By Terry Reilly (c)

AS promised last week, and in response to calls for amplification of a

recent article on Mayo football, Another View returns to the topic this week

with a view to initiating some informed thinking which may, perhaps, lead to

better days.

As you know we have not won the senior All-Ireland football crown since

1951... that's 52 years ago!

By: Terry Reilly (c)

Western People, Nov 26, 2003.

REMEMBER the time Mayo footballers were directed, as part of their winter training, to push cars across a car park? Almost everyone made a song and a dance out of it. Blew it out of proportion. It was the butt of national jokes for weeks.There were other issues, perhaps deeper issues, involved between management and players, but that was the issue that was used to highlight coaching inadequacies.

This column at the time pointed out that there was nothing extraordinary in adapting to conditions and resources to get teams fit mentally and physically. As a student of the kind of mind games used in sport, I have (or had before the missus decided to clean out the study) a collection of ‘devices’ used by coaches around the world to get the best (or perhaps worst from their players)…guys in American colleges forced to climb flagpoles, or others confronted by a headless chicken thrown into the middle of a dressingroom–talk about blooding players! You get the drift.Naw. Pushing or pulling cars, even with handbrakes on was mild stuff compared to the tactics employed by coaches who are, depending on the results, either inspired or mad.

Article first appeared June 2003

Slipping fan belts and near misses

By Terry Reilly (c) 2003

MAYO never minded playing Galway in Pearse Stadium in Salthill.  Big pitch.
Plenty of space. Room to express oneself. And some good results. The only
drawback was getting away after the game, along tar-melting roads knotted
with traffic that found out dodgy radiators and slipping fan belts.

Believe it or not,  in those days we checked radiators and fan belts and
oul and petrol and tyre pressure before setting out on any journey of
consequence. And we carried spare water for the rad, a hand pump just in
case Dunlop pressure dropped, maybe even a canister of petrol. And  veteran
drivers knew that a nylon stocking could serve as a replacement fan belt if
needed. Provided, of course,  there was a woman on board with the hosiery of
the requisite denier. Younger readers , check with your mums and dads if you
don't believe your columnist!

First there was 1967: Mayo, smarting from reversals at the hands of the
great three-in-a-row Galway side, had beaten Sligoi in the first round and
Leitrim had beaten Roscommon. But the semi-final clash of Mayo and Galway at
Pearse Stadium on June 25th was the one that counted.