“We need to get back to basics. Get back to what work really is, what’s expected and accepted in Mayo. If we get back there, the results will follow. It’s ‘can we get the basics right and then drive on?’ If we can do that, I think we’ll have a very successful year in 2026.”
IT didn’t feel like Andy Moran was prophesying when he said that the night he took office.
His words were careful but left just enough hanging out there for everyone to get excited about.
In an interview with Michael Gallagher of The Mayo News, Moran referenced Finnbarr Roarty’s impact for Donegal last year.
“There’s no reason why a 19-year-old Darragh Beirne isn’t ready to go and play for Mayo. If he comes and he trains well, why can’t he play?” he said.
Nephew of 2004 captain Gary Ruane, Beirne got a taste along with Kobe McDonald when they played the league game against Kerry down in Tralee.
They learned a lot from that day, right up to and including the way Martin McNally would referee the contact.
Colm Boyle had gone to last year’s final with his father-in-law, a Donegal man. He knew by then there was a fair chance he’d be on the Mayo sideline in 2026.
The former four-time Allstar defender had gone in with Mayo minors in 2023 but what really impressed Moran about his former team-mate was the U19 group he set up.
Boyle would run sessions for a group that had nothing really to be there for.
In between the cracks of minor and U20, there were only occasional challenge games, but the players turned out religiously because they saw it as bridging that gap.
When he was a young player trying to make his way, Boyle was cut from the Mayo panel.
The general feeling was that he was too small. He was gone for three years and would return a faster, stronger, grittier version of himself and become one of the county’s great all-time defenders.
The similarities between Boyle and their newly-minted All-Ireland winning captain Jack Coyne are not lost on anyone.
Having been a county minor and U20, he was cut from the senior panel in 2022.
Mayo’s Darragh Beirne and Jack Coyne celebrate after winning the All-Ireland Senior Football final against Kerry at Croke Park. Picture: Oliver McVeigh (OLIVER MC VEIGH)
He went to America for the summer and played with Connemara Gaels, and would live with Armagh trio Conor Turbitt, Barry McCambridge and Ben Crealey.
But Coyne returned a better player for it.
“You can sulk or you can work hard,” he said at the pre-final press event.
He played the final with tape over his watch and had, among other things, ‘1936’ written on it in reference to the county’s first All-Ireland 90 years ago.
On his other wrist, he wore the wristband he does every day. A simple black-and-red band, it says ‘Pierce’. He and all the Ballyhaunis players have them and wear them in memory of Pierce Higgins, his clubmate and brother of Keith, who died from motor neurone disease.
Coyne and David McBrien have been operating basically as full-time athletes through the football season.
McBrien was one of four players who moved home from Dublin before the season started.
Tommy Conroy, Donnacha McHugh and Enda Hession did the same. They were able to get work but McBrien has had no such luck in construction.
Hession was home within a week of Andy Moran asking him and his house has since been the hub. Players would congregate there to use the sauna and ice bath and enjoy barbeques together.
Enda Hession of Mayo in action against Dylan Geaney of Kerry during the All-Ireland Senior Football final at Croke Park. Picture: Oliver McVeigh (OLIVER MC VEIGH)
Moran said after the game on Sunday that the influence he had on their decision to return home was “probably bullying more than positive attitude, but it made a massive difference out there today when the going got tough.”
When he was a regular on The Football Pod, he gleaned from Paddy Andrews the importance for his Dublin team of the players having the opportunity to meet for coffee around the city on a regular basis.
“You can’t become a group if they’re in Dublin,” he said to the Indo Sport podcast on Monday morning.
The one they couldn’t coax home was goalkeeper Jack Livingstone.
Little did he know when he would stand watching one of his heroes and neighbours Rob Hennelly doing goals for Mayo that he would eventually come to dislodge him.
The change of goalkeeper was part of the rejig that happened after the Connacht semi-final defeat by Roscommon, where they lost the second half 1-17 to 0-7.
When the hooter went and pandemonium broke out on Sunday, Hennelly bolted straight for Livingstone and wrapped him up in an emotional embrace.
Ignoring Hennelly’s own advice in 2020, Moran didn’t call Livingstone into the U20s that year.
Alongside Donegal’s All-Ireland-winning keeper, now coach, Paul Durcan, Hennelly – who only returned to the panel this year himself and held the number one spot for a long time – helped guide the youngster to an All-Ireland in a summer where he made save after save.
The pact in the goalkeeper’s union is strong.
One of the first things Moran had done as manager was go to Chicago, New York and London “to try and get our diaspora back involved.”
He was gifted a Chicago Cubs hat and has worn it since as a reminder to himself of the successful Mayo people who made their fortunes and spread their arms to fellow émigrés in the form of employment.
* * *
SO much changed after Roscommon.
Moran absorbed a bit of the blame himself internally, feeling that they’d trained too hard in the lead-up to it, contributing to their legginess as the Rossies stormed away.
The kickout issues were publicly pinned on Hennelly but a big fix they made afterwards was how they protected themselves better on the opposition kickouts that they lost thereafter.
A fringe team played Limerick a week later while the first team trained, before they went strong in a challenge game with Kildare the following week in Longford.
One of the other problems against Roscommon, as they’ve widely referenced since, was getting caught between two stools in terms of their pressing game.
The players hadn’t fully committed to it yet. At moments, some would second guess it and drop off, completely undermining the whole idea. It was all or nothing.
Darragh Heneghan of Roscommon scores a goal during the Connacht GAA Football Senior Championship semi-final match between Mayo and Roscommon at Hastings Insurance MacHale Park in Castlebar, Mayo. PICTURE: Paul Phelan/Sportsfile (Paul Phelan / SPORTSFILE/SPORTSFILE)
That evening against Kildare was when they, particularly Ryan O’Donoghue as the trigger, decided it had to be all rather than nothing.
It came to life in the 90 seconds before half-time in the Meath game which, like the final, went badly wrong in the beginning.
Right on half-time, with Kobe McDonald having just narrowed the gap to seven off a turnover, Jordan Morris was trying to get one final two-point shot away when Eoin McGreal stole in.
The stand in Castlebar erupted.
McGreal’s role in the final was not what anyone expected it to be. The Mayo management deliberated for the first week before they went to him last Tuesday night and revealed he’d be picking up Paudie Clifford.
“His eyes lit up,” Colm Boyle told Joe Molloy.
The 19-year-old was firmly in their plans for the year but he lasted just 17 minutes of his debut in an opening round league game against Galway in Salthill that gave us a taster of the rollercoaster that was ahead.
He’d suffered a grade 3C hamstring tear and could only do straight line running for 14 weeks. If there’s one thing Paudie Clifford doesn’t do, it’s straight line running.
McGreal’s return from injury facilitated the move of Enda Hession out to the half-back line.
He did a number of tagging jobs but it was his performance in the final, where he ran their attacking game, that really stood out.
Their plan for curtailing David Clifford was a bit about Donnacha McHugh, a bit about David McBrien and a bit about putting a stop-end on the supply.
Moran’s post-match thoughts on it were an interesting insight.
“When you’re an underdog, I think you have to do stuff differently. I think if you do stuff the same and you play around the arc, and you play Kerry around the arc, Clifford will just touch too much ball and he’ll destroy you.
“You have to get them up the field, keep the ball as far away from David as you can, so I think that’s just common sense.
“I think you’ll find over the next five years when this thing settles, and people get really used to the new rules, I think there’s going to be an awful lot of high pressure going on.”
A dejected David Clifford of Kerry rues his missed chances against Mayo in the All-Ireland Senior Football final at Croke Park. Picture: Oliver McVeigh (OLIVER MC VEIGH)
* * *
WHEN Jordan Flynn hit the deck in jubilation at Tommy Conroy’s fisted point, Enda Hession came past telling him to get up and deal with the last 20 seconds first.
All week, Flynn had thought about walking up the Hogan Stand steps together with his brother Kobe McDonald.
“I’d be big on manifestation and all that sort of stuff,” he told The Mayo News.
“This week especially it’s been a big part of my thought process of getting to go up the steps with Kobe. You do dream of it, but you never know if it’s going to come to the fore.”
Mayo’s Jordan Flynn and Kobe McDonald holds aloft the Sam Maguire Cup after their All Ireland Senior Football final win over Kerry
PICTURE: Oliver McVeigh (OLIVER MC VEIGH)
Flynn had been close to not going back this year. With a wedding to come in the months ahead, he deliberated. Andy Moran gave him a bit of space and time off in the early part of the year. The long game paid off.
It has been an unbelievable few months for Kobe.
He won’t turn 19 until December, by which time he’ll be in Melbourne.
The AFL’s official website reported earlier this week that his dad Ciarán and mother Karen will be relocating with him.
Kobe will start life at St Kilda as a Category B rookie. Graeme Allen, the club’s head of talent and acquisition who oversaw the teenager’s signature, was in Croke Park on Sunday.
Geelong coach Chris Scott told ‘Fox Footy’ that Oisin Mullin had “taken a phone-call from the Mayo coach just planting a seed about…[popping] over to Ireland to play in the final,” and how the club were open to it.
Mullin, who had joined Mayo’s pre-season training camp, subsequently confirmed to Channel 7 that he had a chat with Moran but that it didn’t fit around their AFL schedule.
* * *
THE week of the final was a week of big calls.
In some ways the team picked itself after the semi-final, but the roles they would each take and the injury Stephen Coen picked up the weekend in between had to be sorted.
Diarmuid O’Connor pretty much knew he was getting the nod a week out. He was told to prepare for the wing-back position.
Although he’d played a bit-part role in the summer up until then, Moran did reference how the energy he brought to the press after his introduction against Meath was one of the key factors in that game – and their year – turning.
Jordan Flynn of Mayo celebrates scoring a two-pointer during the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Round 3 match between Mayo and Meath at Hastings Insurance MacHale Park in Castlebar, Mayo. PICTURE: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile (Piaras Ó Mídheach / SPORTSFILE/SPORTSFILE)
O’Connor’s brief was on the right-hand side of Mayo’s defence, where by proxy he’d find himself in the path of Gavin White for the afternoon.
Although Sam Callinan was detailed to prevent White from winning the break on either throw-in, as he had done to devastating effect in last year’s final, it was O’Connor who had him for the rest of it.
When the Ballintubber man came off, he couldn’t bring himself to watch the end of the game and headed straight into the changing room.
The TV was on and inside was his brother Cillian on his own. They sat together and watched it up until Tommy Conroy’s point, when they headed back out to the pitch.
Diarmuid had acknowledged a role as a “piano lifter” and kept White to just 20 possessions and a very quiet day by his own exceptionally high standard.
But he was one of a quartet of Kerry players that Mayo felt presented an opportunity for their high-pressing approach.
The relative lack of football White, Seanie O’Shea, Paudie Clifford and surprise late inclusion Tom O’Sullivan had played was seen as something they could go after.
All is well that ends well, but 15 minutes in, Kerry were tugging at the curtains.
1-5 to 0-1 ahead, they missed three shots into the Canal End for two-pointers, as well as a one-point attempt from O’Sullivan before the comeback began.
They felt their players were in the wrong positions and that they were unable to get cover in defence because they couldn’t get their hands on the ball.
It could have been over before it started.
They didn’t expect the first 15 minutes to go the way they did but there was an acknowledgement before the game that going out to press Kerry high would leave the back door open.
Kerry’s second score of the day was the danger. Mayo’s attack breaks down on top of the Kerry goal and three kick passes the length of the field in seconds have David Clifford in for a score.
They wanted to be brave to the point of insanity. When they went for the press, Moran asked Jack Carney to step up into it even if the Kerry midfielders wanted to go the other way into the space out behind, making it “8v6 or even 8v5”.
The images of Tyrone’s famous swarm tackling on Kerry in 2003, for which Paddy Tally was the coach, were used in the build-up to the game.
Cillian O’Connor with Mayo coach Paddy Tally before Mayo v Roscommon at Hastings Insurance MacHale Park. PICTURE: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
Read more: Kevin Cassidy: Mayo people and Andy Moran believed when no one else did
When Mattie Ruane and Rory Brickenden came on midway through the second half, they ended up in the wrong positions in situations.
It was the introduction of Conor Loftus that allowed them to sort it. He carried instructions on, as did Paddy Durcan when he came on for the final few minutes.
* * *
PART of David McBrien’s role all day was to cover off the space in front of David Clifford when he could.
Previous to returning home from Dublin, he’d been plagued by hamstring and quad injuries that weren’t helped by spending half his life in the car.
He played every game this year bar the league defeat in Donegal.
That he played almost all of it between half-back and midfield was another indication of their positive approach.
“The temptation is to play him and Donnacha in the full-back line but it kills what we want to do up the field,” said Moran on Monday.
McBrien’s mother taught Moran in junior infants at St Attracta’s National School and would invoke the privilege of getting the former player to attend her son’s early birthday parties as special guest.
The current centre-back grew up calling Moran “the GOAT”, as they all did in Ballaghaderreen.
Moran was also taught and coached football at school by the late John O’Mahony.
When the time for prayers arrived as Kerry sought a two-pointer to tie it up late in the game on Sunday afternoon, it was Johnno and Aidan Drake, a cousin of his wife Jennifer who passed away last year, that he looked up to.
Moran coaches O’Mahony’s grand-daughter now with the Kilmovee U12 girls team, where his own daughter Charlotte plays.
That’s the secondary gig.
Mayo had 100 field sessions since they started out late last autumn.
In a sign of their connection back to home, a handful of players that didn’t make the 26 for Sunday actually took part in training sessions with their clubs the morning before the All-Ireland.
Perhaps, though, a story from the news page of The Mayo News was the best of the lot.
RTÉ’s cameras picked up Kilmaine man Shane Fitzgerald illustrating the deep emotion of it all after the final whistle.
When the newspaper asked him what was on his mind, he talked about his late father Michael who had passed away three years ago.
“Before he passed I asked him to sign a Mayo jersey and I said ‘sign that there and the day Sam Maguire is won by Mayo, I will have you with me’.”
Everyone in Mayo has their own story to tell about why this means so much.
Andy Moran and his team got back to basics. They worked like dogs. The Mayo people accepted them as new heroes.
Publicly, he didn’t say on the first night what his ambitions were.
But in the first meeting, he and Paddy Tally both told them they were there to win an All-Ireland.
Mission accomplished.
* Information compiled from the following sources: The Irish News, Mayo News, Mayo Football Talk podcast, MidWest Radio, Indo Sport podcast, Off The Ball, Irish Examiner, Smaller Fish podcast, BBC, RTÉ, Instagram, TikTok