GAELIC GAMES: KEITH DUGGANtalks to Donal Vaughan, one of the ambitious young players in Mayo's squad, and finds a quiet confidence that – if they perform to their ability – they can beat any team in the country

IT WAS during extra time in Ruislip that Donal Vaughan spoke up. Only now that the All-Ireland championship is down to the last four – down to that stage of dizzying possibilities – can Mayo football people fully comprehend just how strange a place their footballers found themselves in that afternoon.

Across Ireland, there was no real sign that the All-Ireland football championship had even begun but on the outskirts of England’s metropolis, Mayo’s season was hanging by a thread. They were in a dogfight against the exiles, against the perpetual Division Four side who, alongside New York, are habitually dumped into Connacht – the children of a lesser god.

And it has to be borne in mind that this followed a championship season which was deemed to be among the worst Mayo had known for generations: beaten by Sligo and then by Longford.

John O’Mahony bowed out, still a folk hero in Mayo, but it hadn’t finished the way either he or the public had hoped. And the county board executive had a glittering cast of candidates to audition but in the end went with youth in the frame of James Horan, one of the most stylish ball-players on Mayo’s nearly team of the 1990s and a man who had demonstrated meaty managerial ability with his home club, Ballintubber.

But just then, Mayo were in a very delicate place.

“I was one of the players who spoke before the extra-time in London and I used the comparison to Cork last year.

I was watching their game in Newcastle in England against Limerick. They possibly could have been beaten but they went on to win an All-Ireland. So I made the point that, if we could get over today, anything is possible. Now what we are facing is an All-Ireland semi-final. We are going to give it everything we have and hopefully come out the right side of it.”

Vaughan’s interest in Cork wasn’t entirely coincidental. Had the coin spun differently, he might have been wearing the blood and bandage colours or even the Kerry shirt in this year’s championship. His parents are from Kanturk and his father remains an “out and out Cork supporter”. He lived the first two years of his life in Cork and the next five in Kerry and his formative GAA memories belong to Fitzgerald Stadium and Munster finals in Kerry.

Then his parents moved to Ballintubber in Mayo through work and everything changed. Vaughan was among the younger players identified and developed by John O’Mahony; he made his debut against New York in 2009. Since then, he has become one of the most eye-catching players in a Mayo defensive unit that seems to become tighter and meaner with every outing.

Mayo always had speedy, able and clean defenders but this season they seem more like a unit. And, so far, they have been impenetrable when it matters. Vaughan is only 22 but he carries himself with a sense of maturity and composure that belies his relative inexperience. When Mayo drew Cork in the quarter-finals, he received a series of texts from the relatives in the south saying it would have to be family first. “Basically saying ‘we are behind you’. And that meant a lot to me,” he recalls.

Mayo went into the match classed so firmly in the role of cold outsiders that it bordered on the disrespectful. They were the provincial champions after all. Cork, the All-Ireland holders, had come through the qualifiers.

The manner of their win underlined the sense that there has been something different about Mayo this year. They have been quiet and tough. Vaughan was one of those scheduled to appear at a press briefing in McHale Park last week. The night was billowy and dark and the stadium all but empty. Vaughan sat at a table in a brightly-lit function room wearing a Munster rugby shirt and, faced with a series of interviews, he spoke comfortably and frankly about whatever subject was raised.

Asked about the Cork game, he spoke methodically about the way Mayo had played their way into it.

“Cork were dominating around the middle of the field and that is the key to any game this weather. If a team is getting a supply of ball into their forward line, you are going to be under pressure. So we spoke about it: if they got a run on us, just settle down, get a bit of ball around the middle and kick a few scores. So if you look at it, we did that and then Kevin (McLoughlin) scored his great goal. From there on in, we did fairly well around the middle and kept the pressure off our back line. It was on Cork’s back line. So they were the key aspects in the recovery.”

In the build-up to that game, Mayo did what they had done all year under Horan: worked hard and ignored the outside world. As winners of the Connacht championship, they were representatives of a province that was serially maligned and their own pedigree was called into question in the lead-up of the game. But he does not feel that that has been of any relevance to the team.

“What you are talking about there is external motivation. We have a lot of internal motivation – I am not going to reveal it here today but there are a lot of driven fellas in this panel who have experienced the last few years and they don’t need to open the Sunday papers on the morning of a game to get motivated. So, no, we are not waiting for someone to say something.”

As Vaughan sees it, the motivations – individual and collective – are much deeper. Before he joined the panel, he was occasionally called in to participate in A versus B games and it was only then that he began to understand how much effort the squad were putting in and how little the general public understood of that effort.

And he is fresh enough to recall the fan’s perspective. He stood on Hill 16 for the 2006 All-Ireland final, when Kerry mauled Mayo. He was with a friend, David Harney, and they were surrounded by Kerry shirts but Harney kept stubbornly shouting for Mayo long after the last ghost of a chance had fled the stadium. Eventually Kerry people told him to shut up but he wouldn’t.

“I suppose the game was over after 10 or 15 minutes so it was hard to watch. But I think most Mayo supporters stayed until the end. And a lot of Mayo supporters have stuck by Mayo football – after years and years of disappointment, they keep coming out. And I would like to thank them for that. They are the best supporters in Ireland in my opinion.”

Several of Vaughan’s team-mates – Alan Dillon, Ronan McGarrity, Andy Moran – were on the field that day. Those disappointments feed into the energy that has carried them this far. Trevor Mortimer has come back into the team, reimagined by Horan as a half-back and thus far having an incredibly strong influence on the team.

“Trevor is a leader on the team,” Vaughan says. “Anyone looking on from the outside could see that. A lot of the younger players would look up to him. He was captain for the last two years and he has a point to prove.

“A lot of people would have the opinion that the season we had last year was the worst ever for Mayo. He was captain of that team. So he is back in this year and Trevor doesn’t talk too often but when he does, people listen – which can be a good thing. Trevor doesn’t have a lot of experience in the backs but wherever he plays he is going to have an influence.”

Vaughan is only in the third season of what seems set to be a distinguished county career but, already, he has become familiar with the radical swings of mood and fortune that Mayo seem to suffer. But when he thinks back to last year, it is as if it has toughened the team and Vaughan can look forward to Sunday with a combination of optimism and hard realism.

“Last year was a strange season. We did so well in the league and then we were gone in the championship. It is always my belief that if we perform we can beat any team in the country. And if you don’t perform, you can be beaten by anyone. It was tough. I think sometimes you have to feel a bit of pain. What is the saying? You can’t appreciate success until you have experienced disappointment.

“You are always going to have more downs than ups – unless you are from a county like Kerry, where you could win five or six All-Irelands in your career. We are in an All-Ireland semi-final now and it is a massive opportunity for us. So we are going to grab it with both hands.”