The westerners' long years of overambition and underachievement have impacted on the county's players, but maybe it's time to wave goodbye to a flawed history and move on, writes MALACHY CLERKIN

ANDY MORAN has no need of your sympathy. Pity not his plight, scorn not his ethnicity. Yes indeed, he is a Mayo footballer, has been for 10 seasons now. And he knows what you’re thinking. A league semi-final against Kerry in Croke Park? A Kerry team that’s maybe only two or three short of its championship side? You’re averting your eyes.

So be it. He wouldn’t begin to try and change your mind with something as slight as words or argument. A decade in green and red has taught him some absolute truths, foremost among them being that opinions and impressions mean nothing.

History means nothing, dreams and wishes and all that carry-on means nothing either. Hang your hat on any of it and you’ll be on the floor before long. It wasn’t a dainty lesson to learn either.

“Of course it can have an effect,” he says. “No question. I’d love to sit here and say it doesn’t but it does and it has in the past. Most managers will use stereotypes to try and motivate you and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. But it has definitely been there with us in the past.

“I do believe, though, this group of guys we have playing for us now is a stronger bunch than we’ve ever had before. A lot of them have won an under-21 All-Ireland in 2006 and a lot of them just don’t care about whatever went before.

“Like, we brought on a lad there on Sunday, Evan Regan, who was 10 years old in 2004. I’d say he doesn’t even remember us getting beaten in that All-Ireland by Kerry. It has nothing to do with him and it should never have anything to do with him. It’s important that we, as the older fellas, build a new stereotype and get away from all that.”

It can’t be much fun, though. All counties have reputations one way or the other but Mayo’s is uniquely bathed in twilight. Always good enough to win a Connacht title in a given year, never good enough to win it all. Derided for getting cleaned out in All-Ireland finals when the vast majority of the country can’t even conceive of getting to one. Year after year of pats on the head and kicks in the gut must tug at him at some level. He maintains otherwise.

“I can’t help what happened in ’96,” he says. “I can’t help what happened in ’89. I was involved in 2004 and 2006 but you have to move on. What I love is coming in on a Tuesday night after a game and trying to fix things and trying to get things right. And I think that’s what we’re always trying to do.

“Different stereotypes can get built up about people but you can’t do much about that. There’s guys there in our squad, the likes of David Clarke who has been at it since 2001. He’s had injuries, he’s had defeats, he’s had everything. And he’s still there trying.

“It takes a lot from any man once he’s fallen to decide to get back up again. Lads get forgotten about because they haven’t won an All-Ireland but I’ve played with guys who were the best leaders, the best players you could ever meet. They brought through the next generation. The work these guys have done is immense and you can’t forget that just because they never won the big one.

“There’s a lot of enjoyment in other things too. Of course the objective is to win that elusive prize but those lads had good days too.”

It was Kerry who put a halt to their gallop in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final, just one of those days where Colm Cooper turned in not so much a football match as a sky-writing display.

Mayo hung in there for long stretches but although Moran had Marc Ó Sé in trouble on occasion, he wasn’t able to filch the goal that would have made a game of it. The end of the year brought him an All Star but that day was a stark reminder of the expanse of water between where they are and where they want to be.

“We were still in it but I missed three goal chances, Donie [Vaughan] missed one of his own and Kerry went down the other end, where Gooch had one chance and he stuck it on the net. That’s the level you have to be at. I don’t think we deserved to be beaten by nine points but the reality of it is we were. The game lasts for 73 minutes and you have to play it out, win, lose or draw.

“The way I look at it, nine out of the 10 things I did that day were right. Marc Ó Sé was very cute, he pushed me on to my weak foot three times, he had me well examined. But listen, that’s the way it goes. If I do the same thing the next time, then I’ll be angry at myself for not learning. The key thing is that the next time I get into that situation in Croke Park, my composure will be better.

“Kerry are a good side, Marc Ó Sé is one of the best defenders in the country and I did a lot right to win the ball and get the chances. Shot selection let me down at a crucial moment. But I’d be very comfortable to get that chance again and maybe just slip it into the bottom corner this time.”

Since that day, he’s come through a broken leg sustained at the trials for the International Rules team last autumn – “My own fault, big Kevin Reilly tagged me and I held on to the ball too long and he fell on it” – and got healed up just in time for the start of the league.

He’s encouraged by the fact Mayo are playing their best stuff at the end of the campaign, only just losing out to Cork before trouncing Dublin and drawing with Kerry last Sunday.

That Kerry could bring 15 All-Ireland medals off the bench in the second half of that game and still be able to flush another five into the side for tomorrow could be seen as a vulgar display of power if he was of a mind to look at it that way. Needless to say, he isn’t.

“We knew Kerry were very strong coming off the pitch and that we’ll be facing a better Kerry on Sunday. All the big guns will be back for them. We know that, alright. But over the years we’ve actually competed very well against Kerry in the league. We ended up getting a draw last week and were disappointed we didn’t get more.

“We thought we performed well against Cork, we thought we performed well against Dublin and that carried through to the Kerry game. I always go back to the Cork teams and Dublin teams that didn’t win All-Irelands – they put a lot of defeats together before it came good for them but it did come good for them because they concentrated on their own performances and got there in the end. We’ve been playing well for the last three games in a row and there’s no reason that can’t continue on Sunday.”

So there you have it – Mayo footballer in realism shocker. No pity required, no sympathy. No weight of history, no dread presence of white noise fever. Just the here and now and nothing else.

A notion so crazy it just might work.