We grieve for Mayo men again but the Dubs remain on different level

TWO statistics stand out from last Saturday’s All-Ireland football final at Croke Park. Dublin, the now six-in-a-row champions, are incredibly unbeaten in their last 42 championship matches, while Mayo have cruelly extended their losing final run to ten since their last triumph way back in 1951. It sums up the sharply divergent fortunes of the two counties.

To be truthful, nobody expected gallant Mayo to halt the Dublin juggernaut in the long-delayed 2020 showdown, but when Cillian O’Connor levelled the match for the fifth time in the 50th minute, there long-suffering supporters must have been increasingly optimistic that this just might be the day when the famine would end.

Wouldn’t it be typical Mayo: finally ending their big-day torment in Croke Park when nobody was there to see them and in this strangest of GAA seasons when all kinds of wonderful things were happening in the football championship – notably Tipperary and Cavan unexpectedly capturing provincial titles.

Unfortunately, reality was to resurface in the final quarter.  Mayo would only score once more – a point from substitute Darren Coen – as Dublin in that relentless style of theirs kept powering forward with the likes of Brian Fenton and Ciaran Kilkenny opening their broad shoulders.

With Man of the Match Con O’Callaghan, one of Dublin’s first-half goal scorers, continuing to cause major problems, the closing ten minutes were painful to watch with the absence of spectators only compounding the elimination of suspense. There was now an inevitability about the result as the Dubs made it eight All-Ireland wins in ten years.

At least, Mayo again rattled the champions after a shocking start which saw them concede a goal to Dean Rock straight from the throw in. The admirable James McCarthy did the damage with a rampaging run through the centre, leaving many fearing another championship turkey shoot for Dublin was in the offering.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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