Mayo will need Aidan O’Shea to wreak havoc to beat Donegal

There were echoes of the old Mayo in how the current crop went about dismantling Tyrone two weeks ago. Just when you figured the air had gone out of Mayo’s season, they suddenly took flight again.

The question now though is which Mayo will turn up at Dr Hyde Park on Sunday – the lacklustre side that lost to Cavan or the high-energy team that beat Tyrone? When the stakes are high and the safety net is gone, that tends to be when Mayo perform.

The victory over Tyrone was predicated on ferocious hard work all across the pitch, forcing turnovers and then breaking at pace. It was pure endeavour, aggression and just playing that unstructured man-to-man type game that seems to comes naturally to them.

But it would be wrong to say it was all chaos football because Mayo managed the game quite well in the second half when Tyrone’s surge arrived. During that period when Darragh Canavan got a goal and Tyrone were clearly in the ascendancy, Mayo didn’t panic.

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They maintained their shape, held the ball when required in a bid to take the sting out of the game, created some of their set 11 v 11 attacks and kept the scoreboard ticking over. They weathered the storm by adopting a structured approach – but they won the contest by playing their traditional brand of football in the first half.

The victory was built on that first-half display. They will need to start like a steam train against Donegal as well because if they are trailing by five or six points at half-time, I don’t see a way back for Mayo.

And that’s where a fundamental issue arises because one long-held criticism of Mayo continues to prevail – they aren’t scoring enough.

Mayo will probably need to get north of 21 or 22 scores to beat Donegal but on the evidence of what they’ve done this year, it doesn’t look like they are going to be able to do that.

Mayo’s highest tally all season was the 2-20 they posted against Sligo in a Connacht quarter-final.

Ryan O’Donoghue of Mayo and Canice Mulligan of Sligo during the Connacht championship. Photograph: Andrew Paton/Inpho

In three of their six championship outings, Donegal have outscored that 2-20 tally. Donegal’s lowest return was 0-20 against Tyrone. Mayo managed just 1-14 against Cavan, Donegal put 3-26 on Raymond Galligan’s side.

So, if Mayo are to remain alive in this year’s championship they will need to bring their best attacking display of the year to the Hyde.

The reality is that if Ryan O’Donoghue is contained Mayo will struggle to get scores from elsewhere. The absence of Tommy Conroy from the attack has allowed Mayo’s opponents to really focus in on stopping O’Donoghue.

One big plus for Mayo is the return of Paddy Durcan, and he showed against Tyrone that he continues to have the ability to carry a scoring threat from deep. Davitt Neary is also a threat carrying the ball at pace.

But when it comes to adding more punch up top, the big question is whether Mayo can utilise Aidan O’Shea more productively?

O’Shea was brilliant against Tyrone but I just wonder, with him in mind, have Mayo harnessed the new rules sufficiently and tested that long kick from outside the 45 to inside the 21? Because O’Shea has great hands and is a brilliant ball winner. With these new rules there is more space now for forwards if direct ball is kicked inside.

Aidan O’Shea after a missed goal chance against Tyrone. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho

Donegal have some very good defenders but they aren’t necessarily the tallest in the game so O’Shea probably has a height advantage there which Mayo could exploit. Donegal might be forced to react to such a tactic by bringing a player like Hugh McFadden back, but if nothing else that would be giving Jim McGuinness something to think about, possibly altering and upsetting his plans.

O’Shea is better known for his assists more than his scoring, laying the ball off with quick hands. I think he has to be more selfish against Donegal – he should take it upon himself to support O’Donoghue in the scoring department.

O’Shea’s scoring rate needs to be higher – he was excellent against Tyrone but in terms of his own shooting he only came away with 0-1. He scored 1-0 against Cavan and was held scoreless in the Connacht final by Galway.

He managed only 0-1 against Leitrim in the semi-final but against Sligo he chipped in with 1-2, and that is the kind of range he needs to be targeting against Donegal.

Over the years he has probably been too selfless in many ways by offloading to a team-mate – I’d like to see him be a bit more score-hungry this weekend because I don’t think Mayo are going to win the game if O’Shea only scores a point or two.

He needs to be just wreaking havoc in there because that in turn will create opportunities for O’Donoghue as Donegal will have more than just one threat to be fussing over.

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Mayo had poured so much of their season towards winning the Nestor Cup and so the disappointment of that Connacht final defeat to Galway at the start of May appeared season-defining. The subsequent defeat to Cavan all but confirmed Mayo’s campaign was about to peter out.

So where did the Tyrone performance come from? There were probably several contributing factors.

Given the energy Mayo had expended for the Connacht final there was a natural comedown for the Cavan game and they potentially took their eye off the ball and weren’t mentally or physically capable of lifting it for that match.

The criticism after that loss and the outside noise suggesting Mayo’s season was done would also have galvanised the group ahead of their trip to Omagh. The news then that Kevin McStay had taken ill and was stepping away on medical grounds would have further united that dressing-room.

Add in the fact Mayo knew they were out of the championship if they lost to Tyrone and you were left with a very dangerous and motivated team.

Mayo will be quite happy playing in Roscommon this weekend as well because they haven’t lost a championship game in the Hyde since 2001.

Cavan's Padraig Faulkner and Killian Brady tackle Ciarán Moore of Donegal in Kingspan Breffni Park. Photograph: Leah Scholes/Inpho

However, Donegal’s form over the course of the season has been stronger than what we have seen from Mayo. And if Mayo are struggling for scorers, Donegal have any amount of them. Mayo had seven different scorers against Cavan, Donegal had 12.

Mayo must set the terms of engagement early on. Stripped all the way back, you’ll essentially probably have unstructured Mayo versus very structured Donegal – so whoever gets to determine the flow of the game will be hard beaten.

Ultimately, I think Donegal will toss too many problems at Mayo for Stephen Rochford’s side to solve them all.

But if Sunday does mark the end of Mayo’s season, they will realise the damage wasn’t done in the Hyde, rather it was done in that defeat to Cavan at MacHale Park.

There was a kick in Mayo against Tyrone last time out but the loss to Cavan might yet prove to already have been a knockout blow.