THE PRECISE MOMENT WHEN Mayo became cast-iron All-Ireland contenders of the modern era was with the arrival of James Horan as manager in late 2010.
Previous incarnations under John O’Mahony and John Maughan, fun and character-laden as they were, weren’t the type of teams that would hang around.
They would fetch up in finals with the mouth-agape wonder of hillbillies in New York, gawping at the height of skyscrapers.
And then they would be scraped off the floor, sent back across the Shannon.
When Horan arrived, he had been part of that first culture and was determined to break the cycle.
He got rid of the ‘collar-up’ attitude. Under Donie Buckley, they became the side that thrived on stripping opponents of the ball. A hard-tackling, ultra-running crash-bang-wallop group of assassins with a little guile up top from Andy Moran and Cillian O’Connor.
Their first league game in 2011 was a draw with Down, who had been in the previous year’s All-Ireland final. Losses to Kerry and Armagh followed.
And then they went to Croke Park. Dublin were undergoing a metamorphosis similar to Mayo, but Pat Gilroy was already more than two seasons deep into the work.
Dublin won 4-15 to 3-13. A pitch-opening scoreline. No hint of what was to come for the next decade.
After 23 minutes, Dublin were 4-4 to 0-2 up, Diarmuid Connolly hitting a hat-trick of goals.
By 45 minutes, Mayo were level, notching 3-9 to 0-4. Dublin finished out the last segment 0-7 to 0-2.
As unusual as it was as a spectacle, momentum would then become the dominant theme of the rivalry.
Pare it all back to the bare statistics and there are those who have difficulties framing Dublin and Mayo as a genuine ‘rivalry’.
Take it back to that 2011 league meeting and the sides faced each other 15 times in the league from then to now. One game in 2012 was abandoned due to fog and refixed at a later date.
Dublin won nine of those games. Mayo won three and the 2014 meeting in Croke Park was a draw.
A quick examination of those Mayo wins also tells a tale. While they won that 2012 refixture 0-20 to 0-8 in Castlebar, they never beat Dublin while Jim Gavin was manager from 2013 to 2019.
Their other wins came in 2022, a Mayo 2-11 to Dublin 0-12 win in Croke Park, and this league campaign just gone by in Castlebar, 1-12 to 0-14.
You want the aggregate scores of those games. Of course you do! It’s a bit like going to Mass. Mightn’t do you any good, but it won’t do you any harm.
Well, seeing as we have them, Dublin scored 223 points to Mayo’s 180.
In that light, the dominance of Dublin was so absolute that Kerry may be felt to be a more genuine contender, especially given their All-Ireland wins in 2014 and 2022.
But it ignores the intensity of the Dublin-Mayo championship games in all weathers in Croke Park. Downpours, Indian Summer afternoons, sun splitting the stones, these two served it up year after year.
For all the crying about the state of Gaelic football, there were entire seasons that were deplorable, right up to the point where Mayo would head east on a crusade, only to find a new way to come up short against Dublin once more. And the finals were so good that everyone parked their reservations for another winter.
The days when it came good for Mayo, they managed to suck the good out of it.
The 2012 All-Ireland semi-final win, Mayo 0-19 to Dublin 0-14 sits along with the 2021 semi-final, Mayo 0-17, Dublin 0-14.
So much emotion was on show those days that they instantly looked vulnerable. In the final reckoning, it was two teams staffed with ruthless Ulster buggers in Donegal and Tyrone that took home Sam.
In three seasons, 2015 to 2017, they met five times. They produced two draws and three Dublin wins.
There was foul means and fair. There was the constant match-up of Diarmuid Connolly and Lee Keegan. The two Mayo own goals in the 2016 drawn final when Dublin managed only 0-6 from play.
There were mass wrestling pin-downs. A factorys-worth of jerseys ripped. Concussions and knocks and thumps and red cards and play-acting to get a man red-carded. It was a madness, one that will be deserving of a book to mark a decades’ passing.
It was also, at least on the Mayo side, a time of great emotion and attachment to the team. When the BBC would even tune into it and tap up an off-the-peg hokum piece for their website about curses or some sort.
How Dublin supporters railed against this! Despite taking matters as far as Mayo wanted – and often Mayo were the aggressors – and beating them with football, they couldn’t get a handle on the propaganda wars.
When you enjoy all those numerical, financial and geographical advantages, then nobody has any sympathy.
When you play all the big games at your home stadium, you haven’t a chance.
Although they took all the titles, there are still a big chunk of Dublin fans irked by how Mayo were frequently portrayed as the Nation’s Darlings as they sought to end the decades of yearning for Sam.
The aggregates from the championship matches? Am I hearing you right? Of course you do. A bit like Mass and all that.
Ten meetings, Two wins for Mayo, two draws, six wins for Dublin. Overall score; Dublin 187 points, Mayo 165.
The rivalry now has the feel of something that has passed by.
When they went in at half time with Dublin up by a single point in last year’s quarter-final, it felt like the game could erupt in the time0-honoured fashion.
Instead, Dublin hit 1-11 to 0-3 in the second half.
This Sunday in The Hyde is a phony war. If they chose so, Mayo could rest their frontline players and get ready for an assault launched from the safety of being the home side in a preliminary quarter-final.
Pride will prevent that though. It will still be box-office, with the additional fascination of the Dubs on a rare road trip, this time to the Hyde.
Roll on Sunday.
