Rowland believes youth and experience important for Mayo champions

Life experience should never be underestimated and that was the message when Cormac Rowland spoke with The Mayo News ahead of Saturday’s provincial semi-final against Fulham Irish.

The coach who joined Kevin Filan’s back-room team this season is looking forward to the big game in Ruislip and believes the mix of experience and youthful energy in the team leaves the Mayo champions well-placed.

“I suppose we're lucky within the club that we have a lot of institutional memory. Kevin (Filan) and Shane (Hopkins) themselves have been heavily involved in Connacht Club campaigns over the years, so they have that experience. and then you've got five men who won All-Ireland medals with Mayo this year. You've also got other guys like Donie Newcombe, Rory Byrne, James Durcan and Neil Douglas, fellas who've been there and done that over the years,” Rowland explained before describing how important winning the Moclair Cup was for the team.

“We were fully focused on the Mayo club championship. We had a good run of things on the Monday after the final, but the ship was pretty much turned around by Thursday so we were ready to rock for Connacht. In Mayo, it’s a very competitive club championship and you don't want to be complacent when you come out of it and think, ‘oh well, we'll have another rattle this year or next year or the year after.’ You get one chance at it, so we're going to go for it and see where it takes us.”

You have to go all the way back to 2015 for the last Mayo winner of the Connacht club title, but Rowland believes the standard in Mayo is high.

“Firstly, I think it was a very nice championship to win because obviously it's the championship of the All-Ireland winners. The standard in Mayo I feel, this year is definitely at a better level than it had been in previous years. Maybe the new rules are feeding into that a small bit into that as well.

I think we can get a little bit fixated about the standard in Mayo. We've had an All-Ireland junior champion, and and All-Ireland intermediate champion in the last five years. I think we have a very condensed championship where you could have a team maybe placed 12th in people's rankings that could easily take on a team based in the top two or three. Whereas if you look at Roscommon and Galway maybe in recent years, it's maybe three or four teams that are consistently at the top of the championship. When you compare this year to last year we had four new teams in the semi-final. It’s that well-contested.”

This Castlebar group looks to be a fair blend of youth and experience while Rowland thinks it’s crucial within any squad. “We have a good age profile. I think of the 20 players we used in the county final, 16 are still in their 20s, so these guys are hungry. Sean Morahan and John MacMonagle are in the early stages of their careers so this is something that they're going to build on.

Sometimes, teams have an older profile and have it so hard in Mayo that the good is taken out of them. We've lads there that want to step up now and progress. I think with any team that is going to be really successful, you need a cohort of players between 24 and 30 who are the cornerstones of the team. Guys that have had a good few years of experience but also retain that athleticism that you need to play at the higher levels. Whereas younger players may not have that experience yet and older players may have lost that little bit of athleticism. So I think we have a nice blend in terms of the 24 to 30 bracket.

Then you have got Paddy Durcan who is still in serious shape. You have Donie Newcombe and Neil Douglas around the place and Rory Byrne who I couldn't emphasise enough what a positive influence they've been with the younger fellas. Then you have the likes of Ben Joyce who is 17 who has a very high ceiling as a footballer. It's a great environment for him to learn his trade, every night it's tasty at training and he's been put up against some really good players. If he makes a mistake he can reflect on it and learn from it.”

Looking ahead to the Connacht campaign, Rowland, a teacher by trade, believes the provincial series is hugely competitive. “Our attitude is to go out, try our level best, empty our tank and to see where it takes us on a given day. I think any of the teams in Connacht could have a right rattle at an All-Ireland. It's winter football, you could be playing in a gale, so home advantage counts for a lot. So there are different things that feed into it. But I think we have tradition and we'll go out and give it a rattle and see where it takes us.”

This game in London represents a unique occasion for the club on and off the pitch. Rowland states that victory is the utter priority, but understands there will be a social side to the trip as well.

“Firstly, obviously it's a club so obviously it's very important from that perspective. I think it's a good news story and there'll be lots of fun and engagement on that side of things for those people. Firstly, our only job is to win the game, and after that everything else is an add-on. If we lose, there'll be a lot of head scratching, so winning is our first priority and that's all we're concentrating on. Going out, emptying our tank and seeing where it takes us,” the coach added.