivals, especially during his second coming. The managerial team who ended his tenure, for instance, consisted of three men who were all mangers in D2 in 2021 – Paddy Tally, Micheál Quirke, Jack O’Connor himself, aided by a seasoned selector in Diarmuid Murphy. McStay now has an army of selectors who have basically only known life in D1 the past decade between their experiences with Roscommon, Donegal, Kerry and Monaghan, or in some cases, Mayo itself.

More than once during his coaching career McStay has expressed a fondness for the line don’t die wondering. Mayo too had to see how this marriage might work. He deserves his shot.