Poor Rob Hennelly!
Well known sports psychologist Oliver Stone did once write that sport is a game of inches, so we should know better by now, but who would have known that stopping to tie your laces would have such disastrous consequences?
First, Mossie Quinn, and now, Darragh O'Se are crediting Hennelly's bootlace tying with turning the tide in the replay.
With Mayo leading 1-12 to 0-12 on 54 minutes, Hennelly stopped to tie his laces before taking his kick-out.
As someone well acquainted with the modern game, Darragh naturally assumed that this was a time-wasting ploy. The last thought in his mind was that Hennelly might actually need to tie his laces.
However, what happened next led O'Se to question that judgement. Eddie Kinsella gestured to Hennelly to hurry up. To O'Se's amazement, Hennelly obliged.
In his Irish Times column today, he described the scene.
He set the ball on the tee with his right glove on and his left glove tucked under his oxter. He stepped back to start his run-up with the velcro from his right glove dangling and holding his left glove in his hand. He went ahead with the kick-out even though he obviously wasn’t ready.
From the kick-out, Dublin won possession and, after a few passes, the ball reached Brian Fenton who blazed a shot across goal and Bernard Brogan turned it in. Even by the time the ball hit the net, Hennelly hadn't got around to strapping up his gloves.
It seems harsh on Hennelly to pin the whole of Mayo's final quarter collapse on his rushed kick-out, but then Quinn and O'Se seems to be suggesting that this small incident is emblematic of Mayo's lack of composure more generally.
Read their columns here and here.
