The All-Ireland football championship heats up in earnest this weekend, with a number of fascinating games across the country. The meeting of Mayo and Galway on Sunday in McHale will surely be tasty.
When we last saw Mayo, they were hammered in the Division One final by Kerry. Mayo defender Padraig O’Hara was in the thick of the action that day, and came in for criticism after Kerry’s David Clifford made light work of him.
Off the ball, the Mayo back was seen attempting to taunt Clifford, in a move that clearly backfired as the Kerry forward scored 1-6 to secure the Division One final for Kerry.
Lovely finish from David Clifford to get @Kerry_Official's second GOAL of their Division 1 Allianz Football League Final v @MayoGAA #GAANOW pic.twitter.com/TeppsgJN4q
— The GAA (@officialgaa) April 3, 2022
Kevin McStay - who was a guest on this week's Mayo News Football Podcast - claims he wasn’t helped by the way in which his team set up, with Mayo isolating Clifford with Padraig O’Hora.
"His defensive efforts on the goal were very, very good. If you look at it from a coaching perspective, he did everything just about right.
"And if you remember, he was in isolation, which was poor form by the defensive coverage he was given, he was given no defensive coverage.
"That isn’t nice for any defender, especially when your on the top player in the country at the moment in terms of form.
"He made a rookie error of getting involved with him."
Ahead of this weekend’s Connacht quarter final with Galway, it is expected that O’Hora will be marking Galway's talisman Shane Walsh.
In last year’s meeting between the sides, Walsh was slammed to the ground by O’Hora in an off the ball incident that saw the Kilkerrin-Clonberne man require treatment at half time, with the Ballina Stephanites back going unpunished for the incident.
Galway manager Padraig Joyce was incensed after the incident.
"He got dumped the ground, thrown on the ground and nothing happened. There’s seven or eight officials there are the match.
“I’d seen what happened, but obviously they didn’t see it. It’s frustrating when that happens and they get away with it.
“There’s two linesman, there’s four umpires, there’s a referee and there’s an assistant referee. How someone can’t see what happened is beyond me. But that’s not sour grapes or anything. The man was hurt."
Prior to the incident, Walsh had scored 1-1 and provided the assist for Damien Comer’s goal.
McStay had some interesting things to say about that O'Hora's performance that day when speaking on this week's Mayo News Football podcast. He warned O'Hora to 'mind himself' on Sunday inside the fierce cauldron that is a Mayo-Galway game.
He did bring attention on to himself last year in Croke Park when he was marking Shane Walsh and that was not clever at all. He got out of jail that day.
You can be sure that officials look at these things, and they know going into big games who’s likely to pull a stroke, who’s likely to be involved.
Generally speaking, it’s the same boys involved every time. Every county has a couple of them and that’s just the way it is.
He needs to mind himself. Especially in this truncated championship that we are racing into, you don’t need a suspension, you don’t need anything silly like that. "
It's all set up for a fascinating afternoon at McHale Park on Sunday.
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