18-05-2025
Colm Boyle column: I can't see McStay lifting Mayo now, Dubs still a real danger
It may have been a shock but there was no element of fluke about Cavan's victory over Mayo in Castlebar.
Cavan's second half performance, in which they scored 1-13, was brilliant and they were cruising in the end, with Aidan O'Shea's late goal putting some gloss on the scoreboard for Mayo.
Darren McHale had been the only other Mayo forward to score from play prior to that, having kicked a point in the first half.
Up the other end Cormac O'Reilly and Oisín Kiernan were running riot on the Mayo back line.
The first half was abysmal with Mayo undeservedly leading by 0-7 to 0-4 at half time. They scored six times (including one two-pointer) from a measly eight shots with a slight breeze on their backs on a perfect day for football.
I was expecting Mayo to come out with real intent and energy at the start of the second half. Instead they won possession from the throw-in and signalled to play keep ball. Cavan turned them over, broke fast and finished Gerard Smith blasted to the net. They never looked back from there.
For Mayo this is a fatal blow to any lingering hopes they had of being a bolter in this year's Championship. The defeat itself is obviously a worry from a Mayo point of view, but the manner of it is far more concerning. Their body language for most of the second half was really poor.
The lack of fight and resistance against the second half Cavan tide was startling. Time and time again Cavan broke through the middle of an absent Mayo defence and picked off scores while Mayo players ambled back after them.
On the ball there was no quality in their play and nobody was thinking clearly in the last 20 minutes with some really poor decisions made on the ball, which seemed to snowball.
There was no urgency on the Mayo sideline either as they waited until the 55th minute to make their first substitution with Fenton Kelly replacing Jack Carney. On a day of sweltering heat, they waited until the 69th and 70th minute to make their last two changes when the game was effectively over.
This was a sobering day for Mayo football and it's hard to see how Kevin McStay will raise his team for Tyrone in two weeks' time.
But Cavan are the story and for Raymond Galligan and his troops it was a brilliant result.
Ahead of the All-Ireland series, all the talk was of a 'big four' that had suddenly emerged.
Well, Dublin showed on Saturday evening that this quartet - Armagh, Donegal, Galway and Kerry - are all vulnerable to those in the chasing pack.
To describe Dublin's win over Galway as an ambush would be wrong considering the ridiculous amount of All-Ireland medals that the core group of the Dublin squad have. But it was a timely reminder that class is permanent and no one demonstrated that more than Ciaran Kilkenny.
This is not the best Dublin team that Kilkenny has been a part of and it was far from one of the biggest games he has played in, but it was one of his most influential games in a Dublin jersey.
That's a statement I didn't think I would be saying at this stage of Kilkenny's career but what we witnessed on Saturday evening was an act of defiance. Think of Roy Keane in Turin in 1999 and you're getting close to Kilkenny's masterclass of leadership in Salthill.
Straight from the off, with his team playing into the Salthill breeze, he got to work and assisted Sean Bulger and Killian McGinnis for Dublin's first two scores. He finished the half with two more assists for Con O'Callaghan's scores and a buzzer beater point for himself in a move where he touched the ball four times.
With Dublin expected to struggle on their own kickout in particular, Kilkenny won four on his own in the first half as Dublin took control of the middle ground battle. It was noticeable that Cluxton was putting most of his kick outs down Kilkenny's wing.
In the second half, with Dublin's backs to the wall after conceding 1-2 in the opening couple of minutes to go from four points up to one down, Kilkenny chased back 60-70 metres to get involved in a big turnover which ended up in Lorcan O'Dell winning a free down the other end to settle Dublin down after a shaky start to the half.
But nothing Kilkenny did was more powerful than the two big hits in a row to force Shane Walsh out over the sideline - what a signal to send to your teammates. If anything, Kilkenny's performance got even better when O'Callaghan, who was also brilliant, was forced off through injury in the 43 minute.
He never wilted and seemed to take every free against the Galway press to get Dublin out of the trouble. He finished the game with two more assists for scores and kicked another himself. It was by a country mile the best all-round individual display in the Championship so far.
Galway took the same approach with Kilkenny as Meath did last week with Sam Mulroy - he roamed freely without a designated man marker and the home side paid the price.
For Galway, this is a wake-up call and, in hindsight, it might not be the worst result as long as they can lift themselves for the next two games.
But it is the second game in a row in which they haven't played particularly well. Mayo let them off the hook in the Connacht final with some erratic shooting coming down the stretch but Dublin were the complete opposite and razor sharp in the second half on Saturday, converting nine out of 13 shots.
Pádraic Joyce will be raging that his team didn't deliver a performance in front of a big home crowd but there will be a group of a lot of twists and turns yet and I would expect a big performance from them in Celtic Park in two weeks.
Kerry didn't need to get to the same level of intensity as Dublin or Galway as they easily defeated Roscommon on a baking hot Killarney on Saturday.
In saying that, they weren't massively impressive in doing so. They are very much in damned if they do and damned if they don't territory. They are expected to cruise through this group and, ultimately, they will.
It's whether the lack of intense games in the group stage will be a help or hindrance when the fat is in the fire in a knockout game. Last year's easy group didn't do them much good when Armagh turned up the heat in the All-Ireland semi-final.
The big plus from their point of view was the return of Diarmuid O Connor. It wasn't until David Clifford's goal in the 50th minute that they could finally relax and the final 20 minutes were played at challenge match pace.
In a game that won't live long in the memory, the one striking aspect was how referee David Coldrick implemented the rules compared to David Gough in the Galway-Dublin game.
Coldrick allowed Clifford take some eight or nine steps for his goal despite the FRC looking to clamp down on the four steps rule. He barely allowed any contact at all in the tackle which led to so many soft frees.
Gough, on the other hand, policed the steps rule stringently, pulling the Dubs a few times early on especially. He also allowed for much more contact and physicality in the tackle similar to his performance in the Armagh-Tyrone Ulster semi-final.
This type of refereeing almost always leads to a better spectacle, so let's hope more refs follow Gough's example rather than that of his fellow Meathman.
