Lack of firepower leaves the Green & Red with Blues

As the clock struck five bells last Sunday evening it was the longest, saddest and most silent of strolls down the North Circular Road.

Thousands and thousands of Mayo supporters just stared at the ground and walked swiftly straight ahead. There were no expletives, no chastising of the referee and no bemoaning of the missed chances . . . it was just a stoic silence. In the end, so near and yet so far.

Just four or five hours previously outside Quinn’s Bar in Drumcondra, the mood could not have been any more different. There were Mayo people everywhere, many of them didn’t have tickets, and there wasn’t a whisper of ‘a spare one’ anywhere – not even from the touts.

But these fans were mostly young, happy and loaded with expectation. A pass machine in a nearby shop had a queue of over 30 people by midday, all of them clad in the red and green. So what if they didn’t have tickets – if Mayo won the Sam, they would be there for one of the great occasions of Irish sport.

By one o clock, 15 minutes before the start of the minor match, Mayo supporters had occupied most of the prime positions on ‘The Hill’. By hook or by crook they had secured half – and probably a few more – of the 12,753 terrace tickets.

The Mayo minors responded in style to their early bird supporters delivering a 2-13 to 1-13 victory over Tyrone, their first All-Ireland success since 1985. By the time their inspirational captain, Stephen Coen, picked up the Tom Markham Cup shortly after 2.30pm, the Jones’s Road venue was rocking.

Thousands of Dubs had now infiltrated ‘The Hill’ and also many of the seats in the towering horseshoe stands. The blue bodhrans started to boom from ‘The Hill’, packing a real sound punch that resonated around the ground. Minor matters had been left aside, now we were facing up to the real business of the day.

This contest mightn’t have matched the flow of the Kerry/Dublin All-Ireland semi-final, but the pace and intensity of the first 20 minutes was breathtaking. Often, from the lofty perch of the press box in the upper Hogan Stand, one misses out on the cut and thrust of the action, but from 12 rows back in the Lower Cusack, you can hear the crunch of the tackle, bone against bone, temple against temple. This was no country for old men and no arena for posers.

Mayo did everything right in that opening half hour . . . well almost. They tackled with a manic intensity and played the game at a tempo that the Dubs struggled to keep up with, but they needed scores on the board – lots of them, to carry them through the second half – but alas they only arrived via the drip-feed channel. Dublin heads were reeling, but they hadn’t been knocked to the canvas.

Hawk-Eye just about ruled out an early Keith Higgins effort; Cillian O’Connor kicked a couple of frees wide; ‘keeper Robbie Hennelly also missed a long range placed ball effort, and occasionally there was the sniff of a Mayo goal, but it never came.

Then out of the blue, Dublin delivered a wicked kidney punch. A long ball from Diarmuid Connolly into the Mayo square should have been contested just by Ger Cafferkey and Bernard Brogan, but Hennelly – in his only rush of blood – joined in to make it a gang of three. Brogan’s flick was deft without being viciously fast, but there was no one ‘at home’ to pick it up, and out of nowhere the Dubs were back in business.

In fairness to the Breaffy ’keeper, apart from that slip-up, his heroics kept Mayo in the game with three absolutely magnificent saves. The Mayo backs, though, will be disappointed that from two of them, the Dubs still picked off points from the rebounds. 

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.