Comment
Billy Joe Padden
I’VE been watching developments unfold from a distance over the last seven days and have been struck by a number of things, in particular.
Firstly, I believe that the Mayo players had nothing personal against Pat Holmes or Noel Connelly. This was a purely football-related decision.
It was evident from the ‘no confidence’ vote and the subsequent show of strength at last week’s meeting with County Board officials in Castlebar that the joint managers had lost the dressing-room.
Once that happens, there is no going back.
I would give Pat and Noel huge credit for doing what was in the best interests of Mayo football, and standing aside last Friday night. It was the honourable thing to do.
I also think the players took the right approach by not speaking to the media. I would commend them for not making any of the specific issues with management public.
The players have shown amazing unity in what they’ve done. They’ve stuck together, been respectful of each other and the different views in terms of how individual players voted, and still been united in terms of what they felt was best for the group.
The unity of purpose they showed by turning up together at last Thursday night’s meeting at MacHale Park spoke volumes.
They have been able to sit down as a group and communicate the problems they had, identify a course of action, and work together to come up with an agreed solution.
That has been impressive and it shows me that the unit is tight. Mayo supporters should take great heart from that.
Will they win the All-Ireland in 2016? Who knows?
But they have shown that they were prepared to do whatever it takes to try and achieve that aim. Of course they know that this will be thrown back at them if they come up short next year, but that’s not something that concerns them.
They are in this together.
I think it’s a very positive thing for Mayo supporters that these players are willing to leave no stone unturned to try and win an All-Ireland in the next few years.
The easy thing for them to do would have been to ‘go with the flow’ for another year.
Never in the last five seasons have I seen a Mayo player being asked to do a specific job, even a job that may not have suited them, and it not being done to the best of their ability.
It’s not in their nature, it’s not how they operate. And that’s why no matter what issues were there during the course of the season, the players weren’t going to take their focus off of the task at hand. Championship games had to be won.
In the not-too-distant past, even when I was playing with Mayo not that long ago, we were perceived as being brittle and soft. We were labelled as ‘not tough enough’, ‘not ruthless enough’.
We’ve been asking these Mayo players to be ruthless and single-minded over the last few years. And they have been, plenty of times. And they were again in the last few weeks.
We can’t chastise the players for being ruthless now off the field, when we demand it of them on the field.
If they continue to bring that mindset on to the pitch next season then they will be successful again.
The players have been in ‘All-Ireland or bust’ mode for the last three or four years, and they will be again next season. They will be until some of them retire and the group starts to break up.
There seems to be a line of thinking out there that no good can come from the events of the last seven days.
I don’t agree with that; not if all concerned act in the best interests of Mayo football.
