Billy Joe Padden
MAYO are in a relegation battle now and we only have ourselves to blame.
We let Cavan back into last Sunday’s game by being passive and showing so little aggression and intensity.
There was no response to the Dublin defeat, no backlash.
Sunday was the day to respond but it didn’t happen.
That’s extremely worrying.
I would always say that you can’t always play well, but you can front up physically, you can work hard, and show desire and fight.
Make no mistake that would have been enough to beat Cavan because Mayo had superior footballers.
But that lack of fight and desire will disappoint Mayo supporters. It disappointed me too because it feels like the end of the road may be coming.
It’s inevitable, it’s going to happen at some stage, this team can’t go on forever. But the last two performances and results make me think that it may be sooner rather than later.
Tactically, I thought Stephen Rochford got it wrong against Cavan.
When Shane Nally kicked Mayo a point ahead there were 57 minutes played. At that stage we should have been trying to keep the ball, been patient, passed it sideways, and not tried to force the issue against a team playing a blanket defence.
Instead we pushed our half-backs and midfielders up the field towards the Cavan goal.
And our guys were crowding that area of the field, getting in each other’s way, standing around. We only needed three or four guys up there, not eight or nine, but we ended up helping Cavan to defend by sending extra bodies up.
We were trying to force the issue when we didn’t need to.
We did the right things in that regard in the last ten minutes of the All-Ireland quarter-final against Tyrone last year, so why didn’t we do it on Sunday?
I know I’m like a broken record on this, but I am absolutely totally and utterly convinced that we need to go back to playing Kevin McLoughlin as a sweeper immediately.
It’s just not happening for him in the half-forwardline, but he can be our Ryan McHugh or Peter Harte, playmaking from the half-back line. That’s where the space is now in the modern game and where most attacks start from.
Last Sunday the damage was done in the first half.
Right from the start Mayo were lethargic and lacklustre and yet they were still five points up heading into half-time because Cavan were offering so little.
Mayo were coasting.
But I was actually still concerned at that stage if I’m honest because very few of our scores were created from a counter-attacking strategy or system.
We did show quite a bit of patience alright when we came up against Cavan’s packed defence early on, but some of the points that Danny Kirby and Conor O’Shea kicked I would classify as ‘screamers’. They were long range pot-shots that look great when they go over, but there was no proper attacking method really behind them.
They were just papering over the cracks.
Anyone who’s watched Cavan recently would have known that they had two players that could hurt us: Gearóid McKiernan and Dara McVeety, and I was very surprised that we didn’t man-mark both of them.
They were given far too much freedom and McKiernan ran the show, putting in a man of the match performance.
He also scored the goal that transformed the whole game.
That goal gave Cavan a huge shot of adrenaline and confidence. They were a new team in the second half.
Mayo, on the other hand, found it very hard to go up through the gears because they had started so slowly.
Dublin were in a similar position on Saturday night against Kerry but the difference was that they could bring on guys like Paul Flynn, Kevin McManamon, Eoghan O’Gara, Cian O’Sullivan and Bernard Brogan.
Mayo just don’t have that luxury at the moment.
Cavan were cute too in how they shackled Cillian O’Connor. They gave Killian Clarke a man-marking job and he checked Cillian’s runs all day. Of course, O’Connor should have got more frees but he didn’t, and that’s par for the course.
But I was amazed that Mayo didn’t move him into the edge of the square early in the second half to try and put Clarke under a bit of pressure.
They needed to try something to try and get O’Connor into the game.
Where has the team’s intensity gone?
ONE similarity last Sunday with the Dublin game was how passive Mayo were right from the get-go.
There was no aggression and I can’t remember one instance where a Mayo player made a big tackle, put in a fair hit, or tried to put a Cavan player in their place with a good, honest shoulder.
That makes me wonder where Mayo’s minds and their motivation are at the moment. Does that lack of intensity and work-rate mean that this group is finally starting to hit the wall?
I don’t get the impression that Mayo know exactly what they’re doing at the moment. On Sunday I felt that they were doing something different with every second attack.
There was no sense that there was a definite system or strategy when it came to trying to break Cavan down.
Is the message from management to players concise enough? Are they working in training clearly on what it is they want to do?
It’s just impossible to tell at the moment.
Just one goal in five games is a very worrying statistic too, and the fact that goal came from a penalty underlines our lack of penetration.
I believe that our failure to create goal chances last Sunday again is linked to the fact that we’re trying to kick the ball more often (and too often in my opinion) these days.
We created most of our goal chances in recent years when we ran the ball, got runners coming off the shoulder, and opened teams up by playing one-twos and drawing defenders out.
Now we’re kicking the ball at times when it’s not on and the fact that our half-forwards are more playmakers than strike runners means that the support is often slow in getting to the likes of Andy Moran if the ball does stick in around the goal in the first place.
In the modern game, very few of the All-Ireland contenders kick the ball any more than they really, really have to.
We’re losing more than we’re gaining at the moment by trying to force the issue and kicking the ball into our attack.
We’re certainly taking the running power of our half-back line out of the game, and that’s not a good thing.
Speaking of which, there were times in the second half when our half-back line seemed to be gone AWOL as well.
How is that even possible?
We have four or five of the best half-backs in the country and they’re not there when we need them.
I thought Colm Boyle was too deep, Lee Keegan spent most of the day chasing around after Martin Reilly, and Paddy Durcan was on corner-back duty again.
Sure, Keegan landed two points but, by and large, the game passed him and most of the Mayo lads by.
Battle in store in Omagh
I’M fearful going to Tyrone next Sunday.
We’re the perfect opponents for them really and they would love nothing better than to drive us towards Division 2 by beating us in Omagh.
If you thought Monaghan and Cavan were defensive, just wait until you see Tyrone. And because we seem to be so unsure about our own game-plan right now, I just wonder how we’re going to cope with Mickey Harte’s.
Stephen Rochford has to address the issue with his team’s poor motivation and intensity levels this week.
He also has to make a clear decision on what our tactical approach is now and communicate that to the players.
If I was part of the Mayo management this week I would be making two suggestions: 1) Go back to playing with Kevin McLoughlin as a sweeper; 2) Tackle and hit all week in training. Get the bodies ready for what’s coming on Sunday.
If we play like we did against Dublin and Cavan I see us getting beaten something like 0-12 to 0-8.
Certainly if we go four or five points behind against a team like Tyrone, we won’t be coming back to win.
Not the way they play and with so many of our forwards struggling for form and fitness.
If we’re to have any chance of beating them we have to match and better their physicality.
That means meeting every challenge head on, winning breaks and dirty ball, and trying to get our hands on more ball when kick-outs go long.
We really missed the physicality and the presence of Aidan and Seamus O’Shea last Sunday too.
Some people in Mayo seem to think we can do without them, or maybe even that we’d be better off without them.
I really can’t understand where that’s coming from, these people have very very short memories.
For some reason the two O’Sheas don’t seem to be flavour of the month with some Mayo supporters, but they’re absolutely integral to this Mayo team.
And we need them, the team needs them.
Barry Moran and Alan Dillon would have come in very handy last Sunday too to win ball around the middle, and to be patient when they had it in their hands.
Unfortunately, I think we’re going to be beaten by three or four points next Sunday. But obviously I hope I’m wrong.
I’m not sure if we’re going to be good enough to beat Donegal either but we may still stay up as Cavan will probably need to beat Roscommon on the last day to save themselves. And the Rossies may just get us out of jail.
Who’d have thought it would come to that?
