In the last six years, Mayo have been eliminated from the semi-final or final six times.
Kerry, Donegal, Dublin, Kerry, Dublin, Dublin.
What do those three counties and six different teams have in common? It’s pretty damn simple. They were better than Mayo.
It’s hard to call this a fallout anymore, the heave that ousted Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly from the county’s senior management position. It happened over a year ago and a full, fresh season of heartache has since followed but the pair decided to wreck up old graves, seemingly in a bid to ease the damage to their reputations.
.@woolberto delivers the definitive dissection of former Mayo managers' 'revelations' @AIB_GAA #TheToughest https://t.co/DaAqSTJT4w
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) December 20, 2016
The whole way through that lengthy interview with the Independent, words like attitude and ruthless and hard luck stories popped up from Holmes and Connelly. Their mindset fits the generalised narrative that this is a mental thing for Mayo.
They brought in a psychologist to confirm that the players weren’t ruthless enough. They told them they were bullied against Kerry – under Horan’s regime – and they spoke about what does and doesn’t cut it in Kerry and Dublin.
That bullshit doesn’t wash with players. We’ve had any number of coaches down through the years at our club who talk about how they do it in a different part of the county and that’s immediately when you stop listening. The best thing we ever did as a group of players – and there weren’t many of them – was consciously decide that we were going to stop a) trying to be like other clubs and b) trying to impress other clubs. We were proud of our identity and we wanted to do things our way.
We couldn’t have given less of a toss about what other people thought of us or what they were saying outside the group.
It’s too easy to come along and tell people to be tougher and to try and rile them into a reaction by exaggerating what you heard about them elsewhere. It’s too easy to say to a team that they need to be more ruthless. You might as well just walk into a changing room and say, “win”.
What was the tactic for solving that lack of edge? How did they go about it other than tell the players to be more aggressive?
It’s definitely too easy to make these claims now when you’re not involved. Telling players to stop complaining about how things are run and to just “be ruthless” is of little or no value.
Admittedly, it’s a nice, gripping story that all of us follow, Mayo getting so close and falling at the final hurdle but, honestly, that hurdle has always been beyond their reach. It’s not a mental thing, it’s not as simple as that.
They can do it, of course they can – they can step up some day and catch a team on the hop. They would’ve done so against Dublin the first day out in 2016 if it wasn’t for two own goals – that wasn’t a lack of ruthlessness though, that was freak luck.
No-one would’ve beaten Donegal in 2012. No-one.
Kerry were the best team in Ireland in 2014.
Dublin, now, are probably the greatest squad of all time.
Mayo can win an All-Ireland but, to do so, they’ll have to beat a better footballing team at a game of football. That’s what has faced them so far – not some obscure idea of their mentality not being right. Their mentality is the same thing that has gotten them to the last four year after year after year after year after year after year.
Their mentality is what got rid of two managers because they wanted to give themselves a better shot at winning.
They’ve lost these things so far because they’ve lost to better teams. If they started ballsing up against anyone weaker, then you could start dissecting their frame of mind. Right now, it’s just a lazy stick to beat them with.
