I was creating a personality quiz for a bit of craic earlier.
Which Mayo or Dublin player are you?
There are eight possible outcomes and it’s simple mathematics that determines your fate.
You answer a load of questions – each answer is ranked by how it matches to one of the eight footballers – and it tallies up your score and assigns you a player at the end of it.
For instance: a question might ask which is your preferred gym exercise. You might answer core work. Someone like Cian O’Sullivan would get two points for that answer so, after you go through 11 questions, it counts up which player scored highest – based on your answers.
QUIZ: Which Mayo or Dublin player are you? https://t.co/9mJ0ApzsVV #GAA
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) September 14, 2016
Then I asked this question: What is your biggest weakness?
Easy, I thought.
Discipline – Diarmuid Connolly, 2 points.
Discipline – Philly McMahon, 2 points.
Too many positions – Aidan O’Shea, 2 points.
I rattled through all the players, using mostly generalisations, but then it came to Lee Keegan. He still didn’t have two points assigned for an answer in that question. And the whole process stopped for about 10 minutes.
What the hell is Lee Keegan’s biggest weakness?
Pace? Hardly. Strength? Don’t be stupid. Shooting? Nope.
He can run, he can catch, he can tackle. He can get forward better than any half back in the country and he can man mark as well as any corner back in the country.
And yet he’s been underrated this season. It might be because of the sky high standards that he’s set for himself over the past half decade, it might be the new management, the changing systems, the roles he’s been given.
It might just be that we’re all idiots. Anyone who has undervalued him anyway.
Mayo’s form the whole way through the All-Ireland campaign was said to be stumbling, patchy, unconvincing. Even now, today, Mayo sit in an All-Ireland final, they’ve won five games in succession and their form is still questioned.
Because of that, their big hitters are put in the firing line.
Why isn’t Lee Keegan going up and kicking two off either boot like he did in a one-point game against Tyrone? Why isn’t he doing it all the time? Why isn’t he setting up goals? Why aren’t Mayo blowing teams out of the water?
Then you get someone like Paul Galvin looking on and he sees it completely differently.
This is a man who’s won All-Irelands. Someone who’s marked Keegan. Someone who appreciates the simplicity in a game of football. You don’t have to be beating four men to be having a good game. You can be contributing to the team.
On SportsJOE’s GAA Hour podcast, the Kerry legend saw Keegan’s 2016 form in a different light altogether than some of his critics have.
“I always look for a habit in a fella. I always look for a pattern in a fella and what’s his habit when he gets the ball,” Galvin teed it up about an hour beforehand when he was giving out in general about people taking too much out of the ball. Then Mayo came up and so did Keegan and Galvin’s earlier message wasn’t heeded.
Colm Parkinson:
“The form of Lee Keegan is a bit worrying. He’s not playing at the level he’s been playing at for the last five or six years.”
Paul Galvin
“He’s one of the few fellas that’s moving the ball on. He’s not soloing the life out of it. I think he’s a very intelligent player. I actually like what he’s doing this year, he’s giving the ball on to guys.
“I always thought I’d struggle playing in the Mayo team myself because I’d never get the ball knocked onto me because they have a habit of running from the back – running it from the full back line even. Their midfielders take the world out of the ball and they don’t knock it on to their half forwards.
“I see Lee Keegan and he keeps it very simple when he gets it, mostly. He’ll go on the odd burst and he’ll maybe get a score but, for the most part, he gets it and moves it. I think Mayo need more of that.”
He’s right. What Mayo have been doing well has been going unnoticed, as a team and as individuals.
It’s why Tyrone were fancied to run over the top of them, no-one was standing out for the Connacht force and, in that, was perhaps their biggest strength. They’re a unit. They’ll do what the manager tells them to do and they’ll take each team as they come.
It’s why Aidan O’Shea isn’t getting the plaudits, because he’s not scoring 1-3 every game when, in reality, he’s going through a mountain of work, he barging through three tackles and laying off handy scores and he’s making huge hits on his own 45′.
It’s why Lee Keegan is said to be having a poor year. Then, when you actually look at it, he’s just doing everything he’s being asked to do and he’s doing it bloody well. He’s playing in the full back line, he’s eating up Michael Quinlivan, he’s putting Sean Cavanagh in his pocket and he’s moving the ball on. For the team.
When he got a sniff of it against Tyrone, he showed what he could do in an attacking sense and he’s going to do it again on Sunday. That’s if his manager wants him to of course.
Lee Keegan’s only crime in 2016 is being disciplined and doing a job for the team. His only drawback is being selfless and effective.
If you asked Stephen Rochford, he probably wouldn’t change anything about his performances because, although Lee Keegan could well be the most undervalued man in Ireland throughout this campaign, he has definitely been the most important man in Mayo.
Listen to The GAA Hour live in Castlebar with Brendan Devenney, James Horan, and Pillar Caffrey. Subscribe here on iTunes.
