Achieving the blend between youth and experience is far removed from a scientific formula, but have Mayo got the mix right as Kevin McStay looks to improve on his first year in charge?
Last year's league title was quickly forgotten – less than a week arguably – when Roscommon dumped them out of the Connacht championship.
The swashbuckling display in swatting aside Kerry on their own turf was probably the 2023 highlight, but that was in the All-Ireland series and as McStay admitted prior to the start of this year’s league, things didn’t really click in the way he had hoped as the year progressed.
Ending Galway’s interest in the championship, especially in Salthill, is never to be sniffed at, and they looked competitive in the first half against Dublin in their All-Ireland quarter-final, but it was one-way traffic after the break as the curtain was brought down on 2023 on the first weekend in July and looking well off the pace of the Dubs, Kerry and Derry.
Since that defeat, Jason Doherty, Brendan Harrison and Kevin McLoughlin have stepped away, while the likes of Rory Brickenden, David McBrien and Jack Carney are among those to have put markers down for regular starting spots.
But is the mix right for a team harbouring ambitions of being in the mix-up later this summer?
Speaking on the RTÉ GAA podcast, former Fermanagh defender Ryan McCluskey believes that McStay may be overly loyal to some of the more experienced players in his squad.
McCluskey name-checked Cillian O’Connor, the county’s all-time record scorer, his brother Diarmuid, also a fellow two-time Young Footballer of the Year award winner who doesn’t turn 30 until next year and Aidan O’Shea, who was part of Mayo sides that have lost All-Ireland deciders in 2012, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2020 and 2021 and has started all three league outings to date, as players whose best may well be behind them.
"There is so much good in terms of some of the new players that have come into the squad over the last number of seasons," he said.
"Have they (O’Connor brothers and O’Shea) still got that desire and hunger to be at the top level? They have been knocking on the door for so many years, big battles in Croke Park in in All-Ireland finals, semi-finals.
"It’s hard to continue to keep that going."
"I’m not sure at times if they are just at that level. At times I think Mayo are carrying them and maybe playing them because of their senior presence within the team."
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