Mighty Mitchels are All-Ireland contenders

Analysis
Nigel Reape

THE biggest difference between Castlebar Mitchels and almost every other team in the county at the moment is simply quality. Just read the roll of honour in under-21 and minor county titles over the last eight years and you will see the foundations of their success. But what is crucial is the fact that they retained almost every key player from those teams. That’s the difference.
This Castlebar team are one of the main contenders for the All-Ireland club title. They are one of the key teams that holders Corofin will target, especially considering the Galway champions lost to them in 2013. Clann na nGael will be a stern test but for me, this Mitchels team are in a better place than they were in Croke Park 18 months ago, and most importantly they learned a lot from last year.
In 2014, they lost the county final to Ballintubber in a couple of minutes by giving away two quick goals because they didn’t defend the inside line. They got that dead right last Sunday, and huge credit goes to their management team. With Aidan O’Shea out the field, the pressure inside wasn’t as strong, and the combination of Tom Cunniffe and Alan Feeney worked superbly, as they totally blotted out their man.
It all meant that Castlebar could set up across the 45-metre line and every time Breaffy tried to run through them, Mitchels literally had three men lying in wait for O’Shea each time. Eoghan O’Reilly spent some time picking up O’Shea and put him on the back foot with some surging runs forward. He took one nice score and made another.
Castlebar have quality all over the field, Niall Lydon is a hugely important forward who does a lot of unsung work and uses his physicality to create scores, Neil Douglas kicked a stunning 3-1 and Danny Kirby was a huge player for them. He played inside with Richie Feeney and the two of them won an amount of possession, holding it up just long enough for the runners to come on to it and get the scores.
The difference between Castlebar and Breaffy is neatly summed up in what happened after the Mitchels lost Barry Moran to a black card five minutes into the second half. He really wasn’t missed; they readjusted and had the players in reserve. Kirby moved to centre forward, won and broke ball, and everything remained on track. You could probably take a handful of players out of the Mitchels starting line-up and they’d still be the best team in the county.
That comes from underage development and a strong, deep panel. Castlebar have that, Ballintubber have that. I think Breaffy are just a small bit behind those two in terms of depth, but they’re certainly on the right track, while the rest of the county are playing catch up.
The O’Sheas are only human. Reverse the roles for a second. Imagine if Aidan O’Shea was in the Castlebar team and was given the role that Danny Kirby had for them on Sunday. He’d be an absolute superstar in that scenario, because he could have focused on simply winning or breaking ball and he would have had the support runners.
Instead, Castlebar dealt with the inside line and it meant that out the field, Aidan had to go foraging for the ball with Castlebar converging on him every time. Be it at club or county level, the key elements to getting the best out of Aidan O’Shea are getting good quality ball into him and freeing up runners to support. If you stop that, there’s only so much he can do.
The Roscommon title was Clann na nGael’s first in a long time, and experience is huge in the Connacht Championship. That gives Mitchels a big edge on Sunday week. I expect them to progress and really challenge for another provincial title.

Nigel Reape won five Mayo SFC titles with Knockmore and is currently manager of Belmullet.