Survival. That’s what the weekend was about. At a certain point, style means nothing and staying alive is the only substance. Sixteen teams started out, 12 are left standing. Mayo, Roscommon, Derry and Clare are the counties who couldn’t escape the guillotine’s blade.
Mayo went out in maybe the most Mayo way possible. The clock in Dr Hyde Park read 69:43 when Fergal Boland drew them level with Donegal. The crowd bounced in the stands, as a draw would mean Cavan were gone and Mayo were through.
With Tyrone 12 points up at the time, Donegal could do nothing to improve their lot. Draw the game, win the game – it didn’t matter. They were finishing second regardless. All that was left was for their goalkeeper Shaun Patton to boot the ball into the stands.
He did not boot the ball into the stands.
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Instead, he aimed one last long kick-out at Brendan McCole, overhit it with the wind behind him and saw it bounce into the arms of Ciarán Moore. The hooter went as Moore gathered the ball and the young Donegal wing-back skinned Seán Morahan, cut inside Jack Carney and scored the winner.
And so Mayo were beaten, sent out of the championship by a point that didn’t even do Donegal any good. They paid the highest tariff possible for losing to Cavan three weeks ago. “When you play a league format, you get what you deserve,” said Stephen Rochford afterwards. “Over the course of the three games, the league table doesn’t lie.”
The championship is feral and suffocating. Of the eight games over the weekend, six were decided by four points or less. Tyrone’s 13-point hammering of Cavan and the nine (!) points Meath had over Kerry were the only outliers. Everywhere else, it was scratch and claw and scrabble all the way to the end.
Even Clare, lowly Clare, forgotten and dismissed by everyone, presumed an easy mark for Louth, even they hauled it back to a two-point game as time ran dead. Ger Brennan’s side survived but they were ragged and frayed by the hooter’s blast.
You want a sense of how tight this all is? None of the provincial champions are guaranteed a spot in the All-Ireland quarter-finals. The fortnight’s break that comes with topping your round-robin group will be enjoyed by Monaghan, Meath, Armagh and Tyrone. The latter two are among the favourites for Sam Maguire, despite having been beaten twice in the championship already. Every county has lost at least once.
That’s how it goes. On a weekend like this, everyone starts out like a school student with a brand new copybook, all neat lines and tidy writing. By the end, everything is covered in ink blots and scribbles and Tipp-Ex, and you’re hoping against hope that you’ve poxed the right answers. Fortunes flip in the time it takes to update the ScoreBeo app.
On 54 minutes, Mayo were bottom of the table and going out. On 55, they were top and heading straight to the quarter-final. On 56, they were in third and going away next weekend for a preliminary quarter-final. On 57, they were bottom again.
Ultimately, they danced on the knife-edge one too many times, sunk by their terrible display at home to Cavan the first day out. They end the group stage with a points difference that is 32 points superior to Cavan’s but go out on the head-to-head record. Given that they were able to match strides with Donegal and Tyrone, it is a deeply careless way to exit the championship.
Survival is all. You have to find a way. Mayo and Derry are better than probably four of the remaining teams and a match for the rest on their day. But their game-management let them down when it mattered most. Derry should have seen out their game against Galway last week. Mayo only needed to play one more pass before their equaliser and there wouldn’t have been time for the kick-out. But both made a mess of it and so the season is done.
Others got busy livin’. Galway are the most dangerous third-placed team in Monday morning’s draw and will be going to one of Ballybofey, Killarney or Newry next weekend. Armagh had them on toast for the first half on Saturday night but Pádraic Joyce’s side found their way back and won. He summed up the game – and the whole weekend – perfectly.
“Yeah, look, the objective, obviously, was to get out of it. You try and get out in as high a position as you can. The way the last two weeks went for us, we happily settled for third to win the game tonight. We’re happy to just get out of it.
“We were eight down at half-time. Could have been more down actually as well. In saying that, we fought back. We knew at half-time that we were fighting for our lives. The lads showed great character and I’m really proud of them, the way they played. It was great. We’re on to next week.”
The only thing that matters.
