Mayo left on outside looking in
Kevin McStayBY the end of July most counties have drawn the curtains on another disappointing championship year. Those still breathing and anticipating can plan for the trips to Croke Park. The August Bank Holiday weekend is my favourite time of the GAA calendar. Once upon a time our lives revolved around the Connacht final and the buzz of the build-up and the excitement in the air. The Qualifiers has more or less put paid to that and if the tempo is a little less frenzied, we cannot deny there is a certain entertainment value.
It is the business end of the football year, the fag end of the championship as all the ducks line up for the quarter-finals. The Big Eight do battle and as I noted last week, in a year when there is certainly no standout team, what a pity Mayo were sent early to the margins.
The possibility of an open championship was debated on these pages at the beginning of the season and the rationale was a simple and basic one: could you make a strong argument, any argument, that maintained Kerry, Armagh or Tyrone are improving teams? The answer to that question is straight-forward enough. Kerry are not the force they were – Moynihan and McCarthy are huge losses to the overall strength of the team. Tyrone appear incapable of avoiding serious injuries and this run of downright bad luck is plaguing them.
Armagh represents the third team in the equation and it is not the benefit of hindsight that informs us of their demise. Too often to the well and all that? Perhaps a little like ourselves in that regard, but the greater truth might lie in the fact Armagh did not win easy. That is to argue, they worked damn hard for every score they got and went to the limits in preventing opposition goals or points. That takes a lot out of any team.
Those reasons and the draw informed my own opinion of the 2007 championship and if only one county emerged as a shock, we have reached August and a possible line-up of the four best quarters ever. Can any team out there declare loudly and bravely that they will saunter home? Is there a team out there with simply no chance of causing an upset?
Let’s examine the one team that surprised us all. Sligo won the Connacht championship on merit and when the provincial season is reviewed I suspect Leitrim will be the team left to contemplate what might have been. A goal opportunity was created at a time when they had Galway on the rack but it was spurned. And with it a place in the decider. Or perhaps, the title itself? We will never know.
But I digress. What of the Sligo challenge? Their place in the QF is obviously assured, but what will some of the round three winners make of them? Will they view them as a soft touch, their ticket to the All Ireland semi-final and the chance to reach the decider proper?
It will be a foolish team that falls into this complacent mode. Sligo has displayed a team spirit and energy that will be difficult to match and they have a modern tradition in the matter of big days in Croke Park. Remember Tyrone and Armagh? I mentioned both above as the public’s favourites at the opening of the season.
The sense that there will be a changing of the guard in Connacht, however temporary it may be, is reinforced with every passing week. Galway and Mayo are officially in transition/rebuild, call it what you will. Their stars of the last ten years have, to paraphrase the ‘Farney Man’, tested and tasted too much. The big days no longer bring wonder in their sporting lives and so, time caught up with them. They were great while it lasted.
And as I type the column we have no word yet on the futures of old playing colleagues, John Maughan and Peter Ford. Will they stay with inter-county management or will they decide enough is enough and want their lives back?
In a funny sort of way, 2008 might be the year John Maughan was always hoping for. The demise of Galway and Mayo will make for a compelling championship next year and the possibility of a Roscommon breakthrough cannot be ruled out. They face a hugely demanding Division 2 of the NFL but that might provide the time, space and opposition that will allow them make the jump from decent competitor to championship winner.
Leitrim, and of course Sligo, will fancy their chances of success also so Connacht may yet turn out to be a really competitive championship. The performance of Sligo in the All-Ireland series and their subsequent league endeavours, will tell us what we need to know about them going forward.
