How many Mayo people, honestly, had given up by half time?
It seemed like it didn’t matter how well you played, there was no real point if Dublin could just be gifted six points from pure, rotten luck.
What’s the point of keeping the most frightening attack in the country scoreless for over half an hour if two of your own men are going to kick it into their own net anyway? What’s the point of getting so close for so long if this supposed curse is hanging over Mayo from 1951?
Stephen Rochford isn’t an idiot.
Mayo should be All-Ireland champions right now but they didn’t leave the game behind them and they didn’t miss the boat. It was nothing like that. They were drowning Dublin – absolutely drowning them – and, only for freakish misfortune – the sort we’ll never see again – they found themselves fighting for their own lives.
But they were rescued by a steady hand who has been preparing for the third Sunday of September all year. From the moment they welcomed Dublin to Castlebar in the league. From the moment he was given the job after the much-maligned players’ revolt.
Stephen Rochford wasn’t about to let a few moments of madness determine 77 minutes of football, or 10 months of work, or a whole lifetime of dreaming.
Lesser men would have. Mayo teams of the past would have. Not this team. Not this manager.
Every decision Rochford makes seems to reap rewards. He threw Tom Parsons in from the start – his first start since the Galway game back in June – and it was justified and then some. Parsons was the dominant of Mayo’s midfield duo, he kicked his county’s first score of the game, and he never seemed to cease striding forward with the ball and putting Dublin on the back foot.
The role he gave Donal Vaughan was inspired. How many times did the Ballinrobe man pop up in possession and Dublin hadn’t a bloody clue what was going on? How many times was he slipping someone else through, taking on a big shot or seemed to be free so he could double up on a capital attacker and hammer his body off of him? He ate up the yards of Croke Park like he might never be back there and, for Rochford, it was a simple case of deploying these starving savages in the right areas.
That’s why he looked so composed on the sidelines even when Mayo went five down. It was all part of a plan – a plan that’s been forming since the day he came in and took charge.
Jim Gavin spoke afterwards and, even though the champions threw away a two-point lead at the end, the Dublin manager was the most relieved man in Croke Park.
“We’re just very happy in the Dublin dressing room to still be in the All-Ireland,” he said.
“We got two lucky goals, scored five from play, that’s not good enough.
“We got the bounce today and we’re very lucky.”
It was honest and frank but it was actually an understatement. Dublin’s starting forwards kicked two scores from play all day and you could see it happening again the next time out. They were a bit wasteful but Mayo were all over them like bloodhounds. Mayo made them look human.
Everything they did – unless it was a gloriously pinged Diarmuid Connolly pass – seemed to be snuffed out by the Connacht men and, so, even when the green flag was waving twice at the Canal End, Rochford stuck to his system.
He had the better team and the better plan so it was simply down to science. They weren’t going to panic, toss it up to luck, or try something unproven just because the gods or the priests or whoever were against them on the day.
They came out after the break and kicked three scores in a matter of minutes. Five points became two, Rochford banged his hands together, demanded more.
Eventually, Dublin got the deficit back to three and cries from the commentators – premature as always – were suggesting a goal was all they could hope for now.
They had missed the point entirely. Rochford wasn’t hoping for anything. His work was done, Mayo’s work was done and this was just a case of putting everything they knew down on a test paper. If it took the 77 minutes, then so be it.
But it took balls to hold that nerve and it took brains to devise that strategy. For Mayo in this final, it then just took the inevitable for them to get back on level terms because they simply weren’t going to beaten. Not with how they played. Not with Rochford steering the ship.
They say underdogs don’t win replays.
Grand. That’s irrelevant.
Mayo proved on Sunday that they are not underdogs. Far from it.
Make them 3/1 outsiders now.
