Westerners will relish sparring with the champions

The visit of Dublin to Castlebar will bring a sparkle to the town as James Horan's side look to weigh themselves up against the All-Ireland title holders, writes KEITH DUGGAN

DUBLIN FOOTBALL fans can expect a touch of Saturday night fever around the streets of Castlebar tonight. The visit of Dublin teams never fails to capture the imagination of Mayo football people, primarily because of the stellar All-Ireland semi-finals of 1985, which Mayo lost after a replay and the stirring comeback of 2006, when they stormed to a one-point win having been seven points down with 20 minutes to go.

But they will be hosting Dublin as All-Ireland champions in a period when domestic confidence – always a volatile commodity in Mayo – is riding high on the market. When Pat Gilroy last brought a team to McHale Park, no Dublin side had won there since 1992. He watched a team fashion a 1-10 to 1-9 on a March afternoon of Siberian cold and declared that the visitors were “blessed to get a win.”

There was nothing much between the teams that day but one monumental fact has since separated them. Dublin have won an All-Ireland title and Mayo have not. And that will provide fizz for tonight’s encounter.

When the teams met again last March, it would have been hard to foresee the outcome of the All-Ireland championship based on the narrative of what was a crazy and shapeless encounter in Croke Park. Dublin appeared to be no closer to breaking their All-Ireland semi-final hoodoo, conspiring to hand a place in the final to Cork with a late collapse.

Mayo, meantime, were starting from scratch: John O’Mahony’s term had ended and Mayo had elected for a bright young manager still cutting his teeth with his club in James Horan.

The final score was 4-15 to 3-13: the Dubs had led by 14 points at one stage but then became embroiled in a shoot-out that was fun to watch and impossible to make sense of. Gilroy’s reaction afterwards might well have served as a declaration of intent: “Come the summer, if we go out and defend like that, we won’t be mapped. It’s no big deal. We’ll sort it out. It’s pure laziness. That’s what it comes down to.”

Whatever about Dublin, Mayo seemed like an outside bet to make the last four of the All-Ireland that evening. But by the summer, Horan had begun to shape a defensive unit that would prove as hard-working and honest as Dublin’s. The oddest statistic of last year was that until their semi-final defeat to Kerry (when they conceded 1-20), Mayo’s biggest concession in the championship had been 2-10. Against London!

Getting out of jail after that extra-time match in Ruislip was the one slice of luck that Mayo needed last year but it served to set up Andy Moran for a season to remember and it allowed the Mayo men to come into the Connacht championship off the radar.

They won it quietly and then ambushed reigning All-Ireland champions Cork in the quarter-final, a victory that made people look at the job that Horan had done with Mayo from a new perspective.

The arc of Horan’s managerial career shows a swift curve. Leading a club team, Ballintubber, to an intermediate championship in 2007 was impressive but what really caught the eye was he immediately made them contenders at senior level.

The team lost quarter-finals in 2008 and 2009 and then went and won their first title in 100 years in 2010.

The win was perfectly timed, arriving just when the interviews to replace John O’Mahony were taking place and even though Horan’s was not the most experienced name on the list of candidates, he was the person most Mayo football people wanted.

“Everything we do has involved concentrating on the basic skills of the game, trying to get our passing and shooting right and by working very hard. We try and play good football,” he explained before Ballintubber’s Connacht club game against Killererin of Galway.

It was as if he applied the same principles to the Mayo job, doing enough to survive and adding deft touches which transformed the shape of the team as the championship began. Trevor Mortimer was recast as a wing back and Aiden O’Shea as a midfielder.

Losing Conor Mortimer for the season could have been regarded as a crippling blow for the county. Instead, when it came to the championship, Horan had the courage to trust 19-year-old Cillian O’Connor, a Ballintubber player, with the free-taking duties.

After last year’s championship, O’Connor said he had written his personal ambitions down for the year; he wanted to make the FBD panel, hopefully score and feature in a league game for the county.

Instead, he finished up by scoring 1-3 against Kerry in the All-Ireland semi-final, was nominated for an All-Star and won the Young Player of the Year award.

Now, with Mortimer back to full health and clipping points with his usual accuracy last weekend against Laois, Horan has developed another marquee forward within the space of a year.

And in the close season, he secured the services of Cian O’Neill, the former Tipperary fitness and conditioning coach.

O’Neill is making the round trip from Limerick to Mayo twice a week, attracted by the opportunity to return to his “first” sport and of working with a team on the rise. This time last year, Horan was still mapping out a panel and a methodology in his mind. This year, the bookmakers have them installed as fifth favourites for the All-Ireland title.

So tonight, they play the holders of that title and with a tea-time throw-in to facilitate the rugby international in Paris, the mood will be giddy in Castlebar.

A crowd of 10,000 is expected to bring something more than league curiosity to the match.

Dublin have travelled a long way since that cold afternoon when Gilroy thanked the heavens for a narrow league win. They return to the west as the team that every other county wants to beat and they have managed to achieve the sacred feat that has eluded Mayo for 60 years and counting.

A win tonight would be another small step on that road for the Mayo men.