ANDY MORAN GOT it wrong about David McBrien on the day of the All-Ireland final; he doesn’t actually work in construction.
The Mayo manager referenced his centre-back in a memorable post-match press conference when detailing the extraordinary sacrifices that some of his players had made in their pursuit of Sam.
“David McBrien moved from Dublin,” said Moran. “If anyone knows of a construction job coming up, can we get him one? He’s had no job for six months, moved home to try to do this today.”
Moran mentioned Enda Hession, Tommy Conroy and Donnacha McHugh too, as players who’d ‘packed up their lives and their girlfriends’ and moved home to commit entirely to the cause.
But McBrien was the one that really stuck out. Did he really leave his job to play full-time for Mayo? Yes is the answer, although as the player himself subsequently explained on the Smaller Fish podcast, he doesn’t work in construction per se, he’s actually a teacher having graduated University of Limerick in 2022 with a degree in Graphics and Construction Technology.
Moran may have mixed up his construction gigs but the message he gave last winter to McBrien, a Ballaghaderreen clubmate, was crystal clear – playing for Mayo while living in Dublin wasn’t an option.
“He was saying, ‘I need you home, get you closer to home for training’ and stuff like that,” explained McBrien. “I won’t lie, he was putting pressure on. He was putting pressure on and eventually, when it came to December time, I said, ‘Right, I’ll come home’.”
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McBrien, left, and Tommy Conroy soak in the aftermath of Mayo's glorious All-Ireland win. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
Moran himself used even harsher terms when describing how he twisted the arms of McBrien and the others to relocate.
“Had I something to do with getting them home?” said Moran after winning the final. “It’s probably bullying more than positive attitude, but it made a massive difference to us out there today when the going got tough.”
The question is, has a desperately dangerous precedent now been set in terms of just how much an inter-county player is expected to give up for the cause? And where does the Gaelic Players Association stand on this one?
In Moran’s defence, he had noted that McBrien was prone to injury and that the six-hour round trip to and from training was a big problem. A typical training day started by jumping in the car at 2.30pm and not getting home to bed until gone 1am. McBrien said that Moran also sourced some subbing shifts for him, to keep some money coming in.
But Mayo weren’t All-Ireland favourites last winter when he pushed McBrien, and the others, to leave their lives behind in the capital and to come home. All he was selling them at that stage was a dream. And a pretty unlikely one considering how many teams appeared to be ahead of them in the national rankings.
Mark Dowd and Roscommon will be hoping to follow in Mayo's footsteps next season. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
Connacht neighbours Roscommon presumably have that same dream now for 2027. They’re the Connacht champions after all, and they beat Mayo by 10 points along that journey. If Mayo can win the All-Ireland, why not Roscommon?
Maybe their manager, Mark Dowd, will also consider having the same sort of conversations with his Dublin-based players that Moran had last winter.
There is a long history of mimicry when it comes to following the template laid down by All-Ireland winners. Like the explosion of towering full-forwards – most midfielders suddenly being shifted up to the edge of the square – that occurred after Kerry’s Kieran Donaghy inspired win in 2006.
Six years later, Donegal presented a new template for how the game could be played and an era of suffocating, defensive football suddenly caught fire in much the same way as this summer’s wildfires.
From training camps in La Manga to the influence of sports psychologists and performance coaches, all it takes is one All-Ireland win to bring it all into the realm of standard practice.
In Mayo’s case, their unique decentralisation programme – taking their players out of Dublin and returning them to the west – may very well have amounted to the missing inches in their long quest to finally get over the line.
A decade ago, when they were right at the forefront of the game, manager Stephen Rochford detailed what a problem it was having so many players based in Dublin.
“At one period during the winter, we might have had 19 in Dublin and 22 in Mayo,” said Rochford in 2018, fresh off one-point All-Ireland final defeats to Dublin in 2016 and 2017.
Stephen Rochford's Mayo had a huge number of players based in Dublin. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
That figure would generally have improved for the Championship but, as Rochford said, it would still be ‘closer to the double digits, 14 is probably the highest it’s been’, for players based in the capital.
If more of them had followed McBrien’s lead, might it have amounted to the missing one-percenters in those agonising years when they consistently came up marginally short in finals?
Or, alternatively, it could have been the tipping point for players already investing so much of themselves in the amateur game. Any suggestion, real or perceived, that football had to come first, in all aspects of their lives, might have led some of those players to simply walk away.
It’s a conundrum that Moran, Dowd and all the other inter-county managers with significant numbers of players based outside the county, or in Dublin, will have to consider in the coming months. Is total commitment, even at the cost of your career and personal life, going to be the new norm?
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Mayo's 'decentralisation' drive may spark new frontier in quest for the missing 1%
ANDY MORAN GOT it wrong about David McBrien on the day of the All-Ireland final; he doesn’t actually work in construction.
The Mayo manager referenced his centre-back in a memorable post-match press conference when detailing the extraordinary sacrifices that some of his players had made in their pursuit of Sam.
“David McBrien moved from Dublin,” said Moran. “If anyone knows of a construction job coming up, can we get him one? He’s had no job for six months, moved home to try to do this today.”
Moran mentioned Enda Hession, Tommy Conroy and Donnacha McHugh too, as players who’d ‘packed up their lives and their girlfriends’ and moved home to commit entirely to the cause.
But McBrien was the one that really stuck out. Did he really leave his job to play full-time for Mayo? Yes is the answer, although as the player himself subsequently explained on the Smaller Fish podcast, he doesn’t work in construction per se, he’s actually a teacher having graduated University of Limerick in 2022 with a degree in Graphics and Construction Technology.
Moran may have mixed up his construction gigs but the message he gave last winter to McBrien, a Ballaghaderreen clubmate, was crystal clear – playing for Mayo while living in Dublin wasn’t an option.
“He was saying, ‘I need you home, get you closer to home for training’ and stuff like that,” explained McBrien. “I won’t lie, he was putting pressure on. He was putting pressure on and eventually, when it came to December time, I said, ‘Right, I’ll come home’.”
Moran himself used even harsher terms when describing how he twisted the arms of McBrien and the others to relocate.
“Had I something to do with getting them home?” said Moran after winning the final. “It’s probably bullying more than positive attitude, but it made a massive difference to us out there today when the going got tough.”
The question is, has a desperately dangerous precedent now been set in terms of just how much an inter-county player is expected to give up for the cause? And where does the Gaelic Players Association stand on this one?
In Moran’s defence, he had noted that McBrien was prone to injury and that the six-hour round trip to and from training was a big problem. A typical training day started by jumping in the car at 2.30pm and not getting home to bed until gone 1am. McBrien said that Moran also sourced some subbing shifts for him, to keep some money coming in.
But Mayo weren’t All-Ireland favourites last winter when he pushed McBrien, and the others, to leave their lives behind in the capital and to come home. All he was selling them at that stage was a dream. And a pretty unlikely one considering how many teams appeared to be ahead of them in the national rankings.
Connacht neighbours Roscommon presumably have that same dream now for 2027. They’re the Connacht champions after all, and they beat Mayo by 10 points along that journey. If Mayo can win the All-Ireland, why not Roscommon?
Maybe their manager, Mark Dowd, will also consider having the same sort of conversations with his Dublin-based players that Moran had last winter.
There is a long history of mimicry when it comes to following the template laid down by All-Ireland winners. Like the explosion of towering full-forwards – most midfielders suddenly being shifted up to the edge of the square – that occurred after Kerry’s Kieran Donaghy inspired win in 2006.
Six years later, Donegal presented a new template for how the game could be played and an era of suffocating, defensive football suddenly caught fire in much the same way as this summer’s wildfires.
From training camps in La Manga to the influence of sports psychologists and performance coaches, all it takes is one All-Ireland win to bring it all into the realm of standard practice.
In Mayo’s case, their unique decentralisation programme – taking their players out of Dublin and returning them to the west – may very well have amounted to the missing inches in their long quest to finally get over the line.
A decade ago, when they were right at the forefront of the game, manager Stephen Rochford detailed what a problem it was having so many players based in Dublin.
“At one period during the winter, we might have had 19 in Dublin and 22 in Mayo,” said Rochford in 2018, fresh off one-point All-Ireland final defeats to Dublin in 2016 and 2017.
That figure would generally have improved for the Championship but, as Rochford said, it would still be ‘closer to the double digits, 14 is probably the highest it’s been’, for players based in the capital.
If more of them had followed McBrien’s lead, might it have amounted to the missing one-percenters in those agonising years when they consistently came up marginally short in finals?
Or, alternatively, it could have been the tipping point for players already investing so much of themselves in the amateur game. Any suggestion, real or perceived, that football had to come first, in all aspects of their lives, might have led some of those players to simply walk away.
It’s a conundrum that Moran, Dowd and all the other inter-county managers with significant numbers of players based outside the county, or in Dublin, will have to consider in the coming months. Is total commitment, even at the cost of your career and personal life, going to be the new norm?
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