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You are > Home > Little to take home from wreckage at Croke Park
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Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Little to take home from wreckage at Croke Park
By James Laffey
MAYO’S long-suffering football supporters traveled to Croke Park wondering if the county had a team that could win an All-Ireland senior title; they went away wondering if the county has a team that can beat Sligo in the opening round of the Connacht championship.
Last Sunday’s National League Final defeat to Cork was as bad as it gets if you care about Mayo football.
There were not too many Mayo supporters who anticipated a victory but there was an expectation that Mayo’s young players would give a good account of themselves. What we got instead was a lacklustre, disjointed display that was almost like a continuation of the team’s last visit to headquarters when we were subjected to a footballing lesson from a fairly ordinary Meath side.
No one enjoys being critical of a bunch of footballers that obviously don’t set out to be beaten off the park but it is impossible to find any positives from Sunday’s display. After last summer’s defeat to Meath this writer asked that we give a break to a young team that was still learning its trade.
But it’s hard to keep giving breaks to a team that does not appear to be learning from its mistakes. Even the most non-critical Mayo supporter (if such a person exists) would agree that Sunday was a real low point for Mayo football, possibly the lowest we have been since the All-Ireland Final defeat to Kerry in September 2006.
Perhaps the most depressing aspect of Sunday’s display was the lack of leadership that was in evidence from the first to the final whistle. In the past we always had a Brady or a McDonald, a Heaney or a Ruane to inspire their colleagues to greater things by taking the game by the scruff of the neck.
Inspiration was in short supply on Sunday and the senior players whom one might expect to be the first out of the trenches – the likes of Trevor Mortimer, Alan Moran and Ronan McGarrity – were rarely in the game.
We seem to have problems all over the field but midfield is where we are in the biggest trouble. We are simply incapable of winning our own ball and it should be remembered that we were up against a Cork team whose goalkeeper was struggling to deliver good kick-outs to his midfielders.
Our defence coped reasonably well in the first half but fell to pieces after the break when Cork began to tighten the screw. Were it not for the excellent David Clarke we would have conceded at least another goal, and possibly two.
Perhaps the most depressing aspect of all was the performance of our forward division where Conor Mortimer seemed to prove his own argument that while Mayo may win nothing with him, we will definitely win nothing without him.
The half-forward line of Dillon, Mortimer and Moran – which was supposed to be our trump card – was blown to smithereens by a rampaging Cork half-back line.
John O’Mahony and his management team have a lot of work to do in advance of the Sligo game, which may prove a real dogfight. Sligo looked impressive in their league final victory over Antrim and former Galway midfielder Kevin Walsh – a protégé of O’Mahony’s – seems to have done an excellent job with the Yeats County men. Only time will tell whether last Sunday’s defeat is a temporary setback or proof of a permanent malaise in Mayo football.
But one thing is for certain: there will be no more idle talk of All-Ireland titles this side of September.
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