DIVISION 1B/Mayo ... 4-5 Kildare ... 0-7: Beware the Ides of March. Mayo, the best team in Ireland right now, came to Newbridge yesterday and announced that the Lilywhite bank is empty. Although Mick O'Dwyer is notoriously reluctant to attribute any significance to the league, he must be gravely concerned about the way his men struggled with painful honesty for the seven sorry points they managed here.
It is true that this Mayo side has been intensely accruing cricket scores with every outing this season, as if obsessed with burying the legacy of famous misses handed on by their predecessors.
Yesterday, however, they too laboured in the wind and hail but still saved grace with attacking moments of pure joy that made the home crowd bow their heads and stream across the plains well before the final whistle. It is days like these that makes the adventures of 1998 all the more distant.
It was the manner rather than the fact of Mayo's goals that presents a troubling truth for those with an interest in Kildare football.
The home team had huffed and puffed with worthy if prosaic diligence over the first half hour to earn a 0-5 to 0-1 lead. The ever excellent Anthony Rainbow marshalled a series of faltering Mayo attacks into safe terrain, Martin Lynch looked happy and involved, Leonard Donlon and John Doyle kicked a couple of fine points. Their admirably loyal home fans were heartened.
Then Mayo began playing and the smokescreen vanished. It wasn't that the visitors banged home two goals in as many minutes that shocked Kildare, it was the sweet and foreign nature of the moves that left them in a state of disquiet.
After 29 minutes, Trevor Mortimer located Marty McNicholas in front of goal and the Breaffy man batted the lobbed pass into space. Calmly, he collected the break and accurately slammed his shot beyond Enda Murphy.
Two minutes later, Mick Wright was harried into over-carrying out of Kildare's defence. Mortimer crisply angled a crossfield free to McNicholas who played a flat pass to James Gill. Meeting the ball at speed, Gill's finish was searing and for Kildare, shocking. All that industry only to find themselves trailing.
There was a cruelty about the third goal, a penalty that arose when McNicholas, in what became a trend, leaped among taller Kildare players to take possession and was held, with his back to goal by Killian Brennan and Rainbow. McNicholas, only in the side after Conor Mortimer was injury hit, calmly banged home his second and Kildare retired to the dressing-room to talk it over.
The rank awfulness of the second half will hardly bother Mayo. The home selectors sent on a flurry of substitutes as if hoping to magic up an Earley or a Finn, a Glenn Ryan or even a young Sos Dowling. Of all those on audition, only John Wiltshire deserves recall, and he of course is a defender.
It is the other side that is in white crisis. Kildare's attack is in critical need of personality. Strange that O'Dwyer, mastermind of a Kerry team so full of mischief and attitude, should now find himself closing his football life presiding over a side so lacking in those attributes. Nothing he tried altered the fecklessness. Martin Lynch returned to his own private reveries. As against Sligo, we were treated to the Eddie McCormack cameo, a role that must be as disheartening to play as it is discouraging to watch.
Mayo, perhaps conscious of admission fees, painted a bit of colour in the last stretch.
Mortimer, who orchestrated most of Mayo's scores, ended a streak of six wides with a great point on 44 minutes. Then with three minutes left, McNicholas blazed in for the hat-trick. It was a fine, sweeping downfield move, involving Tom Nallen and Shane Fitzmaurice and McNicholas's finish was such that the selectors may have to consider him for the next outing.
McNicholas's late point left the westerners with their exotic final score. It was hardly as if they blew Kildare out of the water in the second half but the home side was in an abject state, troubling the umpires only with John Doyle's free. And their five second-half wides were poignantly off course.
Best not to get carried away by Mayo, always the great sweet talkers at this time of year. Suffice to say they have an edge about them that is appealing. Kildare, though, look a blunted force and the great Waterville man had best call in all the favours owed to him by the gods.
KILDARE: E Murphy; M Wright, C Davey, K Doyle; T Harris, A Rainbow, K Duane; K Brennan, R Sweeney; M Lynch (0-2), L Donlon (0-1), J Doyle (0-2, frees); T Fennin (0-1, free), A Harris; D Jordan (0-1). Subs: J Wiltshire for M Wright (half-time), P Murray for K Brennan (45 mins), B Murphy for J Doyle (54 mins),E McCormack for T Fennin (62 mins), P Mullarkey for A Harris (68 mins).
MAYO: D Clarke; P Coyne, T Nallen, G Ruane; A Roche, J Nallen, N Connelly; S Fitzmaurice, M Moyles (0-1); J Gill (1-0), T Mortimer (0-1), S Carolan; M Mullins (0-2, frees), J Horan, M McNicholas (3-1, one goal from a pen). Subs: D Heaney for A Roche (half-time), D Brady for J Horan (59 mins), R Loftus for M Mullins (67 mins).
Referee: J White (Donegal).
