Horan going to 'war' for his players hoping they repay trust

It just isn't the Mayo manager's style to wear his emotions like a black tie and something about the language used in the media auditorium seemed a little over-arched and, well, melodramatic. The Cork management's sin had been to light a blaze of little, fugitive thoughts about Mayo's efficiency in the dark art of "tactical fouling".

Worse, they got specific. Two of Horan's players were name-checked by a Cork selector. This, the Mayo man suggested, represented "a new low" in GAA business.

Now the dogs in the street could have decoded Cork's intentions and, most probably, found entertainment in the glaring absence of subtlety. And it's probably fair to say that Pat McEneaney and chums are, by now, pretty well attuned to management teams tossing such gentle, pre-emptive strikes in their direction.

Chances are they see it as a faintly juvenile practice, perhaps insulting of their intelligence even.

So why on earth was Horan so energised after that quarter-final win? Why did he refuse to shake Brian Cuthbert's hand, later declaring Cork's behaviour "disgraceful" and something "they should be ashamed of?"

Because it served a purpose.

His "rant" dominated the following day's back-page headlines, creating the image of a leader going to war on behalf of his men. Horan is four years the Mayo manager and there must, inevitably, be days when he fears they hear repetition in his voice. So, sometimes, targeting a broader audience sends a more succinct message.

INNOVATIVE

He has proved himself bright and innovative at the helm, always selling the message that this Mayo is new, this Mayo is different.

But there is, of course, only one way they can prove that. It's win Sam Maguire or bust in their world now. All those decades lost since Sean Flanagan lifted the cup, all the unlit bonfires, the endless sense of hope residing cheek-to-jowl with fear, now colour their story unavoidably.

Take away Donegal's two early goals in the 2012 All-Ireland final and Mayo have fallen just fractions short of the mountain-top these last two summers.

Compared to, say, the dreadful hammerings of '04 and '06, Horan's Mayo have been cruelly, hauntingly close then. But there can't be much comfort in that arithmetic. Does it really make that much difference whether your corpse leaves the scene by tumbril or gun-carriage?

Particularly in a county now raging against a 63-year curse?

Horan has, palpably, stiffened the Mayo football personality. He has made the team meaner and, yes, maybe a little less scrupulous than so many of the elegant, gentlemanly teams that carried the county's hopes through previous generations.

Talking after the '06 mauling by Kerry, David Brady recalls in Keith Duggan's beautifully evocative 'House of Pain', "We weren't ready to go and jump off the edge. If the Kerry team and the Mayo team were lined up on a cliff and you said, 'The first 30 men to jump win the All-Ireland, they would be gone while we were still considering it!'"

Well, today, there is no doubting that Horan's Mayo would jump. They are as unlikely to equivocate as hungry sharks in a mackerel shoal. But the clock is ticking too and, for everyone, Dublin cast a great shadow. There is broad consensus throughout the game that, whoever wins tomorrow, will face Jim Gavin's team on September 21 and, almost certainly, get run over.

To win their first All-Ireland since 1951, Mayo must - thus - not just beat an increasingly savvied Kerry, but (possible Donegal uprising aside) most probably a Dublin team already being spoken of as one for the ages.

In other words. Mayo are expected to come up short again. Horan knows this. He knows that, regardless of how tomorrow unspools, Mayo's advancement on his watch has probably been overtaken by the city team in blue that edged past them last September.

So what do you when pessimism is so deeply ingrained in expectation?

You create different energy, that's what. You make people feel differently about the environment in which they operate. Four years into his job with Mayo, he wants his team to know how he will go to war on their behalf and that is the minimum he asks of them now in return.

The affection or good wishes of neutrals aren't worth a hill of beans to Mayo. This team has long since separated itself from the history Kevin McStay once alluded to of Mayo pitching up in Croke Park with what he called "big, happy heads on us". Mayo today exist as unequivocally the most driven team in the game. That also probably makes them feel the most hunted.

Hence Horan's uncharacteristic beating of a drum the day of their quarter-final. It is in his team's interests to nurture any hurts they can now, to create the climate that turns a football field into some kind of Armageddon in a lined rectangle.

I very much doubt he was nearly as affronted by Cuthbert and Co as he let on. But he needed his team to see him as they hadn't seen him before.

Now he needs the same in return.

Balotelli circus could disrupt dressing-room

To anticipate Mario Balotelli as a success in Liverpool’s colours requires opening the blinds on a possibility of him finally growing up.

And that has to be the starkest of asterisks attached to Brendan Rodgers’ £16m gamble on the Italian, a worry that he is not so much signing a compelling football talent as some kind of travelling circus.

Balotelli’s talent is undeniable and, if Manchester United see no dangerous extravagance in spending more than £30m on a teenage full-back, then perhaps Liverpool’s investment does find rational context.

But Rodgers is risking the introduction of sporadic outbreaks of listless pantomime now in a dressing-room associated in recent times with the purest of work ethics. The very qualities he has managed to inculcate now come under threat.

Likening Balotelli (above) to the departed Luis Suarez seems fatuous given how, for all the Uruguayan’s demons, his innate competitiveness was never in doubt.

Balotelli’s way has been to ration his energy. Can he change?