For the first time since the year before Mayo claimed their first All Ireland senior title, Mayo will take on Kildare in a senior championship match. That meeting, in the All Ireland semifinal back in 1935, saw the Leinster men win 2-6 to 0-7; tomorrow evening the Mayo faithful will be hoping for a different result when the sides clash in MacHale Park.
Last weekend the first steps in their road to recovery began when they saw off the challenge of a sticky Fermanagh outfit in Castlebar, thanks to a second half surge that saw them hit 1-10 over the closing 35 minutes while restricting the Erne men to just 0-2. While the win gets Mayo's championship run back up and running, there are still a lot of things for Mayo to get right if they are going to push on further this year.
While Mayo restricted Fermanagh to just 0-2 in the second half last weekend, they still ended up conceding 1-12, the same score that was enough for Galway to see them off in the Connacht semifinal earlier this summer. The Mayo rearguard has conceded 9-122 (149pts ) in their 10 league and championship games so far, an average of 0.9 goals and 12 points per game. At the other end of the field they have registered 9-128 (155pts ) an average of 0.9 goals and 12.8 points per 70 minutes. It's been tight for Mayo in the vast majority of games they have played this year, with games against Dublin, Donegal, Monaghan, Down, Galway, and Fermanagh all being decided by either way by three points or less at full time. Meanwhile Kerry and Cork had five and nine points respectively to spare over Mayo at the end of full time in other losses. It's the fine margins that separate sides at this level, and Mayo will have to be more clinical in front of goal if they are going to keep coming out on top in these tight championship games, they kicked 10 wides over the 70 minutes last weekend to go with the 13 (10 in the first half ) they tallied against Galway in the Connacht semifinal.
The games come thick and fast in the qualifiers, leaving little time in between games for kinks to be worked out, but Stephen Rochford has shown that he is not afraid to mix things up with both David Clarke and Alan Freeman coming into the starting 15 for last weekend's game, and when some guile and cunning was needed to steady the ship in the second half, he had no qualms in throwing Alan Dillon into the mix and the Ballintubber man had big influence on the outcome of the contest down the home stretch.
Mayo need to get more scoring return from their starting forwards, with only 1-6 coming from play from their starting attacking unit over the last two games, with Jason Doherty, Aidan O'Shea, Cillian O'Connor, and Stephen Coen all kicking one point from play each, while Diarmuid O'Connor has chipped in with two from play. Lee Keegan has scored three points from play over the two games, Colm Boyle two points coming from defence, and Alan Dillon chipped in with two points from play and he only played for just over 25 minutes in those two games.
Kildare might be the perfect opportunity for the Mayo attack to find their scoring touch from play again, in the championship so far they have conceded 3-34 in their three games to date while they put up 2-42, however those games were against two division three and one division four sides, teams that Mayo would comfortably expect to run up big scores against.
