COLUMN: 'For how long will the GAA allow this final-day farce to continue?'

I know, I shouldn’t start this column by giving out, especially off the back of such a comprehensive and emphatic victory by Moran’s Mayo to close out their first league campaign.

And this is an annual rant. But how long will the GAA allow this final-day farce to continue?

Only in Ireland, only in the topsy-turvy world of the Gaelic Athletic Association could you have a competition that is increasingly regarded as the best on offer in the code, apart from the fact that when it boils down to it, several teams will do their best to avoid winning it.

And – for bonus giving-out points - how long will they continue to lag behind other sports in their promotion of the league?  

Credit to TG4 who streamed an impressive number of games yesterday, while the flashy GAA+ service some of us pay through the nose for, sat idle for the day.

Plenty in the GAA, myself included  would prefer to see the back of Allianz, but I can’t really fathom why they have stuck it this long as sponsors anyway. Let’s park all that for another day, but it is, in its totality, ludicrous.

Shadow-boxing was the theme of the day on Sunday, and Mayo v Roscommon certainly lived up to the billing - from a Roscommon point of view, at least.

The weekend’s Irish Times featured an interview by Gordon Manning with former Ballaghaderreen captain Stephen Drake, who recalled how Mark Dowd, during a one-year tenure, had managed the club to a Mayo senior football championship in 2012.

He recalled how there was a “questionable curiosity” when the Roscommon man was announced as manager, and how Andy Moran, sidelined with the cruciate injury that took him out of Mayo’s 2012 plans, somewhat unsurprisingly “dove himself into” helping Dowd and the team wherever he could.

GOOD TO BE WRONG 

That little piece of history added a layer of intrigue to Sunday’s fixture, as did the fact that Roscommon have been responding very well to having their first home-grown manager in a decade.

As Roscommon have not featured in a Division One National Football League final appearance since 1981, it was reasonable to expect that they might want to give this a lash.

Mayo fans, on the other hand, looked a bit queasy at the prospect. So prior to throw-in, I was wildly pessimistic about the result but not particularly bothered either.

What a luxury on the final day to know that no matter what happens, you’re in bonus territory.

We were keen to see how some of our newer kids on the block performed – Jack Livingstone, Seamus Howard, Hugh O’Loughlin to name three – and to see who might make appearances off the bench.

I was also, I admit, kind of excited to see this rip-roaring Roscommon team in action. We have all seen how good they can be, and I didn’t see anything other than a Roscommon victory.

It’s good to be wrong sometimes, particularly when it’s by a margin of over 20 points. Or is it? 

ALL TOO EASY

Any day you beat Roscommon by such a huge margin is a good day. But we couldn’t shake the sense of anti-climax at the final whistle.

There are no real grounds for complaint from a Mayo perspective; the lads did very well, we were treated to four goals (despite several botched attempts) nearly everyone showed well, we got two points on the board, and we got game time into legs – old and young that needed it.

Sam Callinan and Jack Carney lit up the place. But it was all too damn easy, truth be told. 

Roscommon, it seemed, had no intention of showing their hand in any way, shape or form on Sunday.

Nor had they any plan of lining themselves up for a filleting by the All-Ireland champions in HQ next weekend.

Like ourselves, they were content to get game time into younger legs and try out a few new players.

So the large Mayo crowd in attendance couldn’t really enjoy the rout, because April 25th looms large on the horizon, and that’s when the gloves will come off. 

So at the end of the day, the greatest excitement for our gang on Sunday came from the good weather, watching the Score Beo app for updates from elsewhere in the country, and hovering over the ‘Book seats’ button on the Irish Rail website (none of us can afford to drive anywhere now).

Also, some of us were secretly hoping Galway might get relegated, but alas, it was not to be. Probably just as well, as we had a Galwayman amidst the crew on Sunday, and we wouldn’t want to cause any diplomatic incidents.

There is enough conflict in the world. Oh, and the floodlights are finally fixed, just in time for the clocks changing! The goalpost at the Bacon Factory end is still leaning to the right, though. 

IT’S ONLY A GAME

Other noteworthy moments from the day included, not for the first time, Andy Moran’s post-match interview, where he reassured us that last weekend’s hammering by Kerry cost neither him nor the team any sleep in the grand scheme of things, but he did issue an apology of sorts for the team’s performances against Kerry and Donegal, while thanking the fans for their backing throughout the league.

Andy’s philosophy has always been “in this together” and he has certainly been living up to it thus far.

He deftly and diplomatically dismissed Joe Brolly’s laughable effort at a dig in the previous weekend’s paper (“Who wrote that?”) and continued the tradition of bringing a younger player to participate in the press conference.

This week we learned that young Diarmuid Duffy is balancing Mayo senior football with studying veterinary science in UCD, which necessitates a lot of time studying on buses, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

These little insights into players’ own lives do no harm and help us to remember that at the end of the day, it’s only a game.

Ultimately, Sunday’s game was about finishing the league on a positive note, looking ahead to London, and warming up the engines for the summer that lies ahead. Bring it on.