Opposition teams finding encouragement in McStay’s side’s costly failure to close out games they seemed to have in their hands
Of the 12 teams left standing, only Armagh put up lower totals across the last two games of the round-robin . But low scoring isn’t why they came third in their group. Not directly, at any rate.
Cork's Colm O'Callaghan and Jordan Flynn of Mayo go up for a high ball during their All-Ireland Senior Championship game. Photograph: Evan Treacy/Inpho They were five up on Armagh in the 67th minute and contrived to cough up a draw. They were eight up in Roscommon in the 50th minute and still needed a goal-line stand in injury-time to get out with a win. They were level with Monaghan on the hour mark on the final day but ended up losing by six.
Everyone knows it. How could they not? If you hadn’t seen a minute of Mayo football this year and only looked at the numbers, their fade-out problem would still stand out a mile. “They’re lacking a certain player,” says Padden. “They’re lacking a Seamie O’Shea. They’re lacking somebody who isn’t spectacular but you know that if you put a kick-out down on top of him, he’s not going to end up on the ground and he’s not going to end up in a situation where somebody is going to outfield him. The ball is going to come down and he’ll either win it or it will be there for a break.
Ultimately, the issue is probably more mental than physical. Mayo just haven’t been thinking clearly enough when the pressure has come on. James Carr fluffed a handpass to O’Shea on the edge of the square against Louth when a goal would have killed the game. Last weekend, the celebration of Conroy’s goal indicated a team-wide chilling of the boots. Within a minute, they’d coughed up a penalty at the other end.“They had beaten Cork, they had beaten the blanket.
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