Mayo GAA’s Problems Perfectly Encapsulated by Ringfort On Planned 4G Pitch

While Cavan bask in the glory of their first win over Mayo in championship football since 1948, a certain malaise has set in over the green and red.

Paul Fitzpatrick brilliantly recalled in the Anglo Celt that the last time Mayo lost to Cavan, an equally interesting news story also emerged—of a Cavan man duelling with a badger.

In the wake of this defeat Mayo must be feeling like they have themselves gone back to these black and white times.

I think, Mayo will look at today's performance and Kevin McStay will get a lot of heat, the players will get a lot of heat, all that will happen and part of that is par for the course. Mayo's structures are farcical for an inter-county setup.

We talked about Louth and where Louth are going, the structures they have in place... "All these is a vision of where Louth are trying to go. Mayo, we do not have that

Horan went on to describe how the county teams in Mayo, senior and underage alike have no set training base and find themselves running from pillar to post looking for places to train.

My last two years in Mayo, we couldn't train on the back pitch in MacHale Park so I was scrimping and scraping off teams and clubs trying to get venues to train. I know the U20s are the same thing this year, in multiple club venues trying to get pitches".

We haven't built structures or laid down foundations like we should have over the last decade. We're behind so many other counties in what they've done and how they've progressed with their structures, their coaching, their pitches, their academies.

While Mayo's defeat to Cavan will grab the headlines and the frustration of supporters may be directed toward Kevin McStay and the players, Horan insists that the overall setup leaves a lot to be desired.

Mayo - in terms of GAA - is a big brand and is big business and we just don't have the structures to support it, whether that be a CEO or performance director or what it is so we don't have that and that fundamentally is why we don't have the basics of a pitch at a centre of excellence overall.

I think that's where a lot of the focus should be not just what people see at the tail end of it which is an intercounty manager or players. To me its incredible and there isn't that much heat about it.

An interesting story has also emerged from the monthly Mayo county board meeting on the 13th of May.

It has been reported in The Western People by Anthony Hennigan that an astro pitch- planned to be a part of Mayo GAA's prospective new training base beside MacHale Park - will not be built to regulation size.

This is due to it potentially encroaching on a site marked as a ringfort. The pitch is the correct length but will not be the regulation width for a senior pitch following consultation with the OPW.

It was often alleged that Mayo GAA fans were "away with the fairies" and maybe they were right.