A new departure in the dressing room wall material. Entirely invented dressing room wall material.
Following Waterford's quarter-final win over Dublin last year, Maurice Shanahan emerged to scold the press for 'writing us off' in the lead-up. Since Waterford had been installed as 4/1 favourites and no one could pinpoint any of the articles dismissing their chances, the obvious conclusion was that the Waterford players had been told this by their management.
Mayo's charismatic, shorts-wearing leader during the late 90s and again in 2004, Mr. John Maughan, tried similar-ish tactics the last time Mayo beat Tyrone in an All-Ireland quarter final.
On Off the Ball last night, David Brady recalled how Maughan succeeded in winding up his men before the '04 quarter-final by saying that the Tyrone players had cheered when they drew Mayo.
I remember we had training on the Monday after Tyrone beat Laois fairly comprehensively. But in them days, the draw was done half an hour after the game finished and John Maughan brought us into the dressing room and he said 'How dare they, how dare they' and he said it five or six times and we were saying 'what was he on about?' He says, 'When the draw was made, yesterday, the roar went up in the Tyrone dressing room when they got Mayo.
Maughan alleged his source was a Croke Park steward standing in front of the dressing room door.
But it transpired that the Tyrone players had done no such thing. There was no cheer from the players.
Those who remember the 'Mayo wear headsets during training games' debacle of August 2013 may be unwilling to believe any story that comes out of Brady's mouth.
But Ryan McMenamin was on hand to verify the existence of such a rumour. Drowning their sorrows the day after, they got wind that the Mayo players were angered by Tyrone's supposedly disrespectful glee at drawing them in the quarter-final.
However, while he disputed the claim that Tyrone players had cheered, he did allude to a couple of county board officials letting up a 'yip' when the draw was announced. Perhaps Maughan didn't pluck it totally from thin air.
Something that was seemingly plucked from thin air.
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