Keith Duggan & Articles on Mayo football

[nephinbeg]

Keith Duggan of the Irish Times has wrote 2 articles in particular on Mayo football , one the day prior to the 2004 aif and one after last years,, if anyone has them handy could they post them. I need them for a bit of research.. Thanks

[mick999]

As requested .....

It's raining in Mayo heartland and hearts as the inquests begin

Mayo reaction to All-Ireland SFC humiliation: Keith Duggan on the anger and disappointment in the county at their latest setback

In a Shakespearean touch, it has not stopped raining in the west since Sunday. The rain buckets down on Mayo and there is nothing for it but to bemoan another distorted and inglorious All-Ireland defeat.

Mickey Moran and John Morrison have, understandably, asked for a few days of solitude. Morrison did make encouraging sounds on Sunday night after reviewing the day's events and promising the management would, given time, sit down with the players individually and try to work out what was going on in their heads.

He vowed Mayo would be back, which was at least an early indication the Ulster men are planning to return for the second year of their managerial term.

For the players, the Mayo club championship looms large, but after a desperately subdued return to the Welcome Inn in Castlebar, the squad officially broke up, a dismaying end to a greatly promising season.

Much more so than in 2004, when there were clear signs that Mayo were labouring in the build-up to the All-Ireland final, the nature of last Sunday's defeat remains inexplicable and, for many supporters, unacceptable.

The reaction lies between crushing disappointment and outright anger.

After sitting through The Sunday Game as a panellist, former Mayo star Kevin McStay headed home and wrote a very strong column for the Mayo News arguing that enough was enough.

"I wasn't angry, it wasn't that," he explains, "as an ex-player, you know what it feels like to get walloped and it isn't pleasant to pick up a newspaper or listen to a radio and see a former player cutting the socks of you. But driving home, I thought of my own people who came over here from Boston thinking, 'God, if they won and I wasn't there, I'd never forgive myself'. Nobody put a gun to their heads, but it was an awful lot of time and effort and hundreds of people did the same.

"And it was hard to square off that collective effort with what we saw on the field. The bit that killed me was that apparent lack of ordinary effort, the simple blocking and tackling. That feeling that this game was the biggest day in their lives.

"And I have been critical of David Brady in the past, but I take my hat off to him because he stood up to be counted when he went in. But I felt that there weren't that many standing with him."

Amid the disappointment, theories and criticisms abound. That Mayo did not set out with an obvious contingency plan to counter the threat of Kieran Donaghy has been the chief criticism. But there were problems all over the field and Kerry were masterful in quietening Mayo's key men.

As Jack O'Connor remarked with a satisfied grimace on Sunday evening, they "cracked" the Mayo midfield. Contrary to pre-match expectations, Tommy Griffin was the key man. The heavyweight pair of Darragh Ó Sé and Ronan McGarritty sort of cancelled each other out.

"Yeah, but Mayo needed more than for Darragh Ó Sé to be quiet," counters McStay. "We needed Ronan McGarrity to be huge."

Once again, Tom O'Sullivan hounded Conor Mortimer, although a substantial argument can be made that the Shrule man never got quality ball and was playing a dead match before he got his first meaningful touch.

Aidan O'Mahony marked Ciarán McDonald diligently, tracking the Mayo playmaker back and coolly kicking two points when the opportunities presented themselves as the Crossmolina man, with increasing desperation, tried to make things happen.

"And the explanation for Alan Dillon's game is that once Mayo's overall game plan was obliterated, his role effectively disappeared," adds McStay.

Still, it is the minor details that haunt him. He instances a sequence when a clearance by Séamus Moynihan was half-blocked down. A Mayo player, racing into defence, was too distracted or rushed to notice that the ball was about to fall near him - as he tore back to cover, Paul Galvin was racing the other way, alive to the break.

For Donaghy's goal, he noticed a defender was torn between his natural defensive instinct to race to David Heaney's assistance and a fear of leaving his own man unmarked. That second of hesitation was fatal. "We were bamboozled. And there are plenty of examples, I don't want to pick on individual players."

Anyway, it is as a unit that Mayo failed. And as the team and county go back to the drawing board, there may be a loudening clamour for a fundamental change of the fast and open attacking game that Mayo play.

Mayo are comfortably a Division One team and, as regular provincial championship contenders, a reasonable bet for the last eight of the championship. But there is a mounting feeling that if they are to push on, they will need to play a more sinister and narrow-minded game.

"I don't know if that is the way," argues McStay. "Our style is our style. And when it is good, it is very pleasing to the eye. If we were to go the other way and try and embrace the darker side, as they say, I am not sure we are cute enough to pull it off.

"Take a guy like David Brady, one of the toughest players on the Mayo team, but I am not sure he would be able to adapt to playing the game on the borders of the rules the whole time."

Like most Mayo football people, McStay is uncertain as to where or how things will go from here. Leaving Croke Park last week, he met a former Kerry great who was genuinely troubled and perplexed about Mayo's fretful showing. But speaking of the three most impressive forwards who played for Mayo this year, he noted that only Dillon, the industrious, roving wing forward, would have fitted comfortably into the contemporary demands of the Kerry panel.

"What he was saying was that only Dillon, with his direct approach and incredible work ethic, would have been acceptable to Kerry. I suppose that is a reflection of how we play the game in Mayo. There is an extravagance to our game.

"Being honest, I suppose I liked being that bit extravagant when I was playing myself. And I look back and think, God above, why didn't someone grab me and shout stop. But I suppose it goes back to the way we play the game."

And all they can do is keep on playing and keep clinging to the word that has trailed them all summer - faith.

© 2006 The Irish Times

Weep not for Mayo; look to yourselves
Keith Duggan

Sideline Cut: On Sunday last, 82,000 people witnessed Kerry reconfirm their status as the insatiable, deathless winners of the Sam Maguire. Their 34th All-Ireland championship was achieved at a canter that seemed unimaginable at mid-summer.

And the rest of the country can but admire Kerry and wonder at the internal dynamic that pushes them towards a need for multiple Celtic Cross medals. If it is a form of greed, it is a magnificent one. And, of course, the sense of entitlement and composure that seems to possess Kerry players and teams on September Sundays makes the plight of Mayo, once again cast in the role of beautiful losers, seem all the more poignant and pitiful.

By freezing against Kerry twice within three years, Mayo have become an object of pity and perhaps derision among football counties across the land. Kerry won another All-Ireland title through gargantuan physical effort, through consummate football ability, through mental toughness, through arrogance and through a grim-minded adaptation of the more negative realities of the modern game. They look well primed to win more All-Irelands this decade, and the thing about Kerry is they know how to lose and win with a touch of class - they have had plenty of practice.

The thing I admired most about Kerry on Sunday last was that they destroyed their opponents without once belittling them. Kerry All-Ireland football victories are generally a reflection of the better nature of the game and of sport in general, and in that sense, last Sunday's finale was heartening.

But as Kerry house the Sam Maguire in all the familiar abodes, the story of Mayo is the more interesting part of the equation of this year's final. Once again, the totality of their collapse meant what ought to have been the climactic minutes of a long, gruelling championship were played out in muted, slightly hallucinatory circumstances. As Kevin O'Neill noted, one could write a thesis on the psyche of Mayo teams on All-Ireland final days. It was as though the sight of Kerry jerseys induced an LSD-type flashback that had a physical as well as a psychological effect - because some of the Mayo guys seemed to be moving in a slower motion. Afterwards, Mayo fans spoke of their hurt, embarrassment and frustration, all of which should be remembered.

But it is important to remember that since 1996, only Mayo have reached All-Ireland football finals as frequently as Kerry. Mayo know how to get there - which is more than can be said for the majority of other serious football counties. Already, the revisionism has begun on the management style of MickeyMoran/John Morrison, which can be now slammed by Hard Chaw traditionalists as New Age, all josh sticks and fancy jargon. But the fact is, they got to a league semi-final, and won a provincial championship and a semi-final that has been deemed The Greatest Match of All Time. That hardly constitutes a bad year.

The criticism over the removal of O'Neill last Sunday has substance; and maybe even the disapproval of not starting David Brady is justified. But it ought to be remembered Moran and Morrison resurrected O'Neill's career and persuaded Brady out of retirement.

As for the performance of the players, it is wrong and curmudgeonly to harangue them for behaving like the amateurs they are in the face of another dog-whipping by Kerry. The truth of it is that very few of us can even imagine what it is like to be out there in Croke Park in those conditions.

Maybe there is truth in the general belief that for Mayo to actually win an All-Ireland, they must develop a meaner streak. On Sunday, James Nallen's record of one yellow card in a decade of service was presented to him and he was asked if maybe he ought to have been a bit more cynical over the years. Nallen's reply was dignified and profound: he played the game how he played the game; clean was his philosophy. If Mayo wanted an alternative centre back whose philosophy involved the removal of opponents' teeth, then they were welcome to select him.

Mayo play clean and they play stylish and on days like Sunday, when it goes bad, it makes them look like dandies and pretenders. Over the past few days I kept on wondering how the football life of Ciarán McDonald would have evolved if, for whatever reason, he had moved to Kerry at the age of 15. McDonald has, for better or worse, been the bright, burning emblem of the best and worst of Mayo football. In Kerry, flair is important and celebrated but fairly rigidly harnessed into the team ethic. It could be argued that in Kerry hands, McDonald would have become a more fully realised player and added a few All-Ireland medals to his name in the process.

But maybe in those circumstances, some gift to Gaelic football, something intangible and arguably more precious than a medal, would have been lost. In Mayo, McDonald has, under several managements, played as an out-and-out free spirit. As late as this year, arguments raged as to whether his highly strung, daring genius was detrimental to his team and anathema to the speed and urgency of the modern game. McDonald infuriates some observers, who believe him to be self-indulgent on the ball and ponderous, complicating the fundamentals. Their frustration is understandable.

But I have come to think of McDonald as someone helplessly in thrall to the finer possibilities of Gaelic football, a guy who plays the main game - the contest we all watch on the field - but also a game in his mind where he is constantly and helplessly computing passes and angles that the rest of us cannot see, partly to put a colleague in a scoring position but also for the plain aesthetic joy of it.

Maybe he does not possess that eye for the main chance, that winner's coldness that so many managers and players will tell you counts for everything - although he was pretty icy in clipping the score of the year against Dublin a month ago. But here is the thing: in Ciarán McDonald, Mayo have a player who can play the game of Gaelic football like nobody else on earth. His capacity for elevating what is a fairly simple and rudimentary game into the realm of the sublime, often through a single foot pass, has to be classified as a form of genius. It will not always win you the championship match and, when it deserts him, as it did in the second half last Sunday, the sight can be shocking and dismaying to behold. But the fact remains he can ordain prosaic league Sundays and high-octane championship days that are brutally loaded with effort and brutally lacking in class with one transcendent moment that stays crystal clear and alive long after the season ends. If the game has no room for the celebration of a gift like that, then we might as well say to hell with the game.

There is no denying Mayo and her talisman are in a dark and uncertain place right now. But only one county is fully entitled to feel pity for Mayo. That is Kerry. And Kerry are too respectful, too cautious and too damn hungry to ever allow pity to come into it. If you belong to any other football county and shake your head at the plight of Mayo, you are only fooling yourself. The old adage that winning is everything in Gaelic games is a complete nonsense, except for the footballers of Kerry and the hurlers of Cork and Kilkenny. If winning is everything, we may as well end the championship now. For the vast majority of counties, the idea of winning the big prize is just a summer conceit, a mass delusion.

And if Mayo are the beautiful losers of Gaelic games, then most other counties are just regular, everyday losers with nothing to distinguish them. Don't pity Mayo, because they will be turning up and beating you before too long.

© 2006 The Irish Times

Full back's ability has no limitations
Keith Duggan

All-Ireland SFC Final Countdown : Perhaps when it is all over, David Heaney will find a sympathetic ear in his Kerry counterpart Seamus Moynihan. Like the totemic Glenflesk defender, Heaney has found himself a victim of his own versatility.

The sometime goalkeeper and former midfield lynchpin has spent all season operating directly behind James Nallen at full back. It is no great secret he isn't exactly in love with the position. His problem is he plays it very well. There must be days when he watches Ronan McGarrity or James Gill bursting from the crowd when he yearns to be restored to the position in which he started the 1997 All-Ireland against Kerry.

"I do, yeah. But I am not going to pick and choose where I play. The lads are going well out there but I would like the freedom to get out there," he says.

Heaney is one of the five Mayo players remaining from the defeated 1997 side and his form - assured and uncomplicated - has been one of the key reasons for the county's fairly smooth return to the reckoning. Naturally, he is enjoying the season but sometimes gets frustrated with the limitations of his defensive role.

"Full back is a bit of restrictive, it is kind of cat and mouse. All you are doing really is watching your man and doing what he does. It is kind of a negative game, really. You are just breaking ball and not really setting up attacks. I would like to be out the field but the lads are doing a great job there so if it helps the team to win by me playing full back then that is what I will do."

When Heaney thinks of 1997, it is of the pressure the team travelled to Dublin under. Given the emotion and the stark fact of a loss against Meath the September before, deliverance was regarded as a must. The situation, he feels, is much different now. As has been observed, John Maughan is a more mellow manager, and, partly by accident and partly be design, Mayo have tapped into a combination of calm senior players like Heaney and youngsters who possess natural maturity. The old Mayo hoodoos, the 50 years of waiting, do not matter, says Heaney.

"The supporters talk about it, of course they do. And the press constantly mentions 1951 but it really isn't something we think about at all. I think we don't feel any pressure now. In 1997 there was huge pressure after the 1996 season. This year we were underdogs all summer except perhaps against Fermanagh. And that will also be true against Kerry. We are staying together as a group and the younger lads are very happy-go-lucky. They have that Fermanagh spirit. They play for the fun of it. Us senior lads have been through this situation before and John is more relaxed so there is just a good feeling."

The team has met sports psychologist Dr Aidan Moran on the Friday evening before each championship match. Together they try to distil the essence of their game to a number of key words and phrases. The red armbands the team has been wearing have drawn comment. Heaney says there is no great mystery behind them, they are just another method of giving the team a focus.

Even in 1997, Mayo were working along those lines. The key word from that era was "one minute". At training, when that call was made, the players would "go hell for leather" for that period. Then we would try and build it up to two minutes and so on."

It was all about getting the team thinking on the same wavelength, something which has been one of their most impressive characteristics this season. Although they stuttered against Fermanagh, Mayo disposed of All-Ireland champions Tyrone, of Galway and of Roscommon with a sense of professionalism that marked them apart from the class of 1996/'97.

Kerry, though, began the season as rock-solid favourites for the All-Ireland championship and their sticky and rugged league winning form set up what has been an uncompromising path to the final.

"They seem to have learned from the Tyrone game last year," Heaney says. "They are a tougher, harder team. They bring their wing backs to sit behind the midfield but they are very quick when they break again. We know we have to bring the ball in quickly from midfield to counteract that. If we get the ball and start bouncing around the middle those wings backs are going to fly on so we have to get quick ball, especially for the two lads, Conor and Trevor. They need quick ball. If they get quick ball too - how do you stop the Gooch (Colm Cooper) and Mike Frank (Russell), especially in a place the size of Croke Park. I suppose if you win your individual battle, that is half of it."

Heaney has been doing that handsomely all summer. But this is the 70 minutes in which Mayo must deliver as a team. Although the excitement around the county washes off him now, he is not immune to it and reckons it is a matter of finding a happy medium in the weeks before a game.

"Everyone is so enthusiastic, everyone wants to talk - even at work, it is all about football and you are kind of looking for tickets . . . And it is hard to blame them, we haven't been there since 1997 and we don't know when we are going to be there again. So you have to entertain them and know when to say 'stop'. I have a game to play and that is it. But this would mean everything to Mayo."

Even being there as Mayo's number three.

© 2004 The Irish Times

[mick999]

Part 2 ...

Technician honing his skills

All-Ireland SFC Final Mayo v Kerry: Keith Duggan talks to Mayo's James Nallen who says he does not play merely to win an All-Ireland medal.

In 1997, when Mayo last went into All-Ireland meltdown as they prepared to meet Kerry that September, James Nallen was safely cloistered in Maynooth. He found sanctuary in the university laboratories as a senior technician in the physics department.

Seven years later and Mayo are back in the same situation, but Nallen now wears a white coat around NUI Galway. Driving back and forth across the most tempestuous football borders in Connacht has been a new experience for the senior man of the Mayo defence.

Although a son of Crossmolina, although a survivor of some scarring years for Mayo football, Nallen has been forcibly struck by the magnitude of this game for people in the county. Football is Mayo. Mayo is football. Maybe not a law of physics but something that is equally rigid in the mindset of his county men.

"In 1997 I just had no idea of what the feeling was like," he says over a mineral water in Breaffy House. Nallen has just returned from a public evening in the nearby football field and like the rest of the team was stunned by the numbers that showed up.

"It is different this time even though the comparisons will be made with that game. But I guess the further away you go from the past experiences like that Kerry game, the harder it is to remember what they were like. And they are the ones you don't want to have for life."

Trite to say it, but that 1997 All-Ireland was played in a different country. The video of a forgettable match is framed by the backdrop of the antediluvian Croke Park and shows two very different teams playing a style of football so lacking in urgency. The grace of Maurice Fitzgerald lifted the occasion from the drab. Mayo got lost in the mediocrity of the day.

The Kerry of this Sunday will bear little resemblance to the team of seven years ago in either style or substance. Mayo, too, have changed greatly. True, John Maughan still stalks the sideline but in Mayo but only five men have made the transition from that day. That Nallen is one of that gang to survive the interim years is of little surprise. Since making his debut in the long hot summer of 1995, Nallen had the look of one there for the long haul.

Since then there have been two senior All-Ireland losses, an All-Star and an All-Ireland club championship. Old friends have dropped away. Liam McHale has become a selector. Nallen has turned 30. Maybe the game is different now?

"I dunno," he confesses. "I suppose I am coming more towards the end. So I think I am at the stage where every game is more important now than it was in 1996 or 1997. So from that perspective, you are always aware that this could be the last one. That could be a driving force now. The relationship with the players, I dunno, I dunno . . . there isn't any particular reason why I play. I enjoy it and the group thing is good - there are a lot of good guys here that you would be friends with. But I don't know how many players play to win an All-Ireland or if that is their true reason for playing intercounty football.

"Personally, it is not why I play. You are out there trying to improve on skills and you have to enjoy it. But I think often you play club, you get selected for your county, it is a great honour, you are on the fringe, then you make the team and all that acknowledges your skills or what not. Once you get there, it is hard to fall out of is really what I am getting at. The easiest way to fall out of it is just to not be considered. Once you are there, you are there. And then one day you do fall out of it. And then you are gone. And that's it."

He delivers this comic-bleak assessment of a footballer's lot with a wide smile although with Nallen there is the suspicion when he does leave, there will be no trail of footprints. He possesses many of the classic traits of the native football player: skilful, courteous and like all Mayo men, helplessly honest and introspective on matters concerning the county's parched All-Ireland history.

Nallen is to be believed when he says he does not play merely to try to win a senior medal but yet this is his third crack at it, a privilege granted to few players and testimony to Mayo's consistency over the past decade. Unlike the 1996/'97 vintage though, there has been an appealing edge and conviction about this year's side.

"We have pretty much performed when we needed to perform and if our approach is the same here and we don't allow external factors to get to us on the day then we are right in there with a chance of being winners," he agrees. "In 1997, though, there was a confidence there as well - we beat Kerry in 1996 and definitely there was no doubt we could win it. If you are in a final, you gotta believe you can win no matter what you tell the press.

"You are only fooling yourself if you don't believe you are in with a chance - and you surely are because it is down to two. But in 1997 a lot of the side was young and we were just flat. I don't know if it was training or the approach but it was just a big disappointment. Something you don't want to relive."

The belief that that won't happen appears justified. Nallen identifies the week Mayo spent in the Catskills in the US as the key point of the season. Young and contradictory in the league, it was a team full of maturity and urgency and skill that comfortably won the Connacht championship. The manner of their victory over Galway spelt out they were more than just pretenders. "Once you beat a team like Galway, you know you are in the frame."

Nallen is undoubtedly one of the leaders of this team but that does not mean he is responsible for taking the younger players under his wing. There are plenty of lippy young lads on the scene well able to give an opinion and that is encouraged.

"The young guys have performed admirably so I am not worried about them. I can only control what I do out there."

In this case, out there is Croke Park. A place simultaneously loved and feared by Mayo folk for decades. Mayo is spiritual home of the sign, "Last One to Leave, Turn Out the Lights". They truly do desert the county on weeks like this. Too often, though, they returned and found they preferred to sit in the dark for the winter.

This year, they say, it must be different. Certainly, Croke Park will be a sumptuous place in which to win, say, a first All-Ireland since 1951. James Nallen agrees is it a much better place than it was when Kerry and Mayo met in 1997.

"There is a big echo," he says thoughtfully. "A major echo when you are running so all you can hear as you go up and down is a 'wooh-ah wooh-ah, woooh-ah' kinda thing. At the moment it is blank at the Hill side so it might be more difficult for forwards there. But it is a much better stadium now. As for the grass, I wear six studs. I remember playing Cork in 2002 and I got blisters in the second half. So you wear double socks, blister cushions, you take precautions. It won't happen again."

It won't happen again. That is what they are saying all across the broad land.

© 2004 The Irish Times

[mick999]

Moran loses his place to Geraghty
Keith Duggan

Mayo team: Dermot Geraghty replaces Conor Moran at right corner back in the Mayo team to face Kerry in Sunday's All-Ireland final. This is the only alteration to the team that started the semi-final replay against Fermanagh. The Shrule-Glencorrib defender, who will also line out in the All-Ireland under-21 final against Armagh, obviously did enough to convince the selectors with his second-half performance in Moran's position against Fermanagh.

It is Geraghty's first full start since the New York game last May. Ironically, he lost out to Moran in the subsequent marquee game against Galway. Moran held his place through the championship until last night's announcement at McHale Park.

Although an uncomfortable first half against Fermanagh meant Moran's place was deemed to be under slight threat, the elevation of Geraghty underlines the faith this Mayo team has in its young players.

It is understandable that manager John Maughan and company were keen to alter the make-up of the team that struggled over two weekends to overcome the Fermanagh challenge, something the Mayo manager has persistently alluded to in the build-up to this game.

"The fact that we struggled against Fermanagh, and Kerry played so brilliantly in their defeat of Derry, means people recognise they are the clear favourites. People have been very patient and we have appealed to them to keep their feet on the ground.

"We have won nothing - we are as far away from winning an All-Ireland now as we were at the start of February to be realistic. We are in with a chance. I think the disappointment people felt in 1997 means that they were inclined to keep the lid on things."

Fergal Kelly keeps his place at centrefield after coming in for David Brady in the Fermanagh semi-final replay. Brady had been under pressure after the Tyrone match despite scoring three points as his work-rate faded towards the end of the match.

Kelly's partnership with Ronan McGarrity demonstrated a greater industry and the Ballyhaunis man holds the place.

But given Brady's experience, strength and facility for kicking scores this season, he will probably be introduced as a replacement when Kelly starts to tire - as happened in the Fermanagh replay.

Elsewhere, the team runs along familiar lines, with Ciarán McDonald the centre of a glittering attack whose only black mark has been a conspicuous absence of championship goals. That deficit is something which the management is aware of and they are keen to atone for before the curtain closes on the season come Sunday night.

"It has certainly come to our attention," Maughan said. "We do spend a lot of time shooting and setting up goal opportunities in training. We had opportunities against Fermanagh in particular - maybe in hindsight, Austin (O'Malley) had an opportunity to score a goal but the solid option was to tap it over the bar.

"I do agree - we will need a goal, at least one, if we are to win the All-Ireland.

"You must recognise as well - go back to Fermanagh and even now people find it difficult to accept how good they were. They played for the here and now. They were living in the present and they were exceptionally difficult, very tight in defence. So it was hard to set up goal opportunities."

Because team captain Fergal Costello has been unable to regain his place, there are four survivors from the Mayo team that lost the county's last final to Kerry in 1997 - David Heaney, McDonald, James Nallen and Peter Burke.

With Kerry also announcing a team last night, Maughan was adamant they (Kerry) deserved their favourite's tag, regardless of key absentees.

"In the All-Ireland semi-final against Derry, Kerry did what they had to do without their best player, Seamus Moynihan, and Darragh Ó Sé having to come off. They have managed it brilliantly.

"You know, Kerry have this uncanny knack of always holding something in reserve for the final onslaught, for that final month and they will do the same this year.

"There is another 15 or 20 per cent in that team and I think we will see them come with a real swagger on September 26th. So what happened before Sunday counts for nought, we know that."

© 2004 The Irish Times

Master and commander
Keith Duggan

All-Ireland SFC Final/The Mayo management team: It is of little surprise John Maughan and Liam McHale remain at the epicentre of Mayo's latest quest for an All-Ireland. They share more than deep articulation. McHale was perhaps the key Mayo footballer for over a decade, from his arrival as a teenager in 1985 to the bittersweet September against Meath in 1996.

And Maughan is his county's faith healer. Along with George Golden, they are in the second of a three-year management term. That they fashioned a team capable of mounting an All-Ireland challenge seemed to have come out of the blue. Maughan and McHale have referred to lonely drives home after some chafing league lessons - particularly against Sunday's opposition in Killarney - but they each had a feeling that, in the summer, their group might just come together.

At a function after the New York game, Maughan stated publicly he felt this particular group of Mayo footballers was special. Even before the return of the team's key players, McHale had the same feeling.

"They are very ambitious," he says. "That is obvious. They are talented. That is critical if you want to win games in the summer. They are all good friends and there is a great mix between young and old - that happened really quickly and the Catskills brought us on a lot. But even in Killarney when we were down getting our asses kicked there was a good morale.

"We always felt something would happen - there is a good rapport between players and management, it is more of a friendship thing than a dictatorship. And there is a good atmosphere. People are learning all the time, both us and them."

The evolution of the Mayo team from a shaky if promising bunch of league freshmen to an exciting hybrid of veterans from the not-quite-golden age of 1996/'97, the born-again Ciarán McDonald and basketball convert Ronan McGarrity has been one of the chief fascinations about Mayo. Nobody predicted the chemistry, almost until the eve of the Galway game, by which time there was a thunderously confident mood in the county. It was a stark turnaround from the build-up to the visit to New York, when doomsayers were murmuring about a Mayo embarrassment.

"That is how poor our perceived form was," Maughan remembers. "But we felt then there was a mood about the camp, that the jigsaw was nearly complete and we all had this gut instinct. Coming back from our week, we felt we would make the effort to get Ciarán involved and there was a good chance of that. So we were excited about things coming home."

In part, this summer has exhibited supreme Mayo characteristics. At their best they play beautiful football. As yet, there has been no negative. The Fermanagh series saw them at their most vulnerable but the northern musketeers troubled every single county they met. The ultimate result was that Mayo won a semi-final they might have lost. That is one of the reasons behind the argument this Mayo team is "different" than its predecessors. When Maughan thinks back to the build-up to the county's last All-Ireland finals, it is to a very different scene.

"Well, without going into those finals, I felt there was a number of mistakes. That famous joke that if John Maughan gets a puncture, he changes four tyres. But back then, due credit has not been given to those players. We fell over the line playing Division Three football by a single point and went into an National League semi-final only to be destroyed by Derry. And, in fact, we found them so good we went up to Celtic Park to learn more lessons from them.

"But in 1996 we found ourselves winning a Connacht title against Galway and then we beat a Kerry team that were favourites and maybe they took their eye of the ball. And we went into a final against Meath and history, we know we should have won that game.

"It is easy to point back - in hindsight, quite clearly there were a few players that maybe under-performed and maybe management on the line under-performed. But you get older and a bit wiser and this year we were able to delegate. Any mistakes I might make the boys will correct me and, believe me, when I do step out of line they let me know."

If there is a reflective note to Maughan's tone, it is because he admits he is no longer as consumed with the game as he once was. He is enjoying having time to actually think and consider ahead. McHale agrees Maughan is a more chilled individual than the man who ran him into the ground in the mid 1990s.

"Definitely, no question" he grins.

"I'll tell you, I would love to be playing now. The whole scene has changed. The idea of all those games coming at you is appealing. There is more ball work at the moment whereas before with John we concentrated probably a lot on stamina and power running. We were just saying that we haven't trained hard since the Roscommon game because we have not been able to due to games. That is much more appealing than suffering what John put me through. In 1996 though, there were four or five weeks between matches and the choice was to take time off or train hard."

Maughan interrupts with a grin: "You must remember that . . . emmh . . . lifestyles were different back then as well. We would have to run some of these boys for a week just to sweat the beer out of them. Well, maybe not Liam McHale. But it is true that players are more conscious now."

When Maughan recalls his own state of being at this stage in 1997, he was worn out and anxious. Now, he takes a more fatalistic approach towards things. All year long, he has preached that there are no certainties in the game. He also believes the reaction of the Mayo public is more reasoned and less driven by pure optimism - possibly as a consequence of what happened last time round.

"There is no daftness now. People have had to live through those disappointments and now it all feels nice and calm. Like, we are in year two of a three-year plan and things are going well but it can all fall apart. If we go up and get annihilated by Kerry, people may be calling for our heads on the block."

He delivers this with a laugh but experience suggests All-Ireland final euphoria can be generally followed by Monday morning west of Ireland gallows humour. The thing is, though, this year's team has a different feel to it. McHale is torn between his enjoyment of coaching and the athlete's desire to be out there on the field.

"If the boys gave me the call, I would give it a go. But look, this is my role now. To be involved in a Mayo team that won an All-Ireland would be a dream come through. I played for 13 years and wasn't able to do that, this would be the next best thing."

And 13 must be somebody's lucky number.

© 2004 The Irish Times

 

[mick999]

And More ...

Returning to the heartland
Keith Duggan

All-Ireland SFC Final/Mayo v Kerry: This weekend, the exiles will flood back into Mayo and, in particular, to Tourmakeady, the verdant stretch of townland that runs between the shore of Lough Mask and the dark Party Mountains. On Mayo's football scroll of honour, Tourmakeady has made little impression, but in terms of the game and its meaning to Mayo the place represents what is vaguely referred to as "the heartland".

For most of the last century, Tourmakeady has bled people. Just as Achill folk gravitated towards Cleveland, Tourmakeady worked up an unbreakable affinity with Chicago. Since the 1930s, Tourmakeady men worked on the sky-reaching buildings off Lake Michigan, pining for the plain and familiar shore of the Mask, one of the untapped beauty spots of the west.

The leaving continued more or less unchecked until the 1980s ended, and now that the exodus has stopped it is said there are as many Tourmakeady people out in America as are left in the native area.

"The club here did two tours of Chicago, one in 1979 and again in 1986," says Tourmakeady club chairman Pádraig Ó hÉanacháin. "I ended up going out ahead of the club in 1986, so I was in the airport when the team landed. Growing up, I was always aware of the connection, but it was only that night in the arrival hall I learned the scale of it. There must have been 500 people waiting there with Tourmakeady links."

The Ó hÉanacháins do not consider themselves anything other than an ordinary GAA/Mayo family, and yet they are immersed in Gaelic football. Pádraig played on the 1981 Tourmakeady championship side that caused a bit of a stir by beating Garrymore - "they were the kingpins then" - in the Under-16 B championship.

The club would win a county junior title the following year and had reason to be optimistic for the seasons ahead. But by the time that generation of Under-16 footballers reached the Under-21 grade, nine of their number had left Ireland.

Pádraig, a bank manager in Westport, was one who stayed. Like his father Tom, a schoolmaster in the nearby townland of Srath, he grew accustomed to watching the phenomenon of young people disappearing.

Emigration was always a fact, but after Tom secured a teaching post in Tourmakeady in 1947, it worsened dramatically.

"Nearly every lad I went to school with left," Tom says. "Nearly every one of them. Some would come back for a visit, but others were not seen around here again. All of the lads I went to school with had big families - 12 in that house, nine in that - they all left. I would say the present population is not even half of what it was, especially in the southern half.

"The 50s was the worst. While it was bad in the 30s, at least then it was confined to America. World War II, funnily, put a stop to it, and although there was fairly dire poverty, there was good fun around here. In the 50s, they started for England. There were bad stories of men tramping all over the place looking for work.

"They used to tell how they would move a cow lying down in a field and sleep in the spot for warmth. Entire families left. Houses closed up. It was really frightening. We felt that whole townlands would close down. It was really depressing."

Tom attended Mayo's first All-Ireland victory, over Laois in 1936. He can still name that team, starting with Tom Burke in goal, at the drop of the hat, and because he was 14 and in thrall he possibly retains a stronger affection for them than the famous 1950/51 Mayo team.

Football was unorganised in Tourmakeady then - "We made attempts at it when we had a ball" - but interest in the game was enthusiastic.

The local schoolteacher was a GAA and Fianna Fáil fanatic and made it his business to secure a copy of the Irish Press newspapers that were delivered on the milk lorry. Eventually a number of Fianna Fáil-oriented men took to gathering at Donoghue's shoemakers on a nightly basis.

"A namesake of my own, Lord have mercy on him, would read the paper aloud for those that had gathered there. Green Flag was the big GAA columnist. And then the rows would start."

Tom married into distinguished football stock. His wife, Joan O'Neill, came from Ballinrobe, and her brother Owen Roe played in goal for Mayo in the mid-1950s, including the All-Ireland semi-final defeat against Dublin in 1955. A particular save he made from Kevin Heffernan earned him the sobriquet "the prince of goalkeepers" from a young Michael O'Hehir.

Her younger brother, Art, a suitably named forward full of skill and guile, was deemed to be one of the best young footballers in the county, and although he played for Mayo in 1959 at the age of 20, his career was sadly ended by a serious knee injury.

Ballinrobe was generally the point of departure for family members forced into emigration, and from her early childhood Joan considered the now defunct railway station a place to dread.

"It was always a very morbid thing. I have a terrible memory of Ballinrobe railway station, I hated going there. Because any time you would go there you would find parents bringing maybe their daughters or their sons there and crying their hearts out. Because there was always the chance they would never see them again. It was horrendous."

Tourmakeady CLG came into existence in 1965. Around the same time, Gaeltarra Éireann set up a knitwear factory in the village, a small, vital industry whose worth was infinitely greater than the profit it showed on the ledger.

It was a means for some young people to remain in the area and, more significantly, it attracted some new people into the area. Through the dark years, the lights from the knitwear factory were a comfort. Three years ago, though, it was switched to Bangalore, India.

"I worked there myself for a brief period in the mid-1980s," Pádraig says. "I suppose there was about 60 of us in there at the time, which is significant in a small community."

"Without it," Tom says, "the whole thing would have been a wash-out."

As with the rest of the country, Tourmakeady stabilised in the final years of the last century. The bleeding stopped. Drive through the place this September and you are struck not with any sign of lingering poverty but by the deep and untouched beauty of the place. There are plenty of fine houses with stunning views of the choppy, black waters of Lough Mask. Many are the summer dwellings of the sons of Tourmakeady who found wealth in Chicago.

Tourmakeady has millionaires now, though not necessarily in Tourmakeady. Through the decades, generous sums of money found their way across the Atlantic. For families. For the church renovations. For the club. The covered stand is called Ardán na nDeoraí. The Exiles Stand. The Stand of Tears.

It is a pretty ground, Tourmakeady's, located in a low spot to give it some cover from the wind that blows off the lough. When Mayo are on the All-Ireland trail all club activity stops, so it will be a winter championship for Tourmakeady this season.

The fervent hope is, of course, that the Sam Maguire will visit the clubhouse before Christmas. It arrived courtesy of the Galway footballers in 1998, but, as Pádraig laughs, "that is not quite the same thing". Although Tom was a lucky charm as he watched from the Railway End in 1936, he will not travel to this final.

"I am old and grey and full of sleep," he quotes with mock self-pity while Joan throws her eyes to heaven. He might as well be charged with minding Tourmakeady for the day for all that will be left in it.

Regardless of how Sunday's final goes, Tourmakeady will enjoy a series of homecomings that will start in earnest tonight and last for the rest of the week.

"People's hearts stay here, I am convinced of that," Joan said.

In the grimmest days, it was feared that Tourmakeady might fall into complete abandonment. That has not happened, although emigration has altered the natural demographic of the area harshly. In Tom's teaching days, there was a period when the national school in Srath had three teachers and 110 pupils. Today it houses 14 kids.

The census would probably register the current population at around 1,100, but of course the census does not travel as far as the Irish haunts of Chicago. Perhaps this week would give a truer reflection of its people.

Pádraig Ó hÉanacháin is looking forward to meeting some school friends he has not seen in a while. They will talk about the All-Ireland, of course, and of how the country is going. And they will undoubtedly, after a few down in O'Tooles or the Lough Mask Inn, revive the stories of their indomitable days on the Under-16 B circuit in Mayo, when they were champions and ready to take on the world.

Which, in a way, they did, although not as they would have imagined.

© 2004 The Irish Times

The bottomless mystery of Mayo football
Keith Duggan

         
       
  Sideline Cut: It may be impolite this weekend to ask, but why have Mayo won only three All-Ireland football titles? And appositely, how come Kerry, their opponents in tomorrow's showdown, have managed to land a whopping 32? Both are west of Ireland counties, full of natural beauty and lyricism and share a mutual pride in the store they place on the game of football.

In their respective provinces, they have each enjoyed a lion's roar over the decades, with Mayo claiming 40 Connacht titles since the inception of the competition, while Kerry have gobbled up an arguably indecent 70 years' worth of Munster baubles.

But beyond the local borders, the similarities between them end. Kerry have found venturing to Dublin in pursuit of the Sam Maguire a liberating and natural experience, while it has inspired little more than a collective psychosis from Belmullet to Ballinrobe throughout the 1900s.

There is something endearing about Mayo's famous "wait" for the return of Sam Maguire, a loyal and lonely stint that has lasted over half a century now.

Ten years can justifiably be deemed a wait. Five times that is something much more poignant and also a little absurd. It is like a man who walks in to the same dance-hall all his life in the firm belief that he is one of the legendary lovers of all time and steadfastly ignores the fact his neighbours see him walking home alone, night after night, year upon year.

In a way it is a delusion, but if so, it is a magnificent one. The Mayo state of mind is that in the years since 1901, the county's first Connacht title, 1902-1935, 1937-49 and 1952-2003 have been freakish and damnable aberrations from the glorious and rightful championship years of 1936, 1950 and 1951.

A much more realistic way of examining Mayo's football history would be to study how those three teams managed to break free from the paralysis that has afflicted 100 years' worth of Mayo teams. How the hell did they ever manage swim through the tidal wave of tears and emotion that has flooded the county's lonely fields on so many winters? Because it seems as if following the (mis)fortunes of the Mayo team was always a harrowing and Catholic experience based on the fundamentals of guilt, self-doubt, envy and inadequacy.

In his memoir Healy, Reporter, the celebrated Mayo newspaperman John Healy gives an account of his days as a cub reporter with the Western People, when he managed to cadge a weekend in Dublin to see Mayo play in the 1948 All-Ireland final against the illustrious Cavan team of the era.

He got dropped off at Barry's Hotel.

"Half of Mayo was trying to push in the doors - and the other half trying to get out. Among the people trying to force a way out as I was trying to get in was Tom Lanagan, whom I had described as 'the raw-boned man from Ballycastle'. He caught sight of me going towards him and let fly with a straight right hand.

" 'Now who's raw-boned?' he shot back as he was bundled away. Someone asked me if he hurt me and I said 'no, not at all'. The Charlestowners and Swinfords were all over the place."

After spending the night sleeping in the cab of a lorry, Healy watched the game from Hill 16 and discovered what it was to love and follow Mayo. The score was Cavan 3-2 Mayo 0-0 at half-time: "Mayo wasn't even 'mapped' as we'd say."

Then came the glorious and futile and damn near insanely unlucky last stand.

"Well, there was four minutes in it yet and the Mayo team came storming back. In front of me a Franciscan priest who had started reading his office from his breviary - and he must have been praying for Mayo - had it still open, except now he'd look up when the Mayo cheers rang out. Now Mayo came charging downfield and Peter Quinn was positioned dead between the posts of the Cavan goal, solo-running the ball, the forwards moving with him.

"The whistle went. The pain which flashed across Quinn's face I can still see. He looked at the referee, as if he was asking what foul he had committed. But the ref called for the ball - it was, incredibly, all over. The Franciscan said plaintively: 'f**k that', and slammed his breviary closed."

The premature ending of the 1948 final - it was accepted afterwards that at least four minutes of the game remained - became another in the endless stories of sufferance that Mayo men and women have endured in the cause of Gaelic football. That two of their three splendid and isolated titles came back-to-back is almost cruel, so dense and bright, a jewel at the epicentre of all those years of blankness.

Even the surrounding Connacht counties must have empathised with the Mayo plight over the years.

Mayo people could be forgiven for asking what they have to do. They hold a curious place in the Gaelic football family tree. In a real sense, Mayo are a giant of the game and they can be relied upon to produce always attractive and, fairly regularly, exceptionally talented teams. They express themselves through football in a manner that can be mesmerising. But God above! There are times when they are as tragic as the Native Americans. There are times when Mayo seems like a lost people. You want some law to be passed to stop them playing football, for their own good.

So why have Mayo not won more All-Irelands? It is one of the bottomless Irish mysteries. My theory is that it might well come down to good manners. There is an aristocratic bent to Mayo society. It is a county full of inherently decent people. It is a county that has always placed great weight on education and the result has been generations of readers, talkers and thinkers. Maybe all that reasoning and introspection is a dangerous thing when it comes to football, which can be an aggressively unreasonable sport. And maybe they are just too modest to actually go about winning as much as they are entitled.

Which is not to suggest that Kerry, who sometimes cannot but win the bloody thing, are in some way vain or boorish. At times, Kerry seemed trapped in a parallel existence to that of Mayo which has them helplessly winning, September after September.

To Kerry folk, genuinely unsure of how to deal with the grief of loss, Mayo must be a strange and exotic and dangerous land.

In Gaelic games, there is a stark division between those few teams who win remorselessly and those who almost never win. Alone, Mayo stalk the merciless hinterland in between, fated, it seems, to almost always nearly win.

But they keep turning up. They will never quit on this. That is what allows Mayo to retain their aristocratic air, their pomp. The castle may have been ransacked many times but the family was never evicted. There is a true nobility about this search that has been passed on from generation to generation. And someday it will end. Sooner or later, the prayers and curses - so often locked in the one sentence - will be answered.




© The Irish Times

[Barney]

Some truly pieces there. Keith definitely seems to appreciate the Mayo psyche, and does appear to have a soft spot for Mayo football.

But they keep turning up. They will never quit on this. That is what allows Mayo to retain their aristocratic air, their pomp. The castle may have been ransacked many times but the family was never evicted. There is a true nobility about this search that has been passed on from generation to generation. And someday it will end. Sooner or later, the prayers and curses - so often locked in the one sentence - will be answered.

The above is my favourite bit - he's spot on, hopefully hopefully some day we can live the dream

[An Gaeilgoir]

The article about Tourmakeady could not have been written with anymore insight or thoughtfulness had it been written by one of us fro the area, hopefully all our dreams of winning Sam will be realised sooner rather than later. Go neiridh an bothar linn.

[westmayo]

Some great pieces there by Duggan, hopefully soon he'll have somthing good to write about after an AI Final. John Melvin mention in his Melvine column that Duggan was going to write a book about Mayo football.  Juding by those articles it should be a good read.

[prewtna]

ive only just finished the reading. thats some writing.

i feel like ive just walked out of a funeral home - battered and drained.

the gods will smile on us sooner or later.

"Johno says keep the Faith", we can only try!