The Wild Bunch are coming to town and Dublin are right to be worried.
The taglines for Sam Peckinpah's iconic movie 1969 western movie are about 'men who came too late and stayed too long’ and ‘unchanged men in a changing land’. It’s about a desperate fight for survival against the odds.
Mayo, when operating at full gas, bring mayhem and cause chaos; even the best prepared of teams struggle to prepare for what they deliver. The Wild Bunch always bring the fight.
Looking back, 2014 and 2017 were probably their best chances of landing that elusive All-Ireland title – in the former they were at the wrong end of some scandalous refereeing decisions in a semi-final replay with Kerry and in the latter they shot themselves in the foot when Donie Vaughan saw red.
But anyone who thought that they were in terminal decline following their 2018 defeat to Kildare in the Newbridge or Nowhere match, the sort of multi-layered epic Mayo specialise in, has been proven wrong in recent weeks.
With James Horan back in charge, following on from his first spell between 2011 and ’14, they proved that their survival instincts are as strong as ever. Not against Roscommon or Kerry when a safety net was still strung below them, but against Galway and Donegal when everything was on the line.
Dublin and Mayo have been the two best, most entertaining teams of the current decade and Saturday's All-Ireland semi-final will be their eighth meeting in nine seasons, including four finals, one of them a replay, and four semi-finals, also including a replay.
The record is five wins for Dublin, one for Mayo and two draws so far, with this weekend’s clash to follow.
That clearly illustrates that Dublin are the better team, but not by much. Only on one occasion has there been more than a score between the sides – that was the ’15 semi-final replay when the Dubs cut loose late on to win by seven. Mayo won the 2012 semi-final by three points and every other meeting this decade has either finished level or in a one-point Dublin win. The margins are fine.
The Dubs can take comfort from the fact that they have usually found a way past their most belligerent of opponents, but the fact that it has generally been so close will also be a concern.
Another concern for them is the fact that since the start of the 2017 championship no team other than Mayo has managed to lay a glove on Jim Gavin’s team.
Their average winning margin in the 19 games they’ve played over the past two-and-a-bit seasons, taking out the ’17 final with Mayo which they squeaked by a point, is 13.8 points. Only Tyrone in last year’s Super 8s match in Omagh managed to keep within a score of them at the final whistle across that period.
This year the Red Hand ran them to six points last weekend at Healy Park and every other championship win this season has been by double digits, the smallest of those 13 points against Cork at Croke Park.
Dublin are going for five in-a-row for a reason – they’re arguably the greatest team of all time – but this season has not been ideal preparation for Saturday’s All-Ireland semi-final and the wall of noise that Mayo will cause.
So what exactly is it that Mayo do generally to get themselves over the line in big games and to cause Dublin such problems in particular?
The first answer to that question is simple – manic intensity. Mayo might not have the most talented group of footballers in the country, but they certainly have the most intense once they cross the white line.
There are no passengers. Everyone is expected to put bodies on the line, throw themselves into the tackle and die for the cause if necessary with grizzled old-hands like Colm Boyle, Chrissy Barrett and Séamus O’Shea leading the way.
They occasionally play a sweeper in defence, but more often they back themselves to go man-for-man and the aggression they bring to the tackle area is a sight to behold – they stand the man up, they turn him back, they hit him hard, they turn the ball over.
They have the fitness and concentration to put the squeeze on even the most well-oiled kick-out machine and they’ve caused Dublin keeper Stephen Cluxton to meltdown more than once in the past. After it’s kicked into a contest they have the ball-hungry players capable of winning it in the air or on the ground.
What has caught up with them, and these are the areas where Dublin are perhaps strongest, is their efficiency in front of goals and the depth on their bench. The loss of Jason Doherty only exacerbates both these issues.
They have to work too hard for the scores they get and as bodies tire when the game heads down the stretch they aren’t replacing like-with-like from their substitutes. That has what has caught them in the end against the Dubs and could be their undoing again at the weekend.
Follow Dublin v Mayo (Saturday, 5pm) and Kerry v Tyrone (Sunday, 3.30pm) via our live blogs on RTÉ.ie and the News Now app, watch live on RTÉ2 or listen to radio commentary on RTÉ Radio 1 and RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta.
