Connacht SFC quarter-final: Mayo v Roscommon (Sunday, 4pm, MacHale Park, live on RTÉ2)
PAUL Mannion would have stood out in Boston no matter what he did. The peroxide follicles made sure.
In most outings for Donegal Boston, he had things his own way. Such is life for one of the game’s great forwards. But when they met Connemara Gaels, and he ran into Jack Coyne, it wasn’t quite so handy.
Coyne caught the eye in last weekend’s league final against Galway with his performance on Rob Finnerty. Getting up to kick Mayo’s last score, pushing them four clear in stoppage time, did no harm either.
Mayo’s U20 captain in 2020, James Horan said the following year that he was “really excited” about Coyne’s future.
Coming from the same Ballyhaunis club, comparisons to Keith Higgins are inevitable.
Yet his only championship minutes to date have been the last five against Leitrim in 2021, a game Mayo won by 5-20 to 0-11.
Colm Reape won man-of-the-match in Sunday’s league final, making a string of saves. Interviewed by TG4’s Michéal Ó Domhnaill afterwards, he looked decidedly sheepish. This is so new.
A few kickout wobbles in the FBD League and early days in Division One suggested that when Rob Hennelly was fit again, he’d come straight back in. But Reape has grown with each passing week. He will wear one against Roscommon on merit.
David McBrien was withdrawn as a precaution at half-time on Sunday and is named to start this weekend. He hadn’t done much wrong on Shane Walsh.
Sam Callinan, at just 19, looked set to start in the corner but the team named has him dropped to the bench, with Donnacha McHugh a surprise inclusion at number four.
Callinan pushed out on Walsh after half-time last Sunday, with Paddy Durcan drafted to full-back to pick up sub Damien Comer in McBrien’s absence.
Jack Coyne’s five minutes against Leitrim are the only five championship minutes owned by the Mayo full-back line and goalkeeper.
Colm Reape, David McBrien, Donnacha McHugh and Sam Callinan haven’t kicked a ball between them yet in championship.
You can only assume Roscommon will target that area.
The same assumption was made of Galway, though. That they’d go after it in Croke Park, see if Mayo’s new-look defence is all it’s cracked up to be. With a forward line of Walsh, Finnerty, Matthew Tierney, Peter Cooke and Johnny Heaney, and with Comer to throw in, Mayo will have been delighted to keep them to 0-11.
Reape had a big hand in that, of course. On another day, they would have conceded four, maybe five goals and the questions would ring in their ears seven days out from championship.
Kevin McStay’s house is literally a couple of hundred yards from Dr Hyde Park. He managed Roscommon for three years, the first of them alongside Fergal O’Donnell in 2016.
They won Connacht the following year and met Mayo in an All-Ireland quarter-final that they lost heavily after a replay, having led by 2-2 to 0-1 early in the drawn game.
Before Roscommon went out that day, McStay told them that “the honour falls to us now, as Roscommon people. Our families, our friends, they want to walk f***ing talls, lads, in this stadium. They’re fed up sneaking out the back door.”
His affinity with Roscommon could never be questioned, but nor could where his heart really lay. When McStay stepped down in 2018, he announced he was retiring from inter-county football management. He had given up on ever getting the Mayo job he so coveted.
Well might he enjoy it as much as he has so far.
Had he been in his front room rather than the away dugout when Mayo and Roscommon played in this year’s league, he wouldn’t have heard so much as a peep from the huge home crowd for the first hour.
Everything about that game suggests Mayo cannot fail to win on Sunday. They were so utterly dominant, so comfortable, and playing without Aidan O’Shea or Ryan O’Donoghue in their attack.
Davy Burke’s side were turned over at will. Mattie Ruane controlled midfield. It was 0-7 to 0-0 at one stage. The Rossies rallied as Mayo eased up and somehow it finished a two-point game, but it wasn’t that at all.
The one thing Burke might take from it is the difference Ciarain Murtagh, Conor Cox and Donie Smith made off the bench. Murtagh and Cox are named to start, but they’ve appeared there on paper throughout the league and not actually started.
The three-horse race dynamic of Connacht is slightly misleading. The Rossies have played in five of the last seven provincial finals, winning two of them. In the same time period, Mayo won their only two finals.
Yet it was always Galway that Roscommon had a handle on.
Their 2019 win over Mayo was their first in championship football since 2001, and their first in Castlebar for 33 years.
Lifting themselves from the league meeting, knowing Mayo are even more buoyant now than they were then, is a psychological challenge you can't see them passing.
TEAMS
Mayo: C Reape; J Coyne, D McBrien, D McHugh; S Coen, C Loftus, P Durcan; M Ruane, D O’Connor; F McDonagh, J Carney, J Flynn; A O’Shea, J Carr, R O’Donoghue
Subs: R Byrne, S Callinan, T Conroy, J Doherty, F Irwin, D McHale, E McLaughlin, C McStay, C O’Connor, P O’Hora, P Towey
Roscommon: C Carroll; C Hussey, C Daly, D Murray; N Daly, B Stack, E McCormack; D Ruane, K Doyle; C Murtagh, C Lennon, E Smith; C Cox, D Murtagh, B O’Carroll
Subs: C Lavin, C Walsh, R Dolan, R Hughes, R Fallon, C Connolly, D Smith, C McKeon, N Kilroy, P Carey, E Nolan
