GAA Column: A wild week in Mayo football

The past week has been an interesting one in Mayo football circles. As always the county hasn’t been far from the headlines. The decision of Kobe McDonald to sign for St Kilda in Australia and Andy Moran to recall Cillian O’Connor, James Carr and Rob Hennelly has been central to many conversations.

In terms of the Kobe McDonald news, I think it’s understandable that Mayo supporters are disappointed even though we all knew in the back of our minds that Kobe was probably going to Australia. What we were seeing in the club championship was only a tease in terms of what could have been, but now that he has decided to go off and take a contract in Australia Mayo supporters feel like they’re missing out on a generational talent.

The loss is huge in terms of the ability that he has and what he could have gone on to achieve as a Gaelic footballer. However, maybe he’ll not like Australia and come back and still achieve great things. If that is the case, we will embrace him and support him as best as we can.

Speaking first as a Mayo supporter, I think you can never let yourself get too high or too low in these situations. You can never get too disappointed about a player deciding to move away from football. It’s an amateur sport at the end of the day. You can never think that all is lost when you lose one player in particular or you can never pin too much hopes on one player.

There was no guarantee if Kobe stayed around and played 15 years for the county, that Mayo were going to win an All Ireland. So I think that the level you have to find is always somewhere in between the highs and lows. Looking at it from a personal level, I’m sure this offer has been available to Kobe for a while. I’m sure he’s had the time to think about it, discuss it with his family. I presume he’s staying around to finish his education. I think that’s always a good thing for him.

PERSONAL LEVEL

IT will be interesting to see how much Gaelic football he will play or is permitted to play over these next couple of months. I think it might be easier for him personally if he doesn’t play that much because if he goes out and stars for Mayo under-20s then he’ll have a microphone in his face after every game asking him why he chose Australia over Mayo. This is one of the things that he will have to balance over the coming months.

On a purely personal level, he’s obviously decided to go out and try and make a success of being a professional athlete, playing AFL. It’s a huge opportunity for him. He has a whole load of attributes that are conducive to playing AFL. He’s tall and has good hands. He’s a great kicker of the ball. He’s a really good athlete. He’s really good endurance, good stamina, and a good rangy stride. Those are all things that I’m sure that the AFL scouts saw as being really big pluses in his scouting. On a personal level, I wish him the best and really hope he’s successful. As Mayo supporters, we just have to move on and make the best of what we can.

I hope he goes well with his education and I hope he’s very content in the decision he’s made because the one thing you don’t want for a young person is to be feeling under unnecessary pressure. I’m sure he’ll be well supported by his family and I wish him all the best in Australia.

No doubt Kobe was a terrific prospect, but until you actually go and do it at senior intercounty level, that’s all you ever are - an underage prospect. But as we all know, there are no guarantees. There was no guarantee that Kobe McDonald was going to drive Mayo on to win an All Ireland. He may have, and we may have lost that opportunity, but we may never know.

READ MORE: Andy Moran adds Donegal All-Ireland winner to new Mayo backroom set-up

TRIO RETURN

WE have heard in the past week about three players returning to the Mayo panel - Rob Hennelly, James Carr and Cillian O’Connor. The trio are players that can and still have something to contribute for Mayo, particularly James Carr who is still a good bit younger than Cillian. Both of them have had injury problems but hopefully they’ll be able to stay clear of those. The attack is an area of the field where we’ve probably been over-reliant on Ryan O’Donoghue. Tommy Conroy hasn’t been able to stay fit, so it’s an area where we need players functioning. However, I wouldn’t be expecting too much from either of them early in the season, particularly Cillian. It’s important to get him as close to fully fit as possible and have him contributing when you need him later on in the season.

James Carr and Cillian O’Connor are long-range kickers. And even coming off the bench, I think that would be useful for Mayo. In terms of Rob Hennelly coming back, he’s obviously an experienced goalkeeper. I think goalkeeping is evolving with the new rules over the last few months. There’ll be less opportunities for them to get short kickouts off, so the kick-out will continue to be hugely important in a different way. Rob will bring a huge amount of big-game experience to the squad.

The National League fixtures have come out this week. We’ll preview those fixtures closer to the time, and there will be huge interest in that competition. As always, it’ll be important to get up and running quickly. I think that having those experienced players back in the squad will be beneficial in terms of adding competition in the group. In general, it’s been a tough week, probably a week that people were hoping wouldn’t happen in relation to the Kobe news, but we have to brush it off and we have to go on. There is no other choice.

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