Rochford climbs on top of the Mayo volcano as they face yet another last stand
Declan Bogue
INTERCOUNTY MANAGEMENT IN the modern era is a game of bluff. To appear to the outside world that you are so chilled you might look around yourself for another layer, all the while sitting on top of a volcano. Or at least a Bunsen burner, turning your backside to tan leather.
Take yourself back to the first round of the National Football League in 2023. Paddy Carr had just brought Donegal to a win over Kerry. He struggled to hold back tears as he talked about how much it meant to bring a little happiness to the people of the county.
Having taken over in late October, and then having to deal with the retirement of Michael Murphy, Carr was a man under pressure, so the win came as a huge relief.
Yet before the league was out, he was gone after a meeting with some key players who made it clear they did not think he was the man for the job.
Occurrences of managers leaving a post mid-season were once unheard of. Nowadays, they crop up every couple of seasons.
It has been a strange last fortnight in the world of Mayo GAA. Defeat to Cavan has left them facing a last stand this Saturday night against Tyrone in Omagh. In the middle of it all, manager Kevin McStay took unwell at the team training session in Castlebar last Saturday. While his health is now stable, he has had to step down as the county team manager.
Inherently decent and hugely respected in the GAA, McStay doesn’t strike us as one of the Teflon individuals at the very top end of Gaelic football management. Having a life and a career outside the game has granted him a more rounded personality but the stress of the last number of weeks cannot have been easy for him to bear.
Writing in the Mayo News this week, journalist Michael Gallagher was present at the defeat to Cavan and recalls: “In the last few minutes of that game, some of the vitriol directed towards him from a small band of humans had to be heard to be believed. How this could occur defies belief, but it doesn’t surprise me.”
Despite all, the Mayo show goes on and rolls into Omagh. It will now be led by Stephen Rochford, who had a previous spell as manager a decade ago.
Back then, it was a fairly daunting challenge.
Like it or not, the dressing room he walked into could be seen as anything from ‘strong’ to ‘difficult’, given how the previous management team of Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly were pushed out of their roles.
Within Mayo, the support were still digesting how they let Dublin wriggle off the hook over two All-Ireland semi-finals. But there was a sense that the same players who had been shaped into credible All-Ireland contenders under James Horan might have their opinions taken into consideration.
After a typically long, drawn-out appointment process, it was 30 November before the county board confirmed Rochford’s appointment. Naturally, how it ended for the previous guys was among the first questions he was asked.
His answer was illustrative. It could have been scripted by a PR company to give a little bit of jam to everyone. Classic rugby-speak.
“It is unfortunate what happened. There is a mediation process ongoing between the player and county board and we will take on board any significant learnings from that.”
With that done and put to bed, he got on with the job.
What style of play he had with Mayo wasn’t quite what he had as manager of Corofin, whom he coached to an All-Ireland club title.
He knew he had the meanest half-back line in Ireland, fashioned in the ways of Horanball, and he kept that unit intact.
While they may have lost two All-Ireland finals in 2016 and 2017, both performances were as good as it ever got for Mayo in the modern age.
Conceding two own goals in the drawn 2016 final was freakish. Limiting the Dublin attack to 0-6 from play however was incredible. For the replay, it was a mere 0-8 from play for Dublin as they edged it by a point.
It was another single point margin in the following year’s final.
While ‘Newbridge or Nowhere’ was the end of Rochford’s first Mayo spell, he was always going to be in demand.
Declan Bonner made a move and brought in Rochford to the Donegal management, where he remained for four seasons.
“There’s no time to dwell too much on it,” Bonner says of Rochford’s current transition from Mayo’s Maoir Foirne to Bainisteoir.
“I’m sure the guys are back in training since they were on Saturday morning when the incident happened. He’s getting the side ready against Tyrone and they are a side who will be bouyed up by how they got on in Ballybofey.”
“There’s no doubt, it’s a pressured situation and the demands are huge,” Bonner says, reflecting on his own two spells over Donegal, from 1998 to 2000 and again from 2018 to 2022.
“But you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to do it and a lot of people decide they don’t want to do it. That’s just the way it is. The good days are good and the bad days are pretty low. And of course, the bad days definitely outweigh the good days.
“Unless you are winning provincial championships or All-Irelands year in, year out, there’s a lot to put up with.”
Rochford isn’t one for the gap year with a metaphoric spell away travelling. A high-ranking bank official with AIB, he has been coaching since he was still playing for Crossmolina and this year marks a full decade in the county game.
After his time at Donegal wrapped up, he was named as a coach for Bernard Flynn’s potential management team of Meath before the county board gave the job to Colm O’Rourke.
A couple of months later, he joined McStay’s set-up. At the time, it looked a crowded house alongside Donie Buckley and Liam McHale as well as selector Damian Mulligan.
If it looked top-heavy, that was revealed after the first year when McHale left, citing, ‘The four lads had a completely different philosophy on how this team should play than I had… I just felt there is no point in me being there when I am so removed from their thinking.’
As the seasons rolled on, Rochford assumed a greater control, running the sessions with input from Buckley.
Now, they are faced with a shot to nothing. Same old Mayo. Different Mayo. Nothing changes.
Check out the latest episode of The42′s GAA Weekly podcast here
The 42
