Mayo manager Stephen Rochford pulled the wool over the eyes of his Roscommon counterpart Kevin McStay by playing Footballer of the Year Lee Keegan at midfield during the first half of their All-Ireland SFC quarter-final on Sunday.
Normally a wing-back and occasionally seen at centre-back Keegan has rarely played in the middle of the field for Mayo.
But Rochford decided to put him on Roscommon’s main man Enda Smith from throw-in and it had the desired effect - Keegan scored 1-03 before the break and Smith looked lost.
But it was McStay who won the tactical battle in the second half, moving Smith to full-forward. Rochford allowed his danger-man to follow him to the edge of the square, thus robbing his team of their most important strike weapon for 15 minutes before a change was made.
"The Lee Keegan match-up on Enda was a good call by Mayo," admitted McStay. "We tried everything to get him off it but he was out for a job and he stuck to his guns and did a great job off him.
"Then eventually we said we can't have him dominating it and we put him back in full-forward and thankfully Lee Keegan went in with him."
McStay’s response to questions on whether or not he was happy to see Keegan stationed at the edge of his own square was: "It's not for me to comment on." But when pressed he said: "Delighted."
Rochford was rightly full of praise for Keegan’s early contribution and he was big enough to acknowledge that he might have been better to push the Westport man back out the pitch earlier in the second half.
When Mayo trailed by 0-01 to 2-02 after 11 minutes it was Keegan who led the fight-back, scoring the crucial goal via a Niall McInerney deflection and he finished his team’s top scorer with 1-03.
"I thought taken in the context of being seven points down, someone had to take the game by the scruff of the neck and put us back into a position to firstly compete and then obviously to go ahead, and I thought Lee did that very, very well.
"And obviously the other side of that is that he had Enda Smith to try and also deal with.
"There's no doubt that the leadership qualities in that guy are second to none and the skill and effort that we saw was top class in that he scored some fabulous scores in that 1-03. For the goal he ran 40 or 50 metres, and two or three of the scores from the Hogan Stand side were really good, but that was only half the job did.
"We were very conscious of the influence Enda Smith had in the Connacht final and maybe we'll look back and say that we should have pushed Lee out five or ten minutes early.
"But it's all retrospective. We were two points up, got ourselves back into that position again heading into the final stretch and probably should have been driving it on, but we'll look at that and see what we can put together for next week."
Seamus O’Shea and Tom Parsons formed the midfield announced by Mayo in the build-up to the drawn game, but shortly before throw-in it was announced that Paddy Durcan would start ahead of Parsons.
Durcan dropped back to wing-back, allowing Keegan to move into the middle and give Enda Smith as tough a 35 minutes as he will have experienced playing for Roscommon.
