Picking my best Mayo team ever
Seán Rice
‘Select your best ever Mayo team’, barks the sports editor down the line.
‘Easy’, says I. ‘Thirty words’. ‘Wha d’ya mean, thirty words?‘, says he.
‘Fifteen players and their Christian names’, says I. ‘You can have them now over the phone, give or take a couple of names. The best Mayo team of all time’!
‘You have analysed hundreds of Mayo teams’, says he, ‘travelled the country with them, watched scores of players come and go, and you try to convince me your best selection is that easy. . . your’re dotin’.
Ok, here goes. Goalkeeper Sean Wynne. Fullback line: Ford, Prendergast, Flanagan. Halfback line: Staunton. . . so on, so forth, all the way to Joko Gilvarry at left corner forward.
‘But’... ‘No buts’, says I. ‘The team that won back-to-back All-Irelands for Mayo in the fifties is unequalled. No position on the side is open to question. Everyone played his part, some better than others, but all vital cogs in the one wheel.
‘If I were to pick my best team ever it would exclude everyone who did not participate in that accomplishment.
‘You can measure them with players that came after. But you can’t replace them. As a unit their achievement in Mayo is unique. They stand alone.
‘So there it is. No argument. Easy.’
‘Not so fast’, says he, ‘with a patent grin that almost melted the phone wires. What about your best of the rest, the best Mayo team since 1960?’
‘Don’t saddle me with that assignment’, says I. ‘My opinion is only one of countless thousands who have analysed Mayo down the years. Ask the aficionados and you’ll find that no two agree on any one Mayo selection.
‘Lingering traces of aversion, nepotism, prejudice, partiality, whatever, is an obstacle to fair selection.
‘No one is free from overstating the positives of their favourite star, or underscoring the negatives of a rival.’
‘So how about it?‘, asks the SE.
At the risk of incurring his displeasure and being sentenced to cover all juvenile matches in Killala for the remainder of the year, your columnist unenthusiastically acquiesces. And if there is a public burning of The Mayo News — a ‘bonfire of the vanities’ — outside the office when the team is selected, on his head let it be.
So starting next week I intend to select one player each week of my favourite fifteen over the past fifty years, beginning with the goalkeeper... one of the most difficult positions to fill because of the astonishing array of star goalkeepers this county has unearthed over the years.
I see the vultures circling already.
Dublin will provide toughest test yet
Nothing Mayo have done so far will be good enough to keep their unbeaten run going as Pat Gilroy's new-look team come to town
THE Dubs return to Mayo on Sunday, their third springtime league trip to the county in four years. They come on a high following wins over Kerry and Derry.
But Pat Gilroy is building no castles in the air. “We know we are a long way from the top teams in summertime in the championship, so we have a lot to do,” said the practical manager, following the surprise win of his side over the All-Ireland champions.
Feet were thus firmly grounded when Derry came to visit in the second round. And again Dublin triumphed.
And in describing their victory as a bit messy and not a game that would live long in the memory, the manager was keeping a tight lid on any sense of complacency.
But a seven-point win over a team that had beaten Tyrone in the opening round cannot be dismissed as a flash in the pan, and Mayo (who beat Dublin by a point in 2007 at McHale Park, and could only force a draw at Ballina last season), have no reason to be other than apprehensive.
So what’s different about Dublin? Newness is at the heart of their upsurge. Having promised so much over the past few years, their humiliation to Kerry last summer was the final straw. Nothing more could be extracted from a side carrying so much baggage.
A new manager was appointed ... and the new broom is sweeping clean.
No more Whelans, or Sherlocks or Morans, or Quinns, or Keaneys or Cullens.
A team backboned by rookies is now in place and supporters are beginning to dream again.
Their philosophy is borrowed from Armagh.
They have chosen blanket defending in a bid to smother embryonic strikes. They are fit, hard-tackling and raw. There is no room for elegance.
But at midfield they derive inspiration from Eamonn Fennell.
A total of 1-4 in the final ten minutes, the goal by Kevin McMenamon three minutes from the end, clinched their win over Derry.
It’ll be a ‘grueller’ next Sunday, and Mayo will find it the most difficult of their three games. Nothing they have done yet will be good enough to derail the Dubs.
the Hurling revival
OVER twelve years have passed since our one and only visit to Nowlan Park in Kilkenny.
Mayo were engaging the Cats, not in hurling, but in the National Football league.
After an overnight stay in the city we strolled into Langton’s Bar, the city’s bank of hurling knowledge, and were taken slightly aback to realise that nobody was aware of the football match.
Only then did it dawn on us that football to Kilkenny is what hurling is to Mayo ... a game which arouses little interest among football folk in this county, but to which the few committed souls are irresistibly tied.
Their passion, and the love of hurling by those who play it, was evident at McHale Park on Sunday where a herculean Mayo effort fell short by the narrowest of margins to Kerry.
Maybe if they had had the benefit of the opening match of the campaign with Armagh — postponed at the last minute because of the weather — the sharpness that games provide might have been enough to get them over Kerry.
What future there is for the national game in Mayo is determined by the enthusiasm of the few who give all of their spare time to promoting hurling. So long as that small font of passion remains, hurling will survive.
If, however, the number of supporters at McHale Park on Sunday is any indication, the general public are still unmoved.
But the standard of hurling has improved considerably in Mayo over the past few years... far better than football has in Kilkenny where it is denied even the luxury of lip service by the hurling authorities.
Just a thought …
The Mayo GAA Board has re-scheduled the official opening of the revamped Mchale Park to coincide with the expected championship clash between Mayo and Galway in June. But will Sligo put a spanner in the works?
