HISTORY BECKONS
Mayo’s quest to end 70 years of agony faces ferocious Tyrone test in enthralling showdown
AS A FINAL that no one predicted in a season that few could have imagined, today’s meeting of Mayo and Tyrone has a fitting sense of the extraordinary.
In the last knockout Championship we hope to see in any of our lifetimes, the presumption all summer was of a showdown between the game’s old firm.
Instead, both Dublin and Kerry were shocked in seismic semi-final results. Yet even though both Mayo and Tyrone have been established top-tier forces for many years, their meeting on the biggest day of the Irish sporting year still thrills with a sense of the unknown.
Pundits have equivocated all week; match previews have been acute studies in agonising.
This could be the game that finally gives life to the oldest of clichés: this really might be too close to call.
Tyrone have journeyed through the treacherous terrain of the Ulster Championship, confronted at every turn by high-calibre opposition and they have accounted for them all.
The manner in which they defanged Kerry, after the fraught and still largely unexplained Covid outbreak in the camp, harked back to the county’s glorious powers in the 2000s.
Awaiting them are Mayo, the team who won’t say no.
If it was fitting that they, as the one county to consistently face up to Dublin, were the ones that finally beat the champions, it only brings them halfway up the mountain.
The most trying climb is ahead of them, and the summit has eluded their forebears for 70 years.
Come 5pm, the most intriguing football final in a decade will be in play. The outcome is a mystery. The battle to determine it should be enthralling.
ALAN DILLON’S final trick was to throw Tyrone the kind of curve ball they could not catch. In the twilight of his 15-year career, Dillon’s purpose on the Mayo panel appeared limited to the odd late cameo from the bench and the damning praise that signposts the end of a veteran’s road, ‘his presence in the dressing room’.
He had not started a Championship game in two years — the epic All-Ireland semi-final replay against Kerry in Limerick, which would also mark the end of James Horan’s first stint as manager — when Stephen Rochford went so far left-field with his team selection for the 2016 quarter-final against Tyrone that, as a lastminute announcement, Dillon was named at full-back on the starting team.
His role, however, was tailored to the skill-set that had defined him as one of the smartest and most skilled play-makers in the game and made him a two-time All-Star.
He played as a deep wing-forward, whose job was to keep his team-mates from running into trouble against a Tyrone defence set up to swallow that game, and allow the Ulster champions to sustain themselves on turnedover ball to counter.
In a game far cagier than had been envisaged, Dillon time and again sought out Andy Moran with clever kicks to the inside line and if every ball did not stick, the game-plan most certainly did.
Tyrone managed just a single point on the counter-attack that evening, and Mayo won by that same margin in a game where tactics trumped temper.
Today Dillon will watch from the stands, but he anticipates that what will unfold before him will not be too dissimilar to that quarter-final five years ago.
He believes it has to be that way for Mayo, especially after watching Tyrone ransack Kerry 35 times in the semi-final, which yielded a whopping 2-8 in turnovers.
Tonight’s final will be just the sixth meeting between the counties, and Dillon has played four (winning three) of the previous five, and is adamant that patience is key to avoid the traps that will be set for his county this evening.
‘I think that is hugely important you take the game to them without bringing it into a slugfest,’ he explains.
‘They will look to suck life out of it and play it on their terms and we would have always focused on not bringing the ball into the tackle, keeping the ball moving, changing the point of attack, transition with pace, use your foot if it is on and if it is not then you must recycle.
‘The most important thing is to not get frustrated. They must not play to the crowd who might feel frustrated that we are not playing that exciting brand that we would have against the likes of Kerry or Dublin. Tyrone will have seen Mayo play at their best, will have noted how we tend to score in bursts like against Dublin the last day when one point followed another and I don’t think Tyrone will allow that.
‘They will seek to break momentum as quickly as possible after each score is conceded so Mayo need to try and build, play with intelligence be very meticulous in how they set up with structure and in how they protect and use the ball.’
And that has been pretty much how Mayo have had Tyrone’s measure in the past, but the challenge could be in finding the player who can fill Dillon’s educated boots in that quarter-back role that was so effective five years ago. The answer to that might just be another veteran in his footballing twilight years.
‘Kevin McLoughlin is key,’ explains Dillon.
‘He is crucially important in that half-forward line, his footpassing and delivery inside will be vital. He is the best kicker we have on that line so we probably do need him to be at his best.
‘Kevin is certainly the most experienced in the half-forward line to look for space and be the link from defence into attack,’ says Dillon, who called time on his football career in 2017, before embarking on a very different role representing the county when he was elected to Dáil Éireann in 2019.
It will come as no surprise that he believes Aidan O’Shea — the pair were once work colleagues — will play a full role this evening, in a contest which he believes may be tailored to suit the Mayo captain, who was benched before the end of the third quarter in the semi-final win over Dublin.
‘Everyone has their own opinion on Aidan but he is crucial to the team especially at this stage. ‘Absolutely, he will start. He is a quality footballer.
‘He had a bad day against Dublin, he knows that himself, every player knows when that happens.
‘He had four weeks to dust himself down and reset. He will be crucial to get us across the line.
‘I don’t even think it is a conversation because James himself knows where Aidan O’Shea can be most influential and support the team. And if that is in the fullforward line or if that is as a second number six or around the middle, who knows because I don’t think this game will be played at the kind of frantic pace that we would have seen against a Dublin or a Kerry.
‘I think it will be more tactical and cautious and it might not be until the final quarter when you will see fresh legs opening up and pockets of space being presented. I know from playing Tyrone in recent years, it is a war of attrition and you need your leader in a war.’
Having played in six All-Ireland finals without winning, Dillon will watch today not just as a Mayo supporter, but as one who has also been part of an epic narrative that has morphed into the most compelling quest in Irish sport.
There is a sense that if this team gets over the line, it will validate the blood, sweat and tears of those who went before them.
‘There will be no happier men than all of those who played with
“We will need
McLoughlin at his very best” “The game
will be tactical and cautious”
them to see them cross the line and get rid of this 70-year wait. And it will be for everyone who has gone before as well, there will be that sense of relief, excitement and joy.
‘When you hang up your boots, you hang them up with absolutely no regret and certainly for anyone who has played in the last number of years, or even retired in the last year, they have gone as far as they could have gone.
‘It is great to now see the next crop carry the jersey and there will be no better feeling in the world at 6.45 on Saturday evening if this happens and we can be part of the overall celebrations.
‘I suppose when I do visualise that, I get goosebumps thinking about what it would be like. As a supporter, I am like thousands more, there will be absolute elation.
‘It is a golden opportunity and if Mayo get the best out of themselves, get a good start they could rip into Tyrone.
‘I think this will be the day.’