“We came so close. But we lost in the end.”
There’s a great, beautifully simple quote in that movie, Moneyball. Brad Pitt, playing the role of Billy Beane, delivers a brutally honest home truth to the Oakland A’s head coach Art Howe after what was a relatively successful campaign for the baseball club.
“If you lose the last game of the season, nobody gives a shit.”
Nobody gives a shit.
Mayo can talk all they want. They can ponder ifs, buts and maybes and they can cry about what might have been – what should have been, even.
They can say they’re cursed, that it’s just not meant to be. They can whinge until the cows come home about rotten luck and how their talented, admirable players still haven’t gotten the just rewards they deserve.
They could do that.
Diarmuid O’Connor won’t.
“It was disappointing but we weren’t the better team and Dublin deserved it,” the man’s just turned 21 and he’s already showing the experience of a veteran who doesn’t want to waste the best days of his career in regret. “They showed that in the All-Ireland final that they’re the best team in the country. So it’s just looking at it this year and trying to improve – first individually and as a team. It’s just a small few inches that you can improve but it makes all the difference at the end of the year.
“We’ve been close the last few years now but, at the end of the day, we just haven’t been good enough. As I said, it’s just trying to put that right this year and finding those few inches. It’s the little things that make all the difference. Everyone’s trying to improve now individually and just push themselves that extra few inches.
“You can dwell on it all you want but it’s just trying focus more on this year and looking ahead rather than in the past. It’s a new panel again this year, new management, so we’re all on clean slates and it’s a brand new year. It’s not forgetting about last year but focusing on this year.”
The pain of Dublin hasn’t so much been an elephant in the Mayo room over the close season as it has been the whole room. Any time any of the players are available for a chat, they’re asked the inevitable questions.
“It hurt for a few weeks,” O’Connor admitted. “But you have to learn from it, you can’t completely forget about it. You have to look at why we lost the game, ‘what did I do wrong’, ‘what can I improve on’? Then you have to try and fix it and put it right and use that this year.
“We came so close in both games but we lost it in the end.”
If you lose the last game of the season…
Near-misses time and again amount to question marks though. Mayo have been at the top for a while but never reached the summit. They have the team, the players, the physique, the attitude. So is it mental? Is it bottle? Does this constant speculation and doubt amount to more pressure?
“There’s always been pressure on Mayo players, the same as there is on players in every county in the country,” the wing forward shrugged. “There won’t be much added pressure within the dressing room anyway. There’s always been pressure there – if you can’t deal with it, you shouldn’t be there. It’s how you use that pressure and not let it overwhelm you, just use it to motivate you and drive you on.”
He’s a got a bigger brother anyway, you know?
Cillian is laid out at the moment and will miss a chunk of the league but the younger of the two O’Connors has been soaking up all the wisdom he can from the corner forward who has now been there and done it.
“Cillian being there a few years before I was, he’s went through what I’m going through now and he knows how to handle it,” he said. “So it’s kind of been more beneficial off the pitch having him around. Just simple things like diet or if I need help or giving me advice on how to handle the occasion of big games and things like that.”
He’s been doing a heck of a job. Diarmuid O’Connor went on and deservedly clinched Young Footballer of the Year. His titanic battle of the summer though was coming against the Footballer of the Year. Him and Jack McCaffrey put on a show worthy of Croke Park.
“It was tough,” he smiled. “Jack’s a brilliant player. I’d need more than an engine to keep up with him. He’s very tough. It was a good experience, I learned a lot so I can use it and see how I can improve on it this year.
“I was [constantly watching him]. You can’t keep your eyes off him at all. If you take your eyes off Jack for two seconds, he could be down the other end of the pitch before you know it. But I suppose it’s the same with every other back in the country, it’s trying to put them on the back foot and not let them dictate. It was difficult though, we had a good battle.”
Battles are for winning though.
Diarmuid O’Connor is only 21 and he’s already had enough of this talk of glorious failures. He has eyes on one thing. And it’s not a player of the year award and it’s certainly not a nice story to tell of what nearly was.
“I had a good year, personally, but, at end of the day, I’d give any personal awards to get the big one: the All-Ireland medal.”
That’s what it’s about. That’s all it’s about.
