Mayo ladies set for league showdown with Meath

LIAM McHale’s new recruits certainly will have learned a lot when they’ve their first league campaign over them.

Though Meath are no longer the team they were, the 2021 and 2022 All-Ireland champions can still ask serious questions of Mayo when they face off at the unusual time of Monday afternoon.

Mayo gave a solid enough display against Dublin last Saturday afternoon. Their work rate, hunger and heads-up, go-for-it mentality cannot be questioned. Problems which have plagued them for years persist, however.

Firstly, the over-reliance on one player to get all the scores. For a dynasty, Cora Staunton led the way. The burden was more evenly spread post-Cora before being front-loaded onto the Cafferky sisters, who have now opted out of the Mayo jersey along with numerous other talented footballers.

On Saturday, the burden fell to Sinéad Walsh. Only in her fourth season out of Minor football, Walsh’s talent has never been questioned, but with so many sharpshooters opting out, the task of racking up scores has fallen to the MacHale Rovers woman much sooner in her career than she would have liked.

Last weekend, Mayo’s only other proven score-getter among the starting six was Burrishoole’s Maria Cannon, who was kept scoreless by Dublin.

Ciara Whyte looked out of position at corner-forward, as evidenced by her being taken off at half time, and is likely to revert to her more natural domain in the middle eight.

Lucy Wallace, Ciara Durkin (a converted defender) and Annie Gough will run and work all day but at the moment they lack the natural score-getting ability to take the heat off Walsh.

Young guns like Leaving Cert student Bree Hession got a good run against Dublin while Kayla Doherty wrapped up a tidy debut by kicking one of Mayo’s three scores from play.

But however stuck Mayo are for forwards, Liam McHale is keen to mind young players who are still very new to senior intercounty football.

“We’ll be trying to get people in as best we can. Guys came in there and definitely put their hands up, but we have to protect the likes of Kayla. Kayla is Minor and we don’t want to do anything to upset Brian McLoughlin, the manager of the Minors,” McHale told The Mayo News after the Dublin game.

“That’s their first choice, the way we are situated, we are probably going to need her for games, so we have a good conditioning coach, a good physio, so we will mind her and manage her as best we can and hopefully bring her along. We’ll be hoping for big things come the end of the league early into the championship.”

Mayo cannot ask for much more at midfield. As they showed against Dublin, Aoife Geraghty and Erin Murray have few equals in the land when fully fit.

Mayo are, however, a work in progress in defence and are still prone to leaking goals at the worst possible moment despite the experience of Saoirse Lally, Kathryn Sullivan and the resurrected Ella Brennan.

However, Sullivan is optimistic that her captain and Castlebar Mitchels teammate, Danielle Caldwell, will be fit to face the Royals after pulling out of the Dublin game at the last minute.

“It’s just a little niggle. She’ll be fine, she’ll be okay for next week,” Sullivan told The Mayo News.

“To not have her out there behind me, personally, was a bit scary but someone just slotted in there. Ella Brennan was in the full-back line there with Ciara Durkin that was meant to start a wing-forward, so we readjusted and I think we did pretty well in those adjustments, so Dani, our captino, she’ll be back next week.”

The last time Mayo played Meath, they were blown away by a tour-de-force from Emma Duggan while an Orange weather warning rocked the now-ruined Air Dome.

Duggan was absent for their most recent game, where two goals each from Kerrie Cole and Megan Collins helped them to a 4-4 to 0-2 win over newly-promoted Tyrone in terrible weather conditions.

The Royals may not be All-Ireland contenders, but they are still no joke and will enjoy home advantage on Monday.

Once Duggan doesn’t feature, it’s anyone’s game. 

FIXTURE

LIDL NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE DIVISION 1 ROUND 2

MAYO V MEATH

NAVAN, 2PM, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3