ALL IRELAND SENIOR FOOTBALL FINAL PREVIEW

Tyrone v Mayo, Saturday September 11 at 5 pm, live on RTE/Sky Sports

As any good corner forward will tell you, it’s not the first run that will beat a good defender, it’s the second, or even the third or fourth. The first can be planned, but the second is reactive, responsive, all about reading the lie of the field and where the space and opportunity is opening up.

That reading and reacting is what has brought Mayo and Tyrone to the showpiece occasion in the annual gaelic football calendar, tomorrow afternoon at Croke Park.

Like every other county who started 2021 dreaming of lifting the Sam Maguire, Mayo and Tyrone came into this season wondering what they had to do differently to try and dethrone Dublin. Mayo, under James Horan in 2020, transformed their playing panel and brought some of the most talented young footballers in Ireland into the panel, eventually reaching the All-Ireland final last December.

Consequently, for the reigning Connacht champions, their initial strategy for 2021 would have centred around tactical adjustments, including the deployment of Ryan O’Donoghue closer to goal, replacing a star corner back in Chris Barrett, and switching Paddy Durcan to centre back to try and get more out of one of the most impressive performers of recent seasons.

Tyrone looked to be a year behind Mayo, in that they went about more extensive reconstruction over the winter gone by. A new joint management team of Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher were drafted in, and straight away they looked to implement a much more expansive, attacking style of play, embodied by their decision to call up Paul Donaghy on the back of the 22-year-old’s fantastic 2020 club campaign with Dungannon Clarkes. Initially, that went exactly as planned.

Yet for both counties, it was the way they adjusted to changing circumstances outside of their control that was to define their season. When Cillian O’Connor’s season was ended early through an achilles tendon injury, there were no shortage of pundits happy to suggest that the loss of the all-time leading scorer in intercounty championship football would be too much for Mayo to overcome.

Meanwhile, Tyrone’s harrowing defeat to Kerry in the semi-final of the Allianz League forced a serious rethink of the Red Hand county’s approach, and there were a couple of personnel and tactical changes that suggested a little bit more emphasis on pragmatism over attacking perfection.

While other counties crashed into the obstacles that were put in their way as the season went on., Tyrone and Mayo’s ability to adapt, respond and thrive in the face of such adversity is why they got this far. Tyrone’s issues with Covid-19 in the lead up to their All-Ireland semi-final clash with Kerry were well-known, but their response to the setback was admirable, and their incredible conditioning was a huge asset once their contest against the Kingdom went to extra-time.

Mayo’s setback didn’t arrive in the lead up to their semi-final with Dublin, but instead it was their complete failure to function as a cohesive unit in the first half of their clash with Dessie Farrell’s side. Aidan O’Shea’s missed mark from 20 metres out shortly before half time was the type of moment that might have broken the mental resolve of lots of teams, but when your county’s footballing history over the past three decades has been punctuated by a litany of catastrophes, then the mental callouses that develop can foster a remarkable sense of resilience.

Against Dublin, there was a response, and an emphatic one. Eoghan McLaughlin’s injury? Carry on. Six points down? Just lock down Dublin and hold them to 0-4 in a little under an hour of football. Extra time against a side perceived as having taken fitness and mobility to new levels in recent years? No problem.

A shrug of the shoulders and acceptance of defeat when Plan A has crashed and burned was never a consideration for these counties. There is never resignation, only reinvention.

And in that, lies the real conundrum that is figuring out tomorrow’s final, because both will bring in Plan A but be ready to deploy plans B, C and D over the course of the 70 minutes.

The starting point is that both Mayo and Tyrone have come this far by figuring out how to take on what were perceived as the most efficient and deadly attacking units in the sport, and to find a way to both defuse their opponents, and to lay a foundation for their own attacking work in the process.

Kerry came to Croke Park with a stellar attacking unit capable of moments of incredible brilliance. Tyrone took the decision to concede short kickouts close to the Kerry goal and thus to add to the number of passes and the amount of ground that Peter Keane’s men would have to cover in order to put the ball in the hands of their elite attackers. All 25 of Shane Ryan’s kickouts ended up in Kerry hands, but only five points resulted from those 25 possessions – expect to see this template followed by a lot of club and county teams in the coming years.

Dublin’s scoring was built on relentless competence, continually moving the ball at a high tempo and constantly doing the right thing accurately until a simple chance from 25 or 30 metres out from goal opened up. Mayo’s defensive intensity forced mistakes on a team that was unaccustomed to mistakes, they starved Dublin of the ball – an alien sensation for a group that in the Leinster final against Kildare, regularly held possession for two or three minutes before taking on a scoring chance.

Having looked after that side of business, both these teams attack in unorthodox ways too. Tyrone build off turnover ball, making unusual lines of running to open up space and unsettle their opposition that is trying to transition from attack to defence. Mayo like to carry from deep, and are heavy users of the old-fashioned approach of one man taking on his direct opponent to create an overlap. However that may play into Tyrone’s hands tomorrow, as the Tyrone half-forward line is probably the best tackling half-forward line in the game. Players like Kieran McGeary, Michael O’Neill and Conor Meyler are exemplary when it comes to defending high up the pitch and denying opponents the chance to get the ball moving forward, and this in turn could set the stage for Mayo’s talisman to play an even bigger role than usual.

Aidan O’Shea’s below par performance against Dublin and his subsequent withdrawal from the fray, albeit he was brought back on again for the last few moments, has led to some speculation about whether or not he will start tomorrow evening at Croke Park. However his ability to win high ball in advanced positions, either at 11 or 14, would force Tyrone to honour that threat, even if it’s used sparingly.

The 2021 American Football season resumed last night with a win for Tom Brady’s Buccaneers over the Dallas Cowboys, and an accepted wisdom in that sport is that even if you aren’t very good at running the ball, you have to still give it a chance occasionally because otherwise it’s too easy for the opposition to just defend the aerial passing attack – and the opposite is true as well. Don’t ever go long, and the defending team can push eight or nine of their eleven players up close to the line of scrimmage, and running space is obliterated.

Even if Mayo use the long ball into O’Shea sparingly, and the presence and current form of Ronan McNamee would suggest that it wouldn’t be an easy route to scores, it will still force players like Frank Burns and Peter Harte to think twice about their positioning, which could be the yard that Durcan, Matthew Ruane or Conor Loftus needs to get up a head of steam.

Also, Mayo will take a leaf out of Tyrone’s book in the sense that conceding possession close to Niall Morgan’s goal, when there are 13, 14 or even 15 green and red jerseys on the goal side of the ball, is no catastrophe. Turning over the ball in the middle third, allowing Matthew Donnelly, Darren McCurry and Conor McKenna to attack an unset defence, is a certain path to defeat.

Perhaps the simplest summary of the contest in store tomorrow is that while it could be argued that there are other teams with a higher number of exceptionally gifted players, particularly up front, Tyrone and Mayo have used their incredible footballing intelligence to plot and engineer their way to this decider. When walls were put in their way, they found a way around them instead of trying to bludgeon their way through. On and off the field, they’ve earned their way to the game’s greatest showpiece event by showing deep understanding of how to respond to challenges, and so the only thing we can with certainty tomorrow is that whatever we see from one team in the first five minutes, we’ll soon see a response, followed by another counter measure, and so on.

It may not have been the final that was widely predicted when the provincial championships were concluded, but this contest could take us down paths we never thought imaginable, with unprecedented numbers of turnovers and incredibly attacking ingenuity likely to be key features. For those reasons alone, it should be savoured.