Mayo back at the drawing board

AS the dust settled on the defeat to Roscommon last week, the Mayo players won’t have done a whole pile, and that’s not a bad thing. A break from the physical work on the training field was badly needed for a lot of them.
But you can be sure the management team will have been busy. The real heavy lifting will have been done by Kevin McStay and company.
So what sort of things will have been on their agenda?
With no idea yet who their opponents will be in the group stages, Mayo’s game-plan and style of play will definitely have been discussed.
Against Galway and Roscommon a lack of scores from play was an issue.
There were a few factors behind that; like not enough quality ball going into the full-forwardline, an injury to James Carr the last day, and Ryan O’Donoghue not being on the ball enough. Plus, Tommy Conroy is only back and Cillian O’Connor has been sidelined too.
So how can Mayo address that issue of mining more scores?
I feel that something that’s happening further back the field is impacting on the way that Mayo have been attacking in the last few games.
The absence of Sam Callinan (the last day) and loss of David McBrien along with, in particular, Enda Hession has severely impacted on the way that Mayo break lines and move the ball up the field.
Hession was so important in those big performances against Tyrone and Kerry, and the same went for McBrien. When they got the ball they were driving out of defence and creating momentum.
That allowed the likes of Jack Carney and Jordan Flynn to come off the shoulder, bring the next wave of impetus, and move everything another 30 or 40 metres up the field.
It allowed Mayo to break lines and punch holes and create more opportunities for players to do something in the attack.
Losing that has been a huge factor in the way that Mayo have played overall.
So I believe they need to go back and work on generating pace early in the movement of the ball down the field.
Of course there will be times when that’s not possible, because there were occasions against Galway and Roscommon when they just gave Mayo the kick-out and sat everyone back.
That’s difficult to break down.
But at times I think you saw the value of somebody like Hession coming up the field, being a bit unexpected, beating a man, and then being able to recycle the ball, play a one-two, or even get in and score a goal. There were lots of defenders back in those situations as well.
So I think that rediscovering that dynamic ‘driving out defence’ is something that will help the forwardline to be more dangerous again.
It will also help Mayo’s counter-attacking game.
We wrote a lot during the league about how Mayo were getting bodies back, helping out in defence and turning over ball; the likes of Diarmuid O’Connor and Fionn McDonagh did it to good effect in the early stages against Galway and Roscommon.
The speed at which those counter-attacks are run is fundamental to how Mayo want to play. And in the last few games they just haven’t been as incisive or as dynamic.

Let’s get physical
THERE’S also going to be a focus from management on the physicality (or lack of it) around the middle of the field.
And that will turn the spotlight on to the two midfielders and the half-forwardline because they’re the players that have the licence to be physical on long kick-outs, in particular.
All of those players have done some great work on the ground this season, they’ve been mobile, they’ve tracked back and they’ve chipped in with some good scores.
That’s all positive. But we need to see more physicality from all of them.
By that I mean, getting physical in close quarters to make sure that their opponent doesn’t catch clean possession and that either you or a team-mate gets down on the break.
And then you physically break out of that area with the ball.
Too often against Galway and Roscommon, definitely, Mayo just weren’t doing that.
There’s no doubt that Jordan Flynn, Jack Carney, Fionn McDonagh, Diarmuid O’Connor and Mattie Ruane all have the physique and athleticism to play that game.
But they need to also have the mentality to go and do it.
Also needed around the midfield area is composure.
Take the second half of the Roscommon game, when Mayo were under pressure and needed a score, they just needed to show a bit of patience.
To understand how to play in the latter stages of the game, to understand that we needed a point. But we never did it and we seemed to be forcing the issue for a goal there and then.
Sometimes a team can get a run on points if they start picking them off early.
I thought there was a lack of composure there, to do the right thing at the right time and just clip a ball over the bar. To be precise and move the ball quickly from left to right in order to move even one defender out of position to create an opening.
That was lacking the last day and will have disappointed the management team.
So highlighting that in a video analysis session should be a huge help to the players in terms of understanding where they went wrong.
In terms of how the attack lines up in five weeks’ time, there are so many players there with different skills-sets that could be utilised in different ways to try and get the forwardline firing again. One of the main priorities for me is to figure out a way to get the ball into Ryan O’Donoghue’s hands as much as possible, and he has to play his part in that too.
There is plenty to keep Mayo’s management busy between now and the end of May.