In the afterglow of Mayo beating Galway in the National Football League final earlier this month, Lee Keegan reached for his phone and sent a brief message to a friend in Australia.
When Oisín Mullin heard the beep and checked his inbox, he surely grinned reading the text from a former Mayo team-mate: “Were we the problem?”
Last November, it emerged Mullin was moving Down Under to pursue an Aussie Rules career with Geelong. In January, Keegan announced his intercounty retirement. Kevin McStay was meant to build a team around the duo, so their departures threatened to leave the new regime stuck in neutral.
But as the league progressed, so too did Mayo. Whether it will remain the case later in the summer remains to be seen, but they were able to absorb the losses of Keegan and Mullin during the league.
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“One issue Mayo don’t have is defenders,” argues Keegan. “Take me and Oisín out, and the running game we produced for years, I think what Mayo are looking for is more inside forwards.
“They’ve tried 16 forwards and have got new combinations in the league. Tommy Conroy is back, Ryan O’Donoghue is back fit, we’ve got Aidan O’Shea back playing good football, albeit the Roscommon game was tough for him, so I don’t think defensively it was a big issue.
“Now, Oisín was a huge loss against Roscommon because as the game unfolded having someone to break a line like him would have been invaluable. But Mayo, as a whole, I think were looking for scoring forwards (in the league). That’s the biggest challenge. Defensively, I think we’ll be fine.”
[ Lee Keegan gradually adjusting to the switch from active service to punditryOpens in new window ]
The great unknown facing Mayo right now is what impact that loss to Roscommon will have on the group for the All-Ireland series.
“A provincial title would have been lovely, I’m not discrediting it because we always love winning them,” says Keegan. “But for Mayo, it’s about bigger things, I think the break will probably do them no harm.
“From chatting to a couple of the club lads who are involved, I know they got a couple of weeks off to declutter, take a break from training and do stuff with their friends and families.
“I know they’re back in the heavy load from this week onwards. I think that will reset them, recharge them and I expect them to have a big say in the group stage.
“I don’t think the effort they put in before and during the league was going to be sustainable to hold that for the championship. From that aspect, I think it’s good to have a blip now rather than having it in six or eight weeks.”
When Keegan scans the landscape, he still sees Mayo as live contenders for Sam Maguire. However, in what is his first season away from the confines of the dressingroom, he feels the noises coming from the capital carry an air of foreboding.
“My worry is, you look at Dublin at the moment, they’ve flicked a switch and literally started kicking the ball inside to Con O’Callaghan,” adds Keegan.
“I think the Derry game came at a good time for them, it was like a light bulb moment where they decided to go a bit more direct to Con. Not many teams score four goals let alone create 10 goal chances against Derry.
“You have one of the hottest properties inside in Con O’Callaghan, so give him the ball by any means possible. We were saying during the league they had no focal point, but all of a sudden they have a focal point in Con and if they keep him fit I’d find them very hard to beat.”
One of the challenges he feels Mayo face is to arrive at the business end of the championship with a polished game-management plan, incorporating a strategy at breaking down tight defensive structures. Over the years, while the chaos was entertaining, it often cost Mayo victories.
“I think sometimes we feed into our own mistakes rather than trying to figure it out,” adds Keegan. “Look at the great Dublin team we played, they’d hold the ball for two minutes before they even had a shot. That’s the nature of where Mayo need to get to, to realise it’s okay to play boring slow football for a long period. It’s to try and manage that.
“The problem against Roscommon was Mayo didn’t manage it well enough. So, it’s to try and get that balance right. We should be getting better at this stage but it was evident against Roscommon that we hadn’t done enough on it.
“Defensively they are fine, I don’t think that is a huge cause for concern, offensively if they get that right I think they have a huge opportunity.”
Lee Keegan was speaking at the launch of Croke Park’s latest schedule of Bord Gáis Energy GAA Legends Tours.
