It’s a tradition of the season that the start of August brings the first major wave of culinary metaphors into the language of the football championship. It usually begins with Kerry coming out of Munster, sleepwalking through an All-Ireland quarter-final and into an All-Ireland semi-final that doesn’t quite crackle like the match-ups on the other side. Are Kerry undercooked? Will the winner emerging from the tougher side of the draw featuring yesterday’s teams have the heat turned up too high and arrive in an All-Ireland final dried up and overdone?
Sometimes it’s been Dublin, walking out of the sunshine and lollipop world of Leinster and a powder-puff quarter-final, into Mayo or Kerry windmilling towards them. Of the three teams that have dominated the era — Mayo, Dublin and Kerry — controlling the temperature and cooking time has always been a more delicate issue for Mayo.
Looking back across their latest campaign for an All-Ireland title since 2011, peak-Mayo probably passed a few years ago. This summer has been a grind. The last six weeks alone have inflicted four games and two chunks of extra time. In 2005 Tyrone took 10 games to win the All-Ireland. Their draw that year against Dublin in the quarter-final was their seventh game. Tomorrow’s replay against Roscommon is Mayo’s seventh match this summer. Mayo winning an All-Ireland from here, assuming no more draws, will total nine games. No team has ever achieved that.
Turn the volume down on their extraordinary support, and their performances have been improving but are still too close to indifferent, starting talk of staleness and a long-standing need for fresh faces. Like everything with Mayo, it’s more complicated than that.
No team has dug deeper into their own resources than Mayo since 2011. Compared to Dublin and Kerry across the same time span, Mayo have played more games, beaten more teams and used more players. The problem has been the failure of many to come through and stick in there.
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In seven seasons since James Horan started turning Mayo in the right direction in 2011, 53 players have been used in 42 championship games. Kevin McLoughlin and Aidan O’Shea have seen game time in them all.
Dublin, by comparison, had used 49 players across 39 matches before yesterday against Monaghan. Six Mayo players have already matched or exceeded that total. Kerry have played 36 championship games in the same period and used 46 players. Six of them have played 30 championship games or more. Eleven Mayo players on the current panel can match that. The average length of a championship season for Mayo works out around six games.
The rate of change for all three teams down the years has been varied. Twelve Mayo players who got game time in the 2011 All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Kerry are still operational, Dublin have the same number left from those who played in the 2011 All-Ireland final. Kerry have seven left from the that game.
Despite their attempts to freshen and evolve the team Mayo have more tough miles clocked than any of their contemporaries, particularly the hardest working parts of their team — the O’Sheas, McLoughlin, Keith Higgins and Lee Keegan. As Cillian O’Connor was leaned on in attack from the moment he stepped up in 2011, the same reliance on O’Connor and Andy Moran exists now. Brendan Harrison, Paddy Durcan and Diarmuid O’Connor are among the best young players to emerge anywhere in the last few years. Mayo couldn’t afford them to become any less than that.
They badly need a few more players pushing for places now to maintain standards as before, and some special ones to bring them the final few yards to an All-Ireland, but the issues that have really tortured Mayo down the years – poor decision-making and skill execution — have never been fully fixed.
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Roscommon brought all the elements last weekend to trouble a weary team: pace, bravery and a complete conviction in their own gameplan. Mayo still clung on and availed when Roscommon wobbled with the game in their hands to win. Mayo retain the ability to impose themselves on games and dominate like before, but not for as long. It still makes them formidable on days like tomorrow. Any more is a huge ask.