Conor Doherty the hero as Derry knock Mayo out of championship on penalties

All-Ireland SFC preliminary quarter-final: Derry 0-15 Mayo 1-12 (Derry won 4-3 on penalties)

Nothing is ever simple. Derry and Mayo fought each other to a standstill in Castlebar until eventually, at three minutes past nine on a dank June night, Mickey Harte’s side found themselves the winners. Conor Doherty took the last penalty in the shoot-out and though Mayo goalie Colm Reape got a strong hand to the ball, it was not enough to stop it squeezing in off the post.

For Derry, rapture. For Mayo, oblivion. In front of a 13,955 crowd, the home side left enough chances behind them for this one to really hurt. That they were not good enough to trouble the steps of the Hogan Stand won’t sting nearly as much as the fact that they were good enough to get further than this.

But when it came right down to it at the end of normal time, they had a lead they could not carry to full term. Same as the Connacht final, same as the Dublin game. It was this year’s fatal flaw and it caught up with them in the end.

To Derry’s credit, they were a different proposition here than we had seen all championship. While it was not the Rhapsody in Red version that carried them to a league title in the spring, neither was it the leaden, lumpen model that has stank out the summer. Instead, it was somewhere in between, set up to frustrate Mayo in the first instance and commendably spiky in attack when they turned over possession.

Kevin McStay’s side took the longest time to come up with an answer to the puzzle Derry set. Playing against the wind in the first half, they could only muster up six shots in total. Two of them came in the same breath, Jack Coyne’s outside-of-the boot effort dropping short on 24 minutes, Stephen Coen’s follow-up skidding wide after Odhran Lynch dropped it.

That small flurry was about as exciting as it got for the home crowd until well after half-time. Sam Callinan scored their only point from play in the first half, Ryan O’Donoghue iced a couple of frees. But all the scoring was happening at the other end, where Lachlan Murray was having a stormer.

The Derry corner forward popped his first score of the day after eight minutes from a mark and followed up with two identikit efforts on the loop before the half-hour. For his fourth of the first half, he skated along the endline past Tommy Conroy and fisted over the bar. By now, he was on to his third marker and the game was barely a half an hour old. Mayo had nobody providing that sort of cutting edge.

Given everything, a three-point lead was about the least Derry deserved out of the opening half. They had dictated terms from the first minute and though Mayo had the wind to come, McStay’s side was going to have to seriously freshen up its ideas for the second half or their season was done.

And so it went. Tommy Conroy came out of the dressingroom with menace, stitching a mark and a businesslike point from play inside the opening four minutes. Aidan O’Shea was timbering his way into the game as well, bouncing off Conor Glass to kick a score and then chasing down Eoin McEvoy to force an overcarry for the go-ahead free. It only took 10 minutes after the restart for Mayo to take the lead, 0-7 to 0-6.

Now we had a game. Derry had to shake themselves – and did. Gareth McKinless found his range with a point from right of the D, Brendan Rogers did likewise from a little more central. Derry had carved themselves a lead again but it felt like a fragile thing at this stage.

Mayo sensed as much and almost immediately forced a penalty at the other end. A flash of brilliance from O’Donoghue sent Darren McHale in the clear and when Tommy Conroy wriggled through on goal, McKinless cut across and raised his foot to block the shot.

It probably hit him in the same spot on his leg that Brian Fenton used last week but the difference was that Fenton made an attempt at a legitimate block. McKinless did not and Brendan Cawley threw his arms wide. O’Donoghue made no mistake from the spot and Mayo had a bit of breathing space for the first time all evening, leading 1-7 to 0-8.

They really should have seen it out from there and ought never have needed extra-time to get the job done. But although O’Donoghue’s penalty hit the net on 49 minutes, Mayo only added another point from there to full-time. They had bad wides along the way – a very kickable Colm Reape free and, as time ran dead, a fisted effort from Callinan. Those misses gave Derry a chance to stay alive.

Murray added to his faultless evening with his fifth score of the day on 54 minutes. McGuigan looped out around Glass to nail another of his own. And then, with the clock deep, deep in the red, Chrissy McKaigue popped an equaliser to bring us to extra-time.

It was such a gut punch for Mayo, made all the worse by the fact that the circumstances were pretty much identical to last week. They went man-for-man on a Derry kick-out but still allowed them up the pitch, a combination of tackling that was both too lax and too robust. And to top it all off, McKaigue’s equaliser was a fisted effort from pretty much the same spot on the pitch as Cormac Costello had scored for Dublin.

It seemed to knock the stuffing out of them for the start of extra-time. With O’Shea having emptied himself and departed towards the end of normal time, they were lacking a focal point in attack now. Twice in quick succession, they ran out of ideas and got turned over, leading to Derry scores. Rogers and Ethan Doherty did the needful for Derry and when Doherty followed up with a second in two minutes, there were three points between the sides.

Jordan Flynn snatched one back for Mayo before the extra-time break but Mayo needed more. Paul Towey came off the bench to wriggle through on his left foot and though you could tell he didn’t want to shoot, he ended up with no choice – happily for him, he split the posts and reduced the margin to one.

The place was throbbing now. Conroy sprinted through with conviction to get himself a chance but blazed it wide. Shane McGuigan showed more composure from the kick-out to stretch the lead out to two. But with Mayo’s season teetering and no room left for messing, Conor Loftus and Jordan Flynn landed a pair of ballsy scores to send us to penalties.

From there, everything assumed a vulgar simplicity. Derry scored four of theirs, Mayo only scored three. Derry progress, Mayo slink off into a winter’s torture.

Derry: Odhran Lynch; Conor McCluskey, Chrissy McKaigue (0-1), Diarmuid Baker; Ciarán McFaul, Eoin McEvoy, Gareth McKinless (0-1); Conor Glass, Brendan Rogers (0-2); Ethan Doherty (0-2), Emmett Bradley, Paul Cassidy; Conor Doherty, Shane McGuigan (0-4, two frees), Lachlan Murray (0-5, one mark). Subs: Eunan Mulholland for Bradley, 44 mins; Cormac Murphy for Cassidy, 67 mins; Donncha Gilmore for C Doherty, 67 mins; Niall Toner for Murray, 73 mins; Ruairí Forbes for Baker, 73 mins; Baker for Forbes, extra-time; Cassidy for Murphy, extra-time; C Doherty for Baker, 83 mins

Penalties scored: McGuigan, Glass, McFaul, C Doherty

Missed: E Doherty (wide)

Mayo: Colm Reape; Jack Coyne, David McBrien, Donnacha McHugh; Rory Brickenden, Sam Callinan (0-1), Eoghan McLaughlin; Stephen Coen, Mattie Ruane; Tommy Conroy (0-2, one mark), Darren McHale, Jordan Flynn (0-2); Aidan O’Shea (0-1), Jack Carney, Ryan O’Donoghue (1-4, one pen, three frees). Subs: Conor Loftus (0-1) for McLaughlin, half-time; Diarmuid O’Connor for McHale, 53 mins; Enda Hession for Coyne, 57 mins; Cillian O’Connor for Ruane, 67 mins; Bob Tuohy for O’Shea, 73 mins; Paul Towey (0-1) for Brickenden, 80 mins; Michael Plunkett for Callinan, 87 mins

Penalties scored: C O’Connor, D O’Connor, Loftus

Missed: Towey (post), O’Donoghue (saved)

Referee: Brendan Cawley (Kildare)