Will Kevin McStay tinker with Mayo team for trip to Leitrim?

IT’S an easy win on paper, even with the hour-and-a-bit of travelling to Carrick-on-Shannon involved. But on grass, as every Mayo supporter knows, we could get absolutely anything from this Mayo team.

In 2024, the Mayo U-20s got a very rude awakening from Andy Moran’s Leitrim when they were beaten in Ballinamore. In that same year, Moran guided their senior footballers to promotion from Division 4 while their ladies’ team captured an All-Ireland intermediate title.

If 2024 was the year Leitrim football made big ripples, then 2025 has been the year they splashed against the cliff of adversity.

In Stephen Poacher’s first year in charge, Leitrim went straight back down to Division 3 with six defeats and a scoring difference of -99.

No Leitrim player scored than nine points across a dismal league campaign that was blackened by an unprecedented and shocking decision not to field a team against Fermanagh.

It got worse when 37-year-old Emlyn Mulligan, arguably the greatest Leitrim player of modern times, revealed that he and some other intercounty veterans had offered to tog when the scale of the injury/absentee crisis became known. A few handy club players would also have answered a call to arms.

“I played over the years against the likes of Kilkenny who would have struggled,” he told the Irish Independent, “but they never forfeited a game against us.”

Mulligan’s offer wasn’t accepted, and Fermanagh got the points without lifting a finger. Leitrim’s final league game ended in a 22-point defeat to Sligo. A sorry state of affairs, indeed. But that’s what Mayo are up against on Sunday, and they can only play what’s put in front of them.

WAY BACK WHEN

MOST of us saw Mayo’s last game against Leitrim on the telly on July 11, 2021. Covid-19 restrictions were in place, but MacHale Park wasn’t even ‘sold out’ when 2,500-odd spectators witnessed an unholy massacre.

The half-time score, 3-11 to 0-4 in Mayo’s favour, prompted an impassioned rant from RTÉ analyst Pat Spillane, who branded the farce as ‘men against boys’ before lamenting the demise of rural Ireland. Cora Staunton and Seán Kavanagh, standing on either side of him, could hardly get a word in edgeways.

“Inequality exists outside the sports field, and inequality exists inside the sports field; there will always be the strong and the weak, there will always be the rich and the poor, but we’ll try to narrow the gap,” said Spillane, shifting passionately through the gears.

“How do you narrow the gap? We need to all work together,” he added, seeing parallels between the problems facing the GAA and the problems facing rural Ireland.

“Too many self-interest groups, too many people minding their own, no joined-up thinking, no co-ordinating. The key is bottom-up, not top-down, but bottom-up.”

He did bring it back to the football though - with solutions this time.

“You need to put money and personnel into coaching, coaching at club and coaching at games, it’s a bottom-up, it’s a long development,” said he ex-Kerry footballer.

“The easy thing to say is get rid of the provincial championship. That’s wrong. What they need is more games.”

'The easy thing to say is, "get rid of the provincial championship" - that's wrong'

Pat Spillane, Cora Staunton and Seán Cavanagh discuss the current state of football after a one-sided first half in Castlebar

Updates: https://t.co/6aYfNjmsSp

Live: https://t.co/ZfZ9mA9XTY pic.twitter.com/Wo5lSzsU5T

— The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) July 11, 2021

Now that last bit is interesting. When Spillane made those utterances, the Leitrim seniors were about 45 minutes away from their last kick of 2021 - backdoors, side doors and Super 8s were ditched for straight knock-out due to the late return of outdoor sports.

A lot has changed since then. Instead of binning the provincials, the GAA guaranteed the eight finalists a place in the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship.

They’ve also added more games. Lots more. Teams are now guaranteed at least three goes at Sam Maguire or the Tailteann Cup. Twenty-four games are needed to eliminate four teams in the respective competitions. Some of those teams get out of their group after losing multiple games, like Roscommon and Derry did last year.

We could carp on all day about championship structures. But, going back to Spillane’s initial point, has adding more games been beneficial to the Leitrims of this world? That question is better left to others to analyse. But looking at the team Mayo are facing on Sunday, you’d have serious doubts.

^{Diarmuid O'Connor warming up for Mayo during their 2021 Connacht Senior Football Championship match against Leitrim in Hastings Insurance MacHale Park Pic: Sportsfile}

TIME FOR CHANGE?

IF Leitrim are almost impossible to analyse, there is still plenty to be said about Mayo.

Nobody can quite guess where Kevin McStay’s men are at, at present. They don’t even seem to know themselves. We’ll arguably know even less on Saturday evening. Beating Leitrim by eleven points - half what Sligo beat them by - would probably be considered a disappointment. With last weekend off, Mayo can’t use fatigue to excuse a sub-par showing in Páirc Seán MacDiarmada.

Do they go with the same team that gave an unconvincing display against Sligo?

Four-time Mayo All-Star Colm Boyle suggested on the Mayo Football Podcast that McStay could rest Aidan O’Shea and Sam Callinan for this fixture. McStay could well do, and Mayo would probably win well without them. But with O’Shea in such good form, and Callinan likely to be a Mayo mainstay for the next decade, would there be any sense in knocking them off their stride so early in the season?

Diarmuid O’Connor has made three substitute appearances in a row and could be in line to start somewhere around the middle. But who does he replace? Not O’Shea, anyway. Darren McHale kicked four against Sligo while Dylan Thornton made a very impressive intercounty debut at wing-forward. The much-talked-about Davitt Neary was solid too and probably deserves another run.

Fenton Kelly could start at wing-back if Eoghan McLaughlin isn’t fit while Fergal Boland will also be in with a shout of starting after kicking two singles off the bench against Sligo.

Put out any combination you like - Mayo will still win.

The attendance figure will generate more talk than the margin of victory, truth be told.

FIXTURE

CONNACHT SENIOR FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

LEITRIM V MAYO

SATURDAY, APRIL 19

CARRICK-ON-SHANNON AT 4.30PM