As soon as one door closes, another one opens. We’ve only just put the Connacht final behind us and now we’re getting ready for a tilt at Cavan in the All-Ireland series. It won’t be simple!
When I initially saw the draw, It made me smile. I have cousins in Cavan who are mad into football and they certainly will be keeping their cards very close to their chests this week, especially if they’re talking to a Mayo man.
They have a new manager with very little experience. And that, in GAA terms, is sometimes seen as a huge negative. Even though that’s not always the case, most often it probably is.
Raymond Galligan has gone from being a player, with very limited coaching experience straight into a really tough job of managing an inter-county team in Ulster.
From the evidence we’ve seen so far he has done well. Their league campaign was always going to be difficult in Division two. They were best of the rest, really, because from the outset, Armagh and Donegal were quite clearly the stronger teams in that group. The roundabout point I’m trying to make is: We don’t know about Cavan.
In the championship, they beat Monaghan in a local derby and against Tyrone we saw a game where they were really good, and where they had opportunities to win. Then, we saw how far Tyrone pushed Donegal.
So, obviously, if you mark it like that, they’re only a couple of points off where Donegal are at currently. I think that’s a concern for Mayo, but Cavan people, are probably still wondering about Galligan. He’s having to learn a bit on the job, but maybe he’s going to be really good. Maybe he really knows what he’s doing.
It’s a dangerous task for Mayo going in as red-hot favourites against a team like Cavan, who would be underdogs like they were for the Tyrone game. They’ll relish that.
The one big negative for Cavan coming into this game is that Paddy Lynch, has torn his cruciate in training and will be out for the rest of the season. A massive loss to them when you consider he’s big, he’s strong, he’s a scoring forward, he hits frees.
MEMORIES
Personally, I remember playing Cavan in a qualifier in Castlebar in 2007. At some stage, I got a little clip in the scalp and it started bleeding. I didn’t even realise that I was bleeding but it started coming down and the referee sent me fpr treatment. Dr Frank Davey was the team doctor at the time, as he had been in the All-Ireland semi-final 1989 against Tyrone.
So me and Frank were having a laugh as he was trying to tidy me up. I said to him: “Frank, you’re definitely not putting any white head bandage on me like you did with my father back in ’89. I’m not going back out there with that type of contraption on my head,” and he had a good laugh about it.
Pearse Hanley was playing for us that day and it was obvious that he was going to be brilliant, but he was soon gone to Australia. We wished him well and took great joy from his acheivements in the AFL, but how different things might have been if he was in the green and red for the next decade after 2007.
APPROACH
How do Mayo bounce back in the qualifiers after losing in the Connacht Championship?
I remember an excellent Mayo team in 2017 nearly losing to a bang average Derry outfit in Castlebar and that team went on to push that brilliant Dublin team really hard in the All-Ireland final.
The management have two ways of doing this. The first one is to double down. You say the game plan, the approach, the tactics, the personnel used in the last round against Galway are the right way to go. And lean into it even further.
That will only be successful if the management actually believe it and the players buy in. I’ve no reason to believe otherwise. The other approach is to make changes because you’ve recognised that what you’re doing hasn’t been working.
I think that a lot of the Mayo performances so far have been very like the one against Galway in Pearse Stadium. You can’t guarantee victories with that sort of performance because you’re just not scoring enough, you’re just not threatening enough, you’re just not dynamic enough.
My preference would be for them to change things up. There needs to be a look at the shape in the forward line and in the midfield area.
Bring Aidan O’Shea further out the field. He has been been doing his job while Ryan O’Donoghue has been outstanding for the most part. However, have they really been creating that dynamic between the two of them? I don’t think we’ve seen that. So I think you need a change.
When it comes to midfield they’ve been very determined to have that legs around the middle. Mayo have really good runners. Scoring is a different matter. We have very few scorers around the middle. Maybe we need a different type of footballer there. Maybe you need Aidan O’Shea out there. He’s not covering as much grass as those other lads but maybe he’ll have a sort of playmaking effect.
EMOTIONAL RESPONSE
Mayo need an emotional response. Mayo players are going to be putting their bodies on the line. They’re going to be much more aggressive. That’s always a good way to start a qualifier game, because when you’re low on confidence, sometimes the best thing that can happen is to get into a bit of a dog fight.
Get into a bit of a scrap and everything else takes care of itself. But if you’re low on confidence.
And you start in a sort of a neutral mind frame, and you’re not really as aggressive as you need to be, you can get walked over.
Will we change what we’re doing? Will we see that aggression and physicality that’s needed? These questions will be answered on Saturday.
