Kieran Shannon: If Age of Dublin is over, what now of Mayo’s resistance?

In 2017, Bohan took over a Dublin ladies team that had lost the previous three All-Ireland finals and duly got them over the line at his first time of asking.

Over 46,000 people made their way into Croke Park that day, making it the highest-attended women’s sporting event in Europe that year, not least because of the identity of the two participating counties. The previous Sunday many of that same crowd would have made up the 82,250 that witnessed Dublin and Mayo play out one of the greatest games of men’s Gaelic football ever.

On that occasion Dublin won by a single point, something Fenton himself kicked that day, but Mayo offered up possibly the best performance that any beaten side, let alone a Mayo one, had in an All-Ireland football final.

No one personified their brilliance and defiance as much as O’Connor. Along with the other outstanding freetaker of his generation, Dean Rock, he had kicked a game-high seven points, three from play. While the abiding memory of him from that day is a free out by the touchline he struck off the upright that would have put Mayo ahead, what’s forgotten is that just a minute earlier he had kicked a majestic point from play from 40 yards out to level the game (The same with the previous year; his missed free at the death of the 2016 final replay is unfortunately more remembered than his remarkable equalising point from play in the drawn game, one of the greatest clutch plays Croke Park has known).

All that was before Rock iced a free to seal another All-Ireland for his county, meaning, as O’Connor put it to his county’s faithful at a reception later that night in the Citywest Hotel, defeat had visited Mayo once again. But even in that moment the Mayo captain was strikingly eloquent and unrelenting.

“Today, we have to admit, Dublin are worthy champions because they overcame great men,” O’Connor told the gathering. “In this very position last year, I spoke about fighting the good fight and hanging in there. We did that. All year long we’ve done that. For years we’ve done that. But what’s more, we’re going to continue to fight the good fight.” 

As it happened, the following year, 2018, proved to be the first season in his then eight-year career that O’Connor and Mayo failed to reach an All-Ireland semi-final. Yet even that summer he broke more scoring records, putting up 3-9 on Limerick, equalling the highest individual tally put up by a player in a championship game.

A couple of days after their championship exit to Kildare, a video surfaced of O’Connor along with his teammates in a Westport hostelry providing backing vocals to Aidan O’Shea’s stirring rendition of Garth Brooks’ The River. They weren’t going anywhere just because they’d lost the match billed as Newbridge or Nowhere. They’d never reach their destination if they’d never try, so they’d sail their vessel ’til the river runs dry.

In 2019 O’Connor and Mayo were back in the familiar setting of Croke Park on All Ireland semi-final weekend, only to come up against a familiar foe who this time would beat them in an unfamiliar fashion: instead of being another nail-biter, Dublin finally gave Mayo the treatment they would anyone else, steamrolling them after half-time. Fenton was to the fore of Dublin’s third-quarter blitzkrieg, imperiously striding through to strike for a goal and a point. Mayo had been reduced to a rabble, epitomised by a ratty O’Connor earning a red card.

Yet in 2020 he was back. Better and bolder than ever. After becoming the championship’s leading scorer ever the previous summer at just the age of 27, he racked up an astonishing further 5-40 in just five games in the Covid championship. Colin Sheridan of this parish made a plausible case that he should have been the footballer of that year, only for the judges to deem that after already bestowing that honour on Lee Keegan and Andy Moran, it’d be a bit much to again deny a Dub who had actually beaten Mayo in the final.

You couldn’t quibble with the eventual winner either: Fenton, just as he had been in 2018. In six years he had won six All-Irelands. Unbeaten. Seemingly invincible. Just like the Blues Sisters; the day after Fenton & Co foiled O’Connor yet again, the Dublin ladies won their fourth All-Ireland on the trot, meaning like Fenton, Bohan was still undefeated in championship.

Their runs would end in 2021. The Dublin ladies stunned by Meath. Fenton and the Dubs came unstuck against Mayo. Mayo got by that day without the injured O’Connor but his absence would tell in the final; chances are he’d have stuck away that penalty Ryan O’Donoghue scuffed and the famine would be over.

Instead it goes on. And it will stretch into 2026 as well. As much as Mayo on paper look as strong as a host of other counties who fancy they’re as good at least as the reigning champions, O’Connor’s decision to opt out for the year is a worrying, telling sign.

He hasn’t retired, just taken a year out. He wouldn’t do that if he felt either his leadership or on-field game was still properly valued by the Mayo management and if he fully believed that they were the men to get the county over the line. A dream is like a river, as Brooks and Aido sang, and evidently for him under this management there’s not enough water there for him to sail his vessel in 2025.

It’s all the more stunning because Dublin will be at their weakest since he came onto the county scene in 2011. For so long they’d masterfully managed to renew the team. A Ger Brennan steps away, a John Small steps in. An Alan Brogan walks away, a Dean Rock steps up. Bernard Brogan and Paul Flynn start to slip, a Con O’Callaghan and Brian Howard break through. But there’s only so long you can replace like with like. And you cannot replace a Brian Fenton.

To think: the man only lost three championship games, and they were all either by a point or after extra-time. In 10 years no team beat him in championship in normal time by more than a point. Now more teams will beat Dublin by that margin. Dublin will remain a top-six team, a la Tyrone of the 2010s but will be doing well to win another All-Ireland in the next five years.

The Dublin ladies team are also after a golden era with a golden generation, the pick of the bunch being Sinead ‘Goldie’ Goldrick. But even they can’t keep producing the likes of Goldrick and Sinead Aherne, which is why he coaxed the latter back in 2023 when the former was unavailable that year. In hindsight that All Ireland Bohan masterminded in 2023 was as impressive as the four-in-a-row he managed from 2017 to 2020, just as the men’s Last Dance campaign of that year was possibly their sweetest.

Bohan is likely to return to the men’s game; don’t be surprised if he lands in Kilmacud Crokes now that Robbie Brennan is focusing full-time on Meath. Meanwhile, the Blues Sisters have come back to the pack. So will Kerry with Declan Quill and Darragh Long having stepped away. Like in the men’s game, Armagh and Galway are nicely positioned but the race is wide open. No clear frontrunner and no obvious Mimoun to their Zatopek.

Because now there’s no Fenton or Bohan around with an O’Connor on their shoulder.