Colm Boyle luxuriating in Mayo's win for the ages

​By Paul Keane

So who are your All-Ireland SFC title favourites for 2027? Good luck with that one.

At the end of an inter-county football season when a Division 4 team won the Tailteann Cup for the first time, and a county that hadn't won the All-Ireland in 75 years made off with the Sam Maguire Cup, predictions for next season will only make fools of us all.

That's Colm Boyle's sense of it anyway. The Mayo selector laughed a few weeks back, when in the thick of a Championship campaign that contained more intrigue and surprise outcomes than any thriller novel, someone asked him where he thought Mayo lay in the overall national rankings?

"The thing about it is, there's no underdogs anymore, because on any given day now, and we're going to experience this year now, when we go out as defending All-Ireland champions - it's almost surreal to say that term! - but any team can beat you," argued the All-Ireland winning Mayo selector.

"Someone referenced to me a few weeks ago about where do Mayo sit in the power rankings? Power rankings is the biggest load of nonsense, they're a complete load of nonsense.

"Any team from, like, 14 down to one can beat each other if one team is not on it on any given day, and you probably saw that with us and Kerry. They were probably just slightly off what they can be and it was us probably playing to our maximum ability, and we took Kerry down.

"Then you see what other teams are doing, like, Louth have beaten Dublin and Armagh in this year's Championship. If you were to say that five years ago, you know what I mean? That's a testament to Louth and what they've done. It's a testament to Westmeath coming and winning Leinster. But Westmeath beating Dublin, again, if you were to say that five years ago, that Westmeath were going to beat Dublin in a Leinster final, they'd think you're off your rocker!

"Football is just an incredible thing at the minute, and I think what we've done, Mayo, I think what we've done is just to elevate it again, because I think teams are going to say, 'All bets are off now'."

That's four different All-Ireland winners in the last four seasons, and five in six seasons if you take Tyrone's 2021 triumph as your starting point.

And yet as epochal as Sunday's win for Mayo was, the county's first since 1951, former wing-back Boyle wasn't actually that surprised.

"This was always going to happen," explained Boyle of Mayo's long wait ending. "It was going to happen at some stage. I know people think that it's never going to happen. But I said it to Andy (Moran) a good while ago, Mayo are going to win the All-Ireland at some stage. If we don't do it as a management team, someone will do it after us.

"It's just happened now and it feels...in a weird way, it feels normal. Which is probably a mad thing to say when we haven't won it in 75 years and we've never experienced this before. But it just feels normal.

"Sunday just felt like a normal game, to be honest with you. The boys were so unbelievably calm in the morning in the hotel. I said to Andy, around 11 o'clock, that I didn't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

"And don't get me wrong, for the first 15 or 20 minutes we were rocking a bit in terms of the way we were playing. We needed to stay in the game, we needed to fight, but my God, once we got to grips with it, the boys just gave a magic performance."

To make it all possible, manager Moran implored the Mayo players to be bold and brave, and to seize whatever opportunities came their way on the field. What that looked like against Kerry on Sunday was a team taking 14 two-point attempts. They only converted four of them but with Kerry scoring just one two-pointer, it was the difference in the end.

Boyle explained that the Mayo players' can-do attitude towards shooting for twos was partly inspired by golfer Rory McIlroy. Back in April, after shooting a second round 65 during the defence of his US Masters title in Augusta, placing him six shots clear of the pack, McIlroy said his simple 'keep swinging' philosophy had paid off, and that he would retain the mantra for the weekend.

"Andy actually referenced it before the semi-final, it's a phrase from Rory McIlroy, from one of his Masters wins," said Boyle of the mantra. "McIlroy just said, 'Look, no matter what, I'm going to keep swinging'.

"Now did we swing a bit too much at times on Sunday? I think our two-point shots were four from 14, so maybe we shouldn't have swung at certain times, but that's a mindset thing.

"The boys had the confidence to go for the shot. When you're under pressure in front of 82,500 people and you're still willing to take on the two-point shot, that's the key thing. And obviously when you can nail them, it's great.

"I think Jack Carney's one in the second half was huge. It's a habit of mine, especially in Croker, because you can't generally see if the ball is going over, so I always look at the player, once the player takes the shot, just to see his reaction. I just looked at Jack and as soon as he hit it, the finger was up, he knew it was over the bar.

"What a feeling that must have been for him. He's been unbelievable for us, I think he's hit 11 two-pointers this year in the Championship. So he's definitely picked up the mantra of keep swinging, that's for sure."