Ger Flanagan - Mayo at the races with Boland in the saddle

COLUMN GAA

IT’S a funny old time to be following the Mayo team right now.
The Mayo supporters have always been tarred as getting over-excited and carried away with a few wins.
So much so the nation’s feelings toward Mayo’s All-Ireland failures changed from sympathy and support to downright hatred.

It's understandable too, because the fanatical way in which we follow the county’s senior football team hasn’t always done us favours.
But it’s almost gone full circle now.
Reading the National League previews in the local and national papers, following the tone on social media and listening GAA podcasts, I was astounded by how many were putting Mayo so far down the pecking order.
Dublin, Kerry (understandably), Derry (arguably) and Galway (hardly) were all being tipped as the top four. Some were claiming to this writer that Mayo would struggle to be in the top five.
Where the evidence for this theory lay I struggled to understand.
League champions last year. Achieved a massive feat in beating Kerry convincingly in the fortress that is Killarney. Beat Galway in a do-or-die championship match, not for the first time in recent years. One score away from what could have been a different second half outcome against the eventual All-Ireland champions.

The ceiling was high.

But yes, the fluctuation was also great. Roscommon defeat, Louth drab, Cork defeat and the aforementioned second half in the All-Ireland quarter-final.

Poor stuff, admittedly, but the peak level should be more of a barometer than the dip if you’re looking at it from a glass-half-full perspective.
The point is, the pessimistic outlook on the team was strange.
This isn’t an argument that Mayo are at the level of Dublin or Kerry. Not quite yet. But to say they are off the rest is groupthink.

Nowadays it’s dangerous territory to praise a Mayo performance. If you venture too close in your appraisal to praise you’ll be accused of being a fanatic and getting carried away.

The apprehension is somewhat understandable, but it shouldn’t cloud judgement on good performances.
Because the last two weeks should be enough evidence to suggest that Mayo are certainly nowhere near as low on the ladder as people were suggesting before the Galway match.

Yes, Galway were brutal.
But Mayo played some smart football and managed the game and the conditions well. They showed in Pearse Stadium that their running game still is the strongest weapon in their arsenal.
Last Saturday night under the bright lights in MacHale Park was a different kettle of fish.
Kevin McStay’s side played a lot of the game on the backfoot. For the early stages of both halves they cut a frustrated side that struggled to break down Dublin’s defence.

The All-Ireland champions came to Castlebar with a gameplan to beat Mayo. They weren’t going to push up aggressively and were more comfortable inviting Mayo on.
It was working brilliantly for 25 minutes of the first half, where they frustrated Mayo into lateral football and poor turnovers before punishing on the break.
But when a bit of chaos ensued toward the end of the first half Mayo made hay.

Likewise in the second half, when the game opened up, Dublin lost their shape and Mayo found a way into the game.

Rather fortunately, albeit. Coen’s goal should have been dealt with, and neither should Ryan O’Donoghue have been allowed use all his cuteness to win that late free, before catching out a completely unfocused Dublin defence to find Fergal Boland who kicked the winner.

It’s two wins from two for Mayo which should give them a safety net to being more experimental with players for the rest of the campaign.
Championship is a different beast, but you can’t beat the winning feeling no matter how great or minute the circumstances.

Boland’s Back

SPEAKING of that man, Fergal Boland’s decision to not emigrate to Australia is paying off.
Although not as impactful on the overall game as last week, the Aghamore man kicked an excellent winning point under pressure.
It’s both a good and a bad thing for the Mayo management.
Good in that they’ve rediscovered a player who clearly still has so much to give to Mayo. Bad in that their decision to drop him last year is now heavily under the microscope.
It was bizarre call.
Particularly when you consider the timing of it; before pre-season training ever really got going. Coupled with the fact he was consistently one of the club championship’s best forwards in the years pre-ceding the call and widely accepted as being much better than a large part of the extended panel members.
The decision to call him back this year comes off the back of a quiet club championship from Boland. So, by that theory the management team have accepted they might have made a mistake last year.

McStay refused to confirm or deny that theory when it was rightly put to him by Oisin McGovern of this parish last Saturday night in Castlebar.
McStay’s right to silence might be interpreted as the loudest admission of error.

That unspoken mistake could yet blossom to a stroke of genius.