LAST Sunday was the first time in his entire reign that Jim Gavin steered away from mind-numbing rhetoric in his post-match interviews. That’s as telling as it gets.
He had every right to be angry with his team. They performed nowhere near the standard they are capable of. But they haven’t been all year. They haven’t really had to try to win Leinster for the last decade, but their performances in the provincial series weren’t the blistering, goal-laden displays of recent seasons.
Dublin did what they had to do against Donegal in the All-Ireland quarter-final, but it wasn’t great. They certainly did play very well in spells against Kerry and it was their best of the year, but they were back below par against Mayo.
The signs were there. Bernard Brogan has been the best finisher in Ireland over the last few seasons but, if he wasn’t Bernard Brogan, he would have been dropped even before the semi-final. Jim Gavin persisted and he was poor against Kerry once more. He was once more decidedly poor last Sunday, outplayed by Brendan Harrison.
If Kevin McManamon or Dean Rock played like that, they would be sitting behind Jim Gavin the next day. Brogan has done enough through his career to perhaps have earned his manager’s persistence, but when does persistence become belligerence and, ultimately, blindness? It was far from just Brogan, though. John Small and Brian Fenton were the pick of the bunch on an afternoon where it was very close to being a complete systems failure for Dublin.
Mayo had been almost totally dismissed by every pundit in the land running up to the final. There was no shortage of scripture to rile them. There seemed to be the belief from Dublin that Mayo were there to be bullied.
The incident in the tunnel gave an insight into the mentality of the two teams. The Dubs were six minutes late in leaving their changing room, leaving the Mayo players like Rottweilers on a leash by the time the blue shirts streamed past in the tunnel.
Mayo returned fire in more ways than one. They made sure and got out of the tunnel with Dublin to throw a dunt or two, but they also maintained a steady focus to start well and score the afternoon’s first two points. And when Aidan O’Shea was fouled when he won his first ball, the green shirts piled in. It set the tone. Mayo had been bullied once too often. Not this time.
What Conor Lane let go on Aidan O’Shea was a travesty. Every time he got the ball in his hands, he was fouled. The more he was hammered for diving to win a penalty against Fermanagh, you’d have sympathy with him after a day like last Sunday.
The referee awarding a free out to Jonny Cooper for a gentle nudge in the back while a long ball hung in the air was the final straw. O’Shea would have been in on goal, but was called back. If the referee had given Mayo a free in every time O’Shea had felt that kind of contact, they would have had 10 points off 20-metre frees alone. Aidan O’Shea doesn’t get frees for the same reason Kieran Donaghy doesn’t get frees. They’re bigger and harder to tumble. And because they don’t fall, anything goes until they overcarry the ball.
If I was Stephen Rochford, I’d be telling Aidan O’Shea to hit the deck every time Philip McMahon or Jonny Cooper hits him next Saturday. That seems to be the only way he’s going to get a fair shake. He won’t get all the frees, but he’ll get more than he is getting right now.
Even when they were given the kind of raw deal only Mayo could get in the form of two own goals, they stuck to the task and recovered. The effort that was exerted by every red shirt for almost 80 minutes was extraordinary. To come from five down and then, again, from three down against a side with the physical attributes Dublin have underlines not only their resolve, but their own conditioning levels.
You spent the whole day waiting for them to wilt, to feel the consequence of those efforts, to get opened up just once on the break and for Dublin to kill them off. It never came and it never really looked like coming in the final-quarter.
And yet, for all Mayo’s ballsiness, Sam still hasn’t returned to the west. I was one of few to predict a Mayo victory, but they threw the kitchen sink, cupboards, fridge and all at it and it still wasn’t enough. Dublin will never be as poor again. Conditions will hardly be as favourable for an underdog again. They’ve shown their hand.
Mayo were millimetres short of proving most people wrong. But if they produce a weak performance in the replay - as they’ve done down the years - we’ll cast the same doubts on them all over again.
