A tale of two teamsheets

Sketch

lSURELY it was someone acting the maggot?

So we thought when not one, but two teamsheets arrived into our inbox last Friday within half an hour.

At 6.06pm, the first email arrived: ‘Mayo Football Team Announced’. Nothing out of the ordinary.

One change for Mayo. Paul Towey (who was due a start, in fairness) in for Tommy Conroy in the full-forward line.

Again, nothing out of the ordinary.

Except Stephen Coen, who wasn’t due to start, was included and poor Conor Reid, due to start at wing-forward, was left out altogether.

At 6.33pm, another email landed titled and it turned out that young Reid was, in fact, due to start while the former Mayo captain was for the bench.

“Bring back Liam Horan!” cried our former colleague and Mayo Football Podcast host Mike Finnerty, bemoaning the departure of Kevin McStay’s old media handler.

Giving some convulsing Mayo GAA officials the benefit of the doubt, his guest Colm Boyle speculated if it was ‘too early for mind games’.

Yes, as it turned out. Bucking national trend, the Mayo team that was (finally) named to start actually started the win over Dublin.

After a question about dropping Fergal Boland last year nearly caused a fracas to put the ’96 All-Ireland to shame, Mayo GAA PRO John Walker issued an ultimatum to the assembled hacks at the post-game press conference.

“Last question lads.”

Better make it a good one so, we thought.

“Why were there two team sheets sent out?” we asked Mayo manager Kevin McStay.

“I’ll deal with that because that actually happened. There’s actually something to that,” cleared still rattled from the question about Fergal Boland.

“We’re humans, the people that run the show, you look around, we’re all human beings, we do the very best we can, there was a mistake made. A team from last week was compared to a team from this week, some fella pressed copy and paste.”

“Human error,” piped Walker.

Then things got a bit personal.

Aiming his words directly at the reporters around him, McStay said: “I’m sure you’ve read the odd report on a Monday…

“How dare you!” joked Malachy Clerkin of the Irish Times.

“Yee’d wish yee’d put yeer eye on for a second,” continued McStay.

“Right lads, all done,” interjected Walker before somebody lost a limb.

To be fair to McStay, he had a point.

These mistakes can and do happen, and they happen to the best of us.

Even an operation as slick and professional as Mayo GAA.