ALLIANZ NFL DIVISION ONE FINAL: Keith Duggantalks to the proud Mayo captain as his side prepare to face Cork at Croke Park
IN 2001, Trevor Mortimer won a National League medal with Mayo and guessed he might have a few more spring trinkets to add to the collection before he was through. Nine years later, he grins mournfully at that assumption. A decade of intercounty life teaches a man to expect nothing. We met on Wednesday last at the family quarry. The middle of the frere Mortimer sank back into a comfy and battered office chair and spoke about what is a big game for Mayo on Sunday.
Periodically, a lorry stopped at the weigh gate and Mortimer excused himself to type the details into the system, print off a docket and pass pleasantries with the driver who came through the door to collect it.
Rollo, a house dog clearly accustomed to the good life, took up the most luxurious seat in the office. Rocky, a chilled-out Rottweiller and the putative guard-dog of the enterprise – he has a spine-chilling sign hammered to the entrance in his honour – lazed under the table, sometimes eyeing Mortimer as he talked ball before laying his head on the floor as if to ruminate on the contrariness of Mayo football. The western county will turn out in force in Croke Park tomorrow. It would simply be against their nature not to.
“They will,” Mortimer agrees.
“Mayo supporters always turn out in great numbers. They are wonderful that way. But I do have to say there is a tendency among everyone in Mayo – we are all probably guilty of it – to exaggerate things at both extremes. At the start of the year, we were probably half-expected to get relegated from Division One. After the way we went out of the championship last year there was a bit of hurt and we took some heat for it. It was justified too. We didn’t show up for the second half and we paid for it.
“So we had no problem getting our focus right for this league. We took it a game at a time. The results started to stack up and the only blip was Dublin. But if we happen to win the league now, people will rave about us and talk about All-Irelands. It is hard for players to keep that out of their heads. But some of us are around long enough now to know that we are probably somewhere in the middle. We are in the mix. We have a good squad. But there are teams that have proven it on the big day and until we do that, there we remain.”
It may surprise people to learn Trevor Mortimer has been the Mayo football captain for the past two seasons. John O’Mahony does not make these choices frivolously. Mortimer may not be the obvious candidate, he is not a motormouth corner-back or a clean-shaven midfield enforcer.
He doesn’t hog the scoring and rarely tries for the flashy pass or the extravagant shot. And that may be precisely why O’Mahony was drawn to him. There is nothing obvious about the qualities Mortimer brings to Mayo. His game is both blisteringly direct and very subtle.
He would shrug off the statistics but it is probable that only Alan Dillon matches him for distances covered in a match. The role that O’Mahony has detailed for Mortimer includes getting to breaking ball, initiating attacks, providing ball to the inside forwards, tracking back, breaking tackles, making himself available to midfielders in trouble, taking points when the shot is on, poaching for goals and offering leadership as team captain.
Or as Mortimer observes dryly: “Sometimes I do wonder if I would be better off standing in the corner forward position and throwing up a few high ones. Ah yeah, it is one of the harder positions.
“John Maughan always told me my best position is full forward but sometimes I get frustrated when I am not involved in the play. In fairness to John O’Mahony, he has given everyone a role. Nobody playing on the team has the excuse that they don’t know what they are doing. In the past, maybe you were expecting to be doing everything – or nothing, as it might turn out.”
That last remark is characteristic of Mortimer. He is friendly and quick to laugh but at the same time he has that Mayo habit of turning morose when he talks about football. On the field, too, he could not be more different to his brother Conor.
The youngest Mortimer is a thoroughbred scorer and with quicksilver feints and blond hair and white boots that have become motifs, he is one of the most easily recognisable players in the country. Trevor is sallow, keeps his dark hair trim with a number two cut and is presently sporting a Guevarian beard. On the field, they are shade and light.
Conor had also worked in the family business prior to taking some time out of his regular – and football – life to see something of the world.
He returned from the Southern Hemisphere halfway through Mayo’s league campaign and bided his time on the bench before once more returning to kick points with impunity.
Mortimer grimaces when asked where the brother is today.
“Not here anyhow. Probably still living in the lap of luxury,” he grins.
They know one another. In the cartography of any match, the older Mortimer can instantly read when and where to look for his brother’s runs; they have the family clairvoyance that can become luminous on the field of play. It bore Mayo fruit in the Connacht final against Galway last year; a long ball in, the Mortimer brothers chasing it down and then Conor instinctively peeling away so that Trevor could compete with the Galway goalkeeper and tap it down to him for the finish.
The seconds afterwards captured the essential difference between the two men. Trevor turned and jogged determinedly back to his position. Conor hauled off a shirt to reveal a vest bearing a tribute scribbled in marker to the recently deceased pop icon Michael Jackson. Trevor raises his eyebrows when asked what he was thinking at that moment.
“I didn’t even see it, to be honest. I had my back to him and was moving up the field. Ah I dunno. Wouldn’t be my thing anyway.”
And it wouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean he won’t fight to the last breath to defend the right of his brother – or anyone else – to go in for the odd bit of public theatre. He nods at the mooted suggestion of a prevailing GAA culture that demands uniformity; that decrees all GAA players should look as though they just stepped out of Templemore, clean-shaven and the regulation haircut. In most big sports across the world – and in summer, the GAA teams play in theatres as dense as any on the planet – players are completely free to express their individuality.
“I agree. Take any other sport and you can look how you want. Every man to his own. Sometimes Conor can be his own worst enemy. But then, he probably plays better when he feels he is annoying people. When he has a cause. I think he has quietened down in that way anyhow. He has that bit of experience now.”
Mortimer throws his eyes to heaven when it is put to him that, whatever about Conor, he has attained a “veteran” status now. “I feel like that anyway,” he sighs.
He is only 29 but he is into his 11th season in the green and red. He is, remarkably, the only player left from the team and substitutes that won the league final against Galway in 2001. This was the Mayo of Peter Burke, Kevin Cahill, Colm McManamon and Maurice Sheridan. Younger players like James Gill, Marty McNicholas and Ronan Loftus were gradually eclipsed by injuries. More than anything, it shows just how heavy the attrition rate is at this level.
And in the past few years, Mortimer has begun to witness a fresh metamorphosis. David Brady took his last bow. Ciarán McDonald departed the Mayo scene in cloudy circumstances. Then David Heaney and James Nallen whispered their retirements and left dodging all fanfare.
And somehow, the irreplaceable ones were replaced. Mayo still fielded a football team. And Trevor Mortimer was among them, an out-and-out senior and the captain.
“It was a bit strange this season. Less familiar faces. I felt David Heaney might stay on for another year but, I suppose when James decided to go, he went. And they went with no hullabaloo, it was a fair reflection on them. They were good lads to have in the group and they were good trainers. But I suppose time waits for no man . . .
“It was unfortunate in the way that things finished up but in fairness to the management team, there was an invitation to come to the trial game and Ciarán for whatever reason felt he deserved better than that. James was invited to the same game and had no issues. It was unfortunate the way it ended because he was a great, great talent and it was frustrating for everyone.
“But the good that can be taken out of it is that everyone might have thought that the whole county would have come to a standstill but here we are in a league final and there is no talk about it. There will always be players looking to step in and drive this thing on.”
The first of the Mortimers, Kenneth, was extravagantly talented and just as unlucky. He famously played in 11 All-Ireland finals at all grades and received runners-up medals after each.
Trevor’s clearest boyhood memory of Mayo football is of being brought to see Kenneth play in the All-Ireland minor final of 1991. They lost to Cork, 1-09 to 1-07. But that day gave him an unforgettable idea of what this whole thing was about. Talk turns to the remorseless quest for the All-Ireland. At this point, Rocky and Rollo take their leave of us, padding out into the dusty afternoon. Are they mounting a protest at yet another “Mayo All-Ireland quest” conversation or have they simply grown bored?
Mortimer accepts it is unusual that a county that has not won an All-Ireland senior medal title since 1951 seriously expects and hopes to do so some year soon. But that has always been the mood in Mayo and Mortimer does not expect it to change.
“There is nothing more exciting when you are a kid than being brought to one of those big games in Dublin,” he says.
“We were just brought up thinking you should be having a crack at the big titles. When I was 15 or 16 back in 1997 . . . . that was our big ambition. I suppose Kenneth’s experiences yeah, going off watching those games rubs off on you.”
He can’t believe 10 years have passed in the search. In the beginning, league weekends were cavalier: three of four piled into a car for an away game, a few pints on a Sunday night, training again Tuesday. Things have quickened. Life has become more serious.
Frank, father of the Mortimer boys, is recovering from a heart operation and so the demands of the quarry have become more time consuming. Mortimer reckons he is either heading to a football pitch or a gym most evenings of the week. “I wouldn’t be big into television but it would be nice to sit on a couch the odd evening,” he sighs. He has no complaints, though. He regards being captain of Mayo as the deepest honour. Time has flown since his first league title in 2001 and football has dominated in the intervening years. Other areas have been sacrificed. “But you know, you would take all that to be captain of your county,”he concludes.
