Mayo's Croke Park Hoodoo is Garbage

Sligo 0-15 : Mayo 1-08. For years we have been reading and writing and verbalising on Mayo's apparent psycholgical failings when we run onto the hollowed ground of Croke Park. We convinced ourselvesa nd everyone else it was a Croke Park thing. Well, forget it. It's complete garbage. The problem is not a Croke Park only problem  - for starters we can now include Markievicz Park  in that particular debate. Last Saturday was up there with any of the bad Croke Park days and leaving Sligo on Saturday evening it was hard to comprehend what we had just witnessed. Is that where we are at ? Are Sligo under-rated? After falling through the trap-door are we capable of bursting back onto the stage via the back-door ?

 

Let no-one say a Sligo win wasn't flagged in advance. The bookies odds and general GAA opinion might have been favouring a Mayo win but there was expectation in Sligo and a few other camps were also predicting an ambush was on the cards. In the end an ambush is not a fair description of what happened - it was more like  "The Grand Old Duke of YorK" - from a winning position on the top of the hill we descended downwards and were unable to get back up.

The match did get off to a positive flying start for Mayo and for the impressive Alan Freeman in particular. We were 1-1 up after 10 minutes and Sligo had failed to score. In fact the Mayo tactic of high ball to Freeman forced Sligo into making a switch that looked like it was advantage Mayo - the influential Eamon O'Hara was pulled from full forward to a defensive sweeper role. However, it proved to be the opposite as O'Hara not only did the defensive bit but also allowed him to a drive Sligo forward from deep positions throughout the remainder of the match. In hindsight too it was a switch that also seemed to unsettle the formation of the Mayo defense as Sligo now attacked from deep or up the wings more often that down the centre. Tom Cunniffe, for one, didn't have one of his better days as a result.

But after that great start Mayo took the foot off the pedal big time. Or as one of the newspaper reports aptly describes it "we went AWOL". No need to write another extensive report of the scores from then till the end of the match as that will be well covered by many others. For Mayo fans we will, unfortunately, remember the match not for it's scores but for the lack of desire to win (unlike Sligo) as the game went on; the amount of ball be gave away; the chances missed; the fact that only 3 players scored (Freeman 1-4, C Mortomer 3p and A Moran 1p); the fact that we only scored 1-08 (our worst tally in a long long time!) and the slowness to make changes from the sidelines when the game was turning against us.
If any credits are being handed out they would most likley go to  Alan Freeman and Andy Moran as the only two that showed a bit of determination for the 70 minutes, Not everyone of the rest played badly but few were without fault on a day when we should have been going home hyped up in anticipation of meeting Galway next instead of going into the hat! 

Sligo deserved the win. They played with passion and spirit, showed a desire to win and worked hard as a team throughout the game. They scored some brilliant points that deserve to win games and we wish them luck.

For Mayo we are now on the scenic route and will be into the first round of the qualifiers. The draw is next Sunday and matches will be on weekend of June 26th.
So the good news is we get a chance to redeem last Saturdays performance. Let's hope we grasp it.

Match Reports

RTE      IRISH INDEPENDENT    
 
IRISH TIMES        and        WJ on Green and Red

    

         
    David Clarke    
         
Chris Barrett   Ger Cafferkey   Keith Higgins
David Kelly   Kenneth Sweeney   Colm McGee
         
Donal Vaughan   Tom Cunniffe   Kevin McLoughlin
Eamon O'Hara   Alan Costello   Mark Breheny
         
  Tom Parsons   Ronan McGarrity  
  Stephen Gilmartin   Tony Taylor  
         
Andy Moran   Seamus O'Shea   Trevor Mortimer
Johnny Davey   Brendan Phillips   Keelan Cawley
         
Conor Mortimer   Alan Freeman   Enda Varley
Ross Donovan   Noel McGuire   Charlie Harrison
         
    Philip Greene