So, after a lifetime of waiting, this is where it begins.
Kevin McStay, wearing blue jeans, sandy brown boots and a black Mayo shell jacket with KMcS stitched above the county crest, enters the Dr Michael Loftus room beneath the main stand at MacHale Park in Castlebar. This press night is his first official public function as Mayo senior football manager.
He is relaxed and friendly and he understands the game. McStay knows many of the faces in the room, some through his work in the media over the years, others from his time in management.
Stephen Rochford, now coach and assistant manager, sits to his left at the top table. He is flanked on his right by Damien Mulligan, another member of Mayo’s judiciously assembled Traveling Wilburys management team that also includes Donie Buckley and Liam McHale.
Trailblazing sports psychologist Niamh Fitzpatrick, who famously worked with Liam Griffin’s All-Ireland winning Wexford hurlers in 1996 when such roles were generally viewed with suspicion, has also been added to the ticket. She was previously involved with Mayo during Rochford’s spell as manager.
But McStay is in charge now. He is here in this room doing this thing as Mayo manager. When he stepped down in Roscommon he had indicated his days managing intercounty teams were over.
“I suppose you should never say never should you really? But there was only one appointment obviously that would have changed that and it was my own county.”
Having been overlooked for the position in 1995 and again in late 2014, he felt his chance had gone.
“Yes, being honest, yeah,” he says. “I’m 60 now, I’d had a few goes at it. And I had no sense there was going to be a vacancy, I thought James would stay on for another year or two, he was doing really good work.
“I didn’t want the job just so I could say I was the Mayo manager, I want the job because I feel I have a lot to contribute and I feel I can make a difference. We feel we will make a difference, that remains to be seen, I can’t tell the future.”
In a nutshell, he wouldn’t have taken it if he didn’t feel he could ameliorate the situation. All of the 2022 panel have already been contacted and he expects Tommy Conroy, Ryan O’Donoghue and Cillian O’Connor to be ‘part of a rigorous pre-season’.
You sense McStay is just anxious for it all to begin now. His first game will not be until January. He was appointed on August 22nd. In a county where football is in the everyday conversation, that is quite the vacuum, quite the wait.
Among the letters he has received was one from an individual who meticulously went through all 40 plus players from the 2022 squad, offering their advice on who he should keep and who he should set adrift.
When a question raises the issue of pressure that comes with managing Mayo, the former manager Rochford pats McStay on the back and laughs, “There’s no pressure at all, don’t mind them!”
Yet it is not unnoticed that the third Sunday of September is only days away, a date once marked out of habit every January on Knock Shrine calendars, in homes from Belmullet to Ballyhaunis, simply as ‘All-Ireland final day’, thickly scrawled in cassock-black biro.
There will of course still be plenty of Mayo ones going to Croke Park this weekend. Some will even bring their stetsons, but the traditional trimming of a green and red headband will be left at home. It feels more of a smart casual outing at GAA headquarters this September than going full military honours with the rig-out. Still, when Garth cranks up Unanswered Prayers, it is best advised not to give any of the Mayo ones a little thumbs up, a knowing wink, a sympathetic nod or anything that suggests ‘he’s playing this song for your boys’, Cowboys, Ted.
However, the next time Mayo travel to Croke Park they will again be moving with renewed hope and expectation and fresh prayers. Inevitably, McStay is asked about Mayo’s great wait.
“We know there is pressure but two things I keep saying to the boys will happen, this will all work out or it won’t work out.”
The road ahead is uncertain. But it always is with Mayo.
“Myself, my wife, my family, we agreed I would dedicate the next four years of my life to this challenge and so I have the space to do it,” says McStay.
“Am I enjoying it? It’s lovely going to the matches. We have great championships here in Mayo. It’s good football and there are plenty of good footballers around the place.
“I am meeting people and they are very positive and nice and curious, but I know when the ball goes in, on the 29th of January all that changes very quickly too. You won’t blame me if I continue to enjoy the honeymoon for another little while.”
So, after a lifetime of waiting, this is where it begins. But sitting here in the Dr Michael Loftus room, even as the soft mid-September sky outside reminds us that winter has yet to bite, everybody in the room already knows what Kevin McStay already knows, the only thing that matters is where it all ends.
