Saturday, August 10

All-Ireland SFC semi-final

Dublin v Mayo, Croke Park, 5pm – RTE/SKY

Anticipation for this match is at such a fever pitch because we know from experience that high drama is pretty much guaranteed.

Every single one of the seven Championship matches the two teams contested from 2012 to 2017 were utterly absorbing battles.

Dublin have dominated the rivalry with four wins and two draws from those seven matches, but three of those wins were by a single point.

Will this match be just as closely fought?

You wouldn’t be surprised if it was, but you can also make the argument that Dublin have improved as a team since the 2017 All-Ireland Final and Mayo have regressed.

Since that epic encounter, Mayo have been beaten in Championship football by Galway, Kildare, Roscommon, and Kerry while Dublin have steamrolled all before them, winning their 14 matches played by an average of 14 points.

This year their average winning margin has been 16 points. Tyrone were the only team to keep the deficit to single digits, but that match isn’t relevant because both they and Dublin effectively fielded second-string teams.

Dublin players like Jack McCaffrey, Brian Fenton, Con O’Callaghan, Paul Mannion, Ciaran Kilkenny, and John Small are now very much in their prime and the older guard show no sign yet either of slowing down.

The fear from a Dublin point of view is that they have yet to experience the real heat of a proper Championship battle this year and so might be a little undercooked for this match.

Mayo, in contrast, couldn’t be more battle-hardened by now after a tough trek through the All-Ireland qualifiers and then two matches in the Quarter-Final series against high quality opposition.

The flip side of that coin is that the Mayo players could still be feeling the effects of a physically and emotionally draining contest against Donegal last weekend whereas Dublin had the luxury of resting most of their front-liners against Tyrone.

Mayo have also been significantly weakened by injuries to captain Diarmuid O’Connor and Jason Doherty.

One of the main reasons Mayo have been able to put it up to Dublin like no other team in recent years is because of the athleticism and scoring ability of their half-forwards, but the absence of O’Connor and Doherty dulls their edge here.

Match-ups will be key from a Mayo point of view if they’re to pull of a shock, but the unique challenge of playing Dublin is that they pose so many threats in so many areas of the park.

Lee Keegan and Paddy Durcan are Mayo’s two best man-markers so there’s a solid argument for them being detailed to track two out of Dublin’s three most dangerous forwards – Con O’Callaghan, Paul Mannion, and Ciaran Kilkenny.

Perhaps Mayo would be better advised to cut out the supply to those forwards though, in which case you could see Keegan and Durcan being played further forward to negate the considerable influence of Dublin’s two most dynamic players in the middle third, Brian Fenton and Jack McCaffrey.

Durcan did a great job as a nominal wing-forward when he marked the in-form Ryan McHugh against Donegal, holding him scoreless and landing three points himself, so perhaps James Horan will give him a similar role on McCaffrey.

It’s debateable whether either of the O’Shea brothers have the engine to track Brian Fenton up and down the field all afternoon, but Keegan certainly would, so perhaps Mayo will roll the dice and play him as a third midfielder.

The domino effect of that would require Mayo to utilise Colm Boyle as a man-marker rather than in the sweeper role he’s performed so well in of late.

That in turn would require the likes of Brendan Harrison and Keith Higgins to go man to man against Paul Mannion and Con O’Callaghan with little cover in front of them which would be a big ask.

If Mayo want to play a sweeper and also Keegan as a man-marking midfielder, they’d have to either go with a one-man full-forward line and counter-attack smartly, or shift Aidan O’Shea out of midfield where he’s been so effective and in to centre-forward and go with a two-man full-forward line.

Whatever way you dice it, James Horan has big calls to make both in terms of his match-ups and overall tactical plan.

Strategy and systems aside, everything we know about Mayo tells us that they’ll back themselves to have a real cut off Dublin rather than stand off them like so many other teams have.

They’ll try to make the contest a real war of attrition, but that’s not something that will necessarily discommode a Dublin team that are just as comfortable fighting you in the trenches as out-flanking you.

Everything we’ve seen so far from Dublin this year suggests they’re as good if not better than they’ve ever been.

So even if Mayo can stick in the fight for 50-odd minutes, you wouldn’t be surprised if a fresher Dublin team with a greater range of attacking threats and a more impactful bench can race clear down the home stretch.