Mayo's defeat to Roscommon could prove a blessing in disguise

by Aiden Henry

MAYO bowed out of the Connacht senior football championship when losing out to Roscommon in the quarterfinal played in Hastings Insurance MacHale Park, Castlebar, yesterday.

Normally losing such a game in your own provincial championship would in the past be regarded as a massive drawback in that your chances of challenging for the big prize – the Sam Maguire – would rank you very much as outsiders.

But not this year, as the new format for the All-Ireland quarterfinal series means it mattered little to either Mayo or Roscommon yesterday if winning the All-Ireland this year was the number one goal.

Indeed, for Mayo, it may well turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

The only downer to this is that we in Mayo never like to lose to Roscommon, irrespective of the circumstances.

When the final whistle blew yesterday, every Mayo supporter in MacHale Park could see what it meant to their Roscommon counterparts. Their joy was unbridled.

Little do they know, however, that they could have done Mayo a good turn.

How could losing to Roscommon be of any benefit to Mayo going forward to the All-Ireland championship series, you may well ask?

There are a number of reasons why, many of which I touched on in last week's preview of the game.

Let’s look at some of the advantages of getting knocked out of the Connacht championship so early.

For a start, Mayo have had a tough league campaign that started at the end of January and which saw the play eight games to win the title. They were all tough games and against most of the best teams in the country.

With so many games in such a short space of time, you are always going to pick up injuries here and there. Mayo had their fair share of them, with Cillian O’Connor, Diarmuid O’Connor, David McBrien, Enda Hession, James Carr and Kevin McLoughlin, to mention but a few, all picking up knocks.

While most of the injuries have cleared up, Mayo still lined out against Roscommon without McBrien, Hession, Carr and McLoughlin.

When you add in Sam Callinan (what a game he had in the league final against Galway) and Bob Tuohy (who came on in that same league final), both of whom McStay decided not to play on account of Mayo’s Under 20 Connacht championship semi-final game against Sligo tomorrow (Wednesday) evening in Hastings Insurance MacHale Park, it illustrates the calibre of player taking no part last Sunday afternoon.

With a well-earned break, the Mayo manager should have a fully fit squad for the All-Ireland quarterfinals.

If you are going to give the All-Ireland a good run, you will need a big squad of players as there will be a serious amount of games over a 10-week period.

As it stands now, Mayo could go on and win the All-Ireland by playing just six games.

Roscommon, on the other hand, could have eight and possibly nine games to play if they are to go on and win the All-Ireland.

So, too, could Galway and most of all the other top teams in the country.

As it now stands now, Mayo are in the group stages of the All-Ireland quarterfinals. There will be four groups of four teams. Each team will play each other in their group (one at home, one away and one at a neutral ground).

The top team in each group will go straight into the All-Ireland quarterfinals proper.

The teams finishing second and third in each group will play off against each other in preliminary quarterfinals, with the winners advancing to the quarterfinals proper. It is then that the knockout stage takes place.

The first round of the quarterfinal group games will be played on the weekend of May 12/13.

This means that Mayo’s next game will be played on either May 12 or 13.

It would take a brave man to bet against Mayo not making the All-Ireland quarterfinal knockout stage.