Dean Rock: To get their hands on Sam Maguire, Mayo need to find more scoring forwards

The key to Mayo getting their attack humming is what they can get out of Tommy Conroy this summer. Photograph: Evan Treacy/Inpho, it was usually Keith Higgins or Chris Barrett trotting over to make sure I wasn’t short of company for the afternoon.lads around me, none of us were left on our own for very long. We knew Mayo believed they had the defenders to matchup with our forwards, they backed themselves in tight man-to-man situations and were quite comfortable for it to become a straight duel.

Ryan O’Donoghue is Mayo’s go-to man in attack, he is an excellent player, but all too often it appears he is their only forward capable of posting a large return – and that lack of a broader scoring threat makes it so much easier for the opposition to devise a defensive approach. There weren’t as many score-getters in Mayo’s half-forward line compared to ours, which meant our half-back players could potentially move off their men in certain moments to get double-ups and cut space for the scoring forwards.

The worry from a Mayo perspective is that Conroy, who suffered a cruciate injury in 2022, just hasn’t been able to rediscover his form. He featured in all seven of Mayo’s league games this season, starting five and coming off the bench in the other two, but his return for the campaign was a solitary point against Derry.

Everything is at the forefront of the brain for players at the start of matches but the tactical side of things can wane a little bit as bodies and minds tire, that’s when a player like Conroy could excel. Mayo might actually have timed their run better this year than in McStay’s maiden season in charge. They went all out for the league in 2023 and it felt in the second half against us in the All-Ireland quarter-final last year that they were just devoid of any real ideas, they lacked that bit of energy. We played really well in that second half, but it seemed Mayo were dead on their feet by that stage of the season.

Mayo-Gaa Dublin-Gaa Gaa Roscommon-Gaa

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