ON THE SAME WEEKEND of All Ireland quarter finals that Sean Cavanagh made his decisive and controversial rugby tackle on Conor McManus, another game carrying all the whiff of cordite passed without major incident.
Leading into that weekend, all of the talk was about Donegal and Mayo. It was, after all, the pairing from the previous year’s All Ireland final.
And there was more than a little spice to it as well. Like many others, Donegal were struggling to cope with the crown and lost the Ulster final to Monaghan. Many complaints were raised about Monaghan’s physical nature after that.
In a qualifier soon after, Laois had them rattled also. There was an unedifying spectacle in the sideline when Donegal manager Jim McGuinness and his assistant Rory Gallagher approached the Laois management of Justin McNulty and Fergal Byron, only to comically shoved with impressive strength back in the direction they came.
The champions were particularly vulnerable.
In the week before the quarter-final, selector Gallagher told The Irish News that everything Mayo manager James Horan said, was carefully orchestrated by their then sports psychologist, Kieran Shannon. And that Mayo and Monaghan had ‘colluded’ in how to beat Donegal.
Even at that, the 4-17 to 1-10 beating Mayo handed out to Donegal was the biggest-ever defeat of a defending champion. One that Horan would describe years later as how Mayo ‘smashed them.’
Both management teams gave the distinct impression, many years before they would yuk it up together for the podcast circuit, they had no time for each other. ‘Mr McGuinness’ was James Horan’s way of addressing his adversary.
There was anger around an attempt to claim the other’s dressing room for the 2012 final. Some words from Aidan O’Shea about Donegal’s overly-physical approach after losing the 2012 final made their way back to McGuinness months later. He had a sharp rebuke.
This weekend represents the first time McGuinness has faced Mayo since that game. Remarkable.
Who best to turn to when you’re mining the seam of the Donegal-Mayo rivalry, but to Martin Carney?
From making his first county appearance for Donegal in 1971 when he was still a boarder in St Eunan’s, Letterkenny, Carney played an astonishing 13 seasons straight with Donegal.
Then, at the age of 33, he switched allegiance to Mayo, where he was Principal at Scoil Mhuire agus Padraig in Swinford, and played on for another six seasons.
And you gently suggest, in order to get the ball rolling that this is rivalry is not exactly Celtic-Rangers, but all the same it has had its’ moments…
He does the sensible thing and pops that balloon.
“The rivalry between Mayo and Donegal, well at times it has been sharp. But this weekend, I am not sure it will rise above a glorified challenge match,” says Carney.
You tell him a line that’s doing the rounds; that Donegal have booked a weekend residential training camp for the same weekend as the league final, as they have Derry in Ballybofey on 6 April.
“But sure Mayo are the same. They are out on the 6th of April as well and they are playing Sligo,” he says.
“Alright, Sligo are a division three team and languishing at the bottom of it. But I know from a good friend of mine in Sligo, TJ Kilgallon, that Sligo are not nearly as bad as their league position would suggest.
“On top of that, Sligo have the Connacht club champions this year, Coolera-Strandhill. They will be competitive and offer a huge challenge. So therefore, the league final is in the middle of all of that.”
With classic understatement, he reckons that, “In their heart of hearts, neither Kevin McStay or Jim McGuinness are madly enthusiastic about reaching the final.
“And yet, when the ball is thrown in, one team or the other is going to win it.”
And therein lies the problem. It calls to mind an ancient line handed down the annals whereby one team in Ulster was playing and winning well in an ÓFiaich Cup semi-final.
The reward for winning meant they would be out in the final a week later in weather you would scarcely leave a milk bottle out in.
“Houl up boys,” one player cautioned his team mates at half-time.
“If we don’t watch ourselves, we could end up winning this thing.”
And therein lies the issue with the 2025 Allianz national football league division one.
It’s been, pardon the lingo, a balls. An entertaining and wild ride for sure. But a balls all the same.
A competition played under severe rule changes that no counties had an opportunity to prepare for with the pre-season competitions. A ridiculous training embargo that those who adhered to look like mugs now compared to the ones who were out for several weeks before.
A competition played under new rules, that were altered and ‘clarified’ midway through, before brand new rules came in for the last two rounds. What other sport in the world does that?
Usually, the aim of the league is to get a good start, then do enough to be in a chance of winning some silverware, although you don’t want to appear too keen.
This year, the tightness of the league has meant that even on the final day, Mayo could be relegated on seven points – something that has not happened since the leagues were streamlined in 2008.
And yet, even that might feel preferable to the outcome that befell them in 2023, when they won the league and beat Galway in the final, only to find that their juices were dry a week later when facing and losing to Roscommon in the first round of the Connacht championship.
“Ironically, if they win it, they could end up with something they really don’t want,” says Carney.
“It has been their experience that has informed the thinking of all the other managers since.
“Mayo didn’t have the legs that day. They didn’t seem to have it in them mentally to get up to that point where they needed to be and their summer imploded subsequently.”
As for Donegal, there’s nothing there for them.
“If you were to get an injury, to the likes of Peader Mogan, Michael Murphy, if one of those type players pulled a hamstring and it was an injury that was going to keep them out for more than three or four weeks…” wonders Carney.
“All of a sudden, they are gone from playing in an Ulster final if they got that far.
“And yet there is the other side of it. Is Jim McGuinness going to be happy going into an Ulster championship, happy off the back of three defeats in four games?
“It’s just one of these illogical situations, impossible to predict how they are going to approach it. And yet we know for certain that both of them, Kevin McStay and Jim McGuinness, don’t want to pick up injuries this weekend coming. And they are both questioning the wisdom of getting to the national league final when it eats up that week that they could be spending preparing for the championship.
“And McStay in particular, it’s a case of once-bitten, twice shy.”
It’s like the old Ben Folds Five song title, that only a nerdy 40-something could recall; ‘The Battle of Who Could Care Less.’
I don’t blame the counties. I blame the GAA for the ridiculous scheduling. They should at a minimum a two break between the league final and a county first championship game.
@Diarmuid: Yep. I think they’re changing it to 2 weeks next year alright as the group games in the Championship will be replaced with the qualifiers again which work better I think…