@maroonandwhite owns Supermacs now??
McStay needs to do a Ten Hag and axe the troublemakers. Everyone knows what the fundamental issues are. Its a 4 year stint so heâs clearly been given license to. A lot of notions on that team, put the foot down year 1 and get rid of the deadwood on day one. Otherwise another 4 years of bullshit from Mayo in store
He needs to shoot one of them early on. Thatâll sort the rest
The Galway boys were cock sure of themselves this summer.
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For once the familiar tingle of drama as the Mayo county board gathered last Monday evening to hear news of their new football manager wasnât turned into a shudder by a sprinkle of mortification. Two days had passed since four candidates had endured interviews in Westport, described afterwards as somewhere between impressively meticulous and brutally gruelling.
The five-person committee, created to avoid the embarrassments of previous years, was chosen to avoid any conflicts of interest with the candidates. From Saturday till Monday, all five stayed gloriously schtum. For the Mayo footballing public used to gorging on rumour and conspiracy, it must have felt like Lent.
The announcement of Kevin McStay as manager, above all others, was significant for Mayo in a few ways. Having been humiliated in 1995 and 2014 when he stepped up before, the new process was strengthened by his decision to go again. It also drew better people into the mix. The calibre of the candidates â Ray Dempsey, Mike Solan and Declan Shaw â and their backroom teams was stunningly good.
Where does it all leave the mood in a place where football seeps easily into the mainstream conversations of everyday life like few other places? âI was at a funeral in Donegal last weekend,â says the former Mayo player Martin Carney. âDonegal are without a manager but there wasnât a word about it. Down here weâve had six weeks of an ongoing soap opera, everyone wondering whoâll get it. Itâs so unlike anywhere else how football infects the day-to-day conversations everywhere.â
Between them Carney, Mike Finnerty, Rob Murphy and John Gunnigan have lived and worked for decades to translate that passion for the wider world. Finnerty is sports editor of the Mayo News and GAA commentator for Sky Sports; Gunniganâs Mayo GAA Blog is a long-standing online saloon for supporters currently trending towards eight million page views by the end of the year.
Murphy has presented the mammoth Mayo Newsâ Football Podcast since 2009, an unflinching travelogue of Mayoâs championship excursions. All of them have played or worked with McStay. None of them saw this coming âŚ
Mike Finnerty: A surprise? Yes, in bold letters with block caps. Iâd have met Kevin in commentary boxes and GAA grounds and Kevin never changed his stance. His view was, âNo: itâs not something at this time of my life I feel I should go for, too much water under the bridgeâ. I can only assume once Kevin started to find out more about how the process was going to run and once he was happy it was not likely to be tweaked or sidelined, his interest began to pique.
Rob Murphy: I could sense this year in the conversations I was having with him that he was re-engaging with the whole Mayo story in a different way. This is just a theory, but the way we lost to Tyrone (in the 2021 All-Ireland final) changed his whole idea of managing Mayo. One line stuck with me: no one had adequately explained in a way I can understand what happened in that All-Ireland final. It fascinates me why Kevin McStay has come back: from a 2019 interview with us where he said the reason I can talk freely now is Iâm done, to going into the job of his life.
Martin Carney: Kevin earned it. Once you saw the other candidates in the race, all the teams carried a lot of weight. Kevin had a star-studded team but he had to go and earn it. And thatâs what he did.
John Gunnigan: He held his counsel until he unloaded the team, and that was really an arms race moment. The question became: is anybody else going to compete with that? Kevinâs playing of the process upped the quality of the choice. It was a brilliant masterstroke.
The success of that appointments process is why this could be a watershed moment for Mayo, but because it took six weeks, and given Mayoâs history, were people suspicious?
JG: There was a lot of head-scratching over why it was taking so long but there wasnât a feeling that anything fast and loose was happening. And thereâs even an odd few people willing to give the county board credit for doing the job right this time.
MC: It was right it was done in a certain way and that this particular process was put in place before the appointment was made, but if it could have been condensed somewhat, that would have been helpful all round.
RM: Itâs great credit to Liam Moffatt (Mayo chairman 2019-21). The real difference he could make was with the stuff thatâs far from sexy. The stuff that absolutely matters. Most people are well capable of taking disappointment and compartmentalising it. Whatâs really difficult to do is when it just feels wrong. Kevin McStay didnât mince his words when he wrote in his book about how much (losing the 2014 managerial race despite no other club nominating a candidate) hurt him.
MF: Most managerial appointments within my lifetime, they were open to allegations of bias, favouritism, cronyism. Because Mayo GAA is so high profile, to have gone through such public washing of the dirty linen, that really hurt Mayo GAA as an organisation and as a brand.
JG: If you go back to 2014, that story hit the papers on All-Ireland weekend. People actually stopped talking about the All-Ireland final and started talking about our nonsense, which was shocking altogether.
But with such granular local coverage across nearly two months, are the media also feeding the beast?
RM: I think it helps keep it from spiralling out of control. People canât stop thinking about this. Therapists will tell you itâs better to talk.
MF: At one point, believe it or not, it felt like there was nothing left to say. But as the candidates started to become known, it felt a little bit Premier League for a week or two. All that was missing was Sky Sports News trying to interview guys in the window of their car in McHale Park.
MC: I have a cup of tea with Willie Joe [Padden], John Maughan and a few others every week and it was mighty fun. The amount of red herrings weâd have for each other. It was like a weekly episode of a TV series.
MF: Edwin (McGreal, the Mayo News journalist) was out doing a news feature in Ballinrobe mart. Thereâs a tea canteen and itâs the centre of the universe on a Wednesday. The only thing they wanted to talk about was Kevin McStay, the backroom team, and what do you think . . . Nothing else. I love the line Billy Joe (Padden, former Mayo footballer) uses: it is the most important of the non-important stuff.
JG: The other bit from the supportersâ side was some degree of feeling that it shouldnât become a circus, like, âOh god, I hope weâre not going to make a holy show of ourselves againâ. There was a dampening down because of that.
Has the change in mood since the 2021 All-Ireland final defeat also dampened things?
JG: Itâs huge. We could always have said 2016-17 when everyone else was on their knees genuflecting to the greatest team ever, we were not. We were fighting to the bitter end. That was just blown to pieces last September. We were presented, as we see it, with an All-Ireland final on a silver platter and we couldnât take the damn thing. Itâs been a very sour, divisive mood among supporters.
MF: A lot of the reaction was coloured by what Mayo did and didnât do before and after the final. Nobody has explained in any sort of meaningful detail what happened. You head into the winter then with this hangover in the background. That didnât change when this season started. It did cause a disconnect as the season went on.
RM: You can see it in the attendances. The Kildare and Kerry attendances, I was really taken aback by the size of the Mayo crowd.
Is that fracture in the support and the team significant?
RM: Itâs important for people outside the county to understand the difference between the attachment to the cause and the love for football. The attachment to the cause was created by James Horan, itâs the Mayo for Sam stuff but itâs also when people go, âGod, thereâs 15,000 in Ennis for a qualifier against Clareâ. Then thereâs the love for football. At the county board meeting it was mentioned Ballycastle have redone their clubhouse. What football is in all these outposts is just incredible. I donât think anyone should ever assume Mayo will always carry this massive wave of support. Mayo people expect something to happen, otherwise they get disillusioned with what theyâre seeing.
What will McStay bring that Mayo need?
MF: Heâs very strong on identity, the importance of that connection between home and when you hit the field. He would be frustrated with the repeated mistakes, the concession of goals in big games. Kevin would go after a defensive structure. He will believe in a traditional style of Mayo football but heâs a realist as well. Heâll bring positivity, energy; there were times in the last few years it didnât feel as enjoyable as it should have. There wasnât that sense that everyone was in it together.
JG: Not only were the supporters not enjoying it, the players didnât look like they were enjoying themselves either. Weâd lumber up to the halfway line and just go lateral. They looked like they hated playing it as much as the supporters hated looking at it. Even James Horanâs body language looked like he wasnât enjoying it either. That was a question for all of us: what the hell are we doing here?
MF: There wonât be transition in terms of building a squad, itâs more the structural stuff. Defensively they have issues to fix; midfield is an area that needs tying down â who partners Mattie Ruane and how do you get the best out of him? There is a fair bit of work to be done.
JG: But isnât that a weekâs or monthâs job? That shouldnât be a yearâs job.
MF: Itâs not that Iâm making excuses, but the lads involved are around long enough to know thereâs no such thing as a quick fix. We donât know how Tommy Conroy and Ryan OâDonoghue will come back from injuries. We donât know how Cillian OâConnor will recover. We donât know for sure if Lee Keegan and Kevin McLoughlin will commit. Thereâs a question mark over what they do with Aidan [OâShea]. Rob Hennelly hasnât kicked a ball since the All-Ireland quarter-final. Itâs not a rebuild, but thereâs a bit of work to be done under the bonnet.
MC: I still think Mayo are going to be relevant. Theyâll be formidable enough in the medium term but maybe not immediately. First year, the Mayo public will need to show a bit of patience. But theyâll be relevant.
Thatâs all theyâll ask of McStay. For now.
I didnât read that but I can tell you right not McStayâs Mayo will be an unmitigated disaster. He is the worst possible manager at the woorst possible time. A born loser and a dinasour to boot taking over an entire team of self entitled born losers, classic Mayo.
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Mayo will win the all Ireland.
A cunt of the highest order to boot
A lot of talk this year from the Mayo for Sam crowd that they didnât have Conroy and OâDonoghue available this year and the huge difference they would have made. No doubt theyâre both an improvement on what was there this year. But they were both there when Mayo lost to Tyrone in Sept 21. I think OâDonoghue has promise, but Galway eventually sussed him out in the Connacht Championship and he was poor in the second half in McHale park back in April.
Itâs a football mad county. But no more football mad than Tyrone, Kerry, or several other places. Iâve always said that a Mayo footballer canât fart and it would be known all around the County in minutes. To my mind it has permeated into the mindset of several Mayo panelists over the years. They are treated like absolute superstars within the County. I remember Mayo cousins regaling me breathlessly with news of a Mayo players new tattoo.
There are some very genuine football people attached to the Mayos. But the Mayo for Sam circus crowd can go fuck themselves.
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I spend a lot of time in Mayo and i likes the county and its people. Thats a strong management team and i think they will be there or thereabouts. Football is fairly even at the moment so they could actually win one without being as good as they were in 2016 and 2017. I hope they do.
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Itâs mad really. I donât think any other county would get articles written in the national papers about the appointment of a new manager like that. Itâs more like something you would see in the local rags. The media have an endless fascination with all things Mayo.
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Mayo are box office,in saying that I donât think Mcstay is the answer.
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Youâd want to have a cold dead heart not to want to see Mayo get over the line eventually.
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Thereâs a lot to unpack there.
Firstly, what did the adult do to get 96 weeks?
Secondly, what were Westport doing appealing the ban if what he did warranted 96 weeks?
Thirdly, what were Mayo GAA doing reducing the ban if they decided he deserved 96 weeks in the first place?
Fourthly, what the fuck are Mitchels doing involving TUSLA in a GAA match? If they were concerned for the child, surely they should have gone down that path long before now?
I have no idea, would be guessing they might have strayed into mandatory reporting territory, whether intentional or inadvertently
But surely that should have been reported immediately and not waiting until now? Am I reading it right? Have they drawn in Tusla to win a game/get Westport fucked out?