Stephen Rochford stood outside the dressingrooms in Healy Park a fortnight ago looking like he’d just invented the chocolate fork. His team had been four-point underdogs against Tyrone but came out on top by seven, a typically confounding way to end one of those weeks where the Mayo footballers feel like the cause of, and solution to, all of the county’s problems. “Mighty,” he gurgled. “Well, feck it was mighty.”
As battlefield promotions go, Rochford’s elevation to a second stint as Mayo manager was a no-brainer. When Kevin McStay had to step back from his role after taking ill at training just seven days previously, Mayo were in the unique position of having a plug-in replacement. Plenty of managers across the country have able deputies but none of them have Rochford’s CV.
An All-Ireland club title with Corofin. Three All-Ireland finals with Mayo, one of them drawn, the other two lost by the kick of a ball, all against the greatest team of the age. Four seasons as head coach with Donegal, who just so happen to be Mayo’s next opponents. There isn’t an AI generator in all of Silicon Docks that could come up with a better fit for the moment.
Standing there deep in the thicket of press phones in Omagh, Rochford looked every inch a man who would agree with such an assessment. There was no poor-mouthing, no bashful batting away of the responsibility that was on him now. Tyrone were beaten, the season was saved for now, Donegal were coming in a fortnight. Time to get after it.
“Rochy isn’t afraid of things,” says former Mayo footballer Lee Keegan. “He definitely divides opinion in Mayo anyway and maybe in general. I have good time for him. One thing I like about him is he’s not your typical run-of-the-mill GAA guy, he doesn’t stick to the typical Irish oh-I-have-to-do-it-this-way thing.
“He doesn’t deflect and he’s not afraid to make big calls. And that has probably gone against him at times, especially when it hasn’t worked. But I’m not surprised to see him step up. Rochy would make no secret of the fact that he would love to be over Mayo again. It’s not something he’d shy away from. The one thing is, he’d have a lot of respect for Kevin.”
When McStay brought him on board in late 2022, he was officially put down as assistant manager. Given that GAA teams usually go with selector or coach or some variation thereof, the title struck some people as slightly odd. So much so that Rochford was actually quizzed on it by the mighty Ah Ref podcast later the following year.
He’s a deep thinker on the game and he wasn’t shy about coming up with a different way to do things
— Lee Keegan
“Well, I don’t know,” was his reply when asked where it came from. “I’m not distracted by titles or labels. Possibly, it was there to ensure that everybody’s quite clear that Kevin is the boss. And that, although I may have managed Mayo at a period and been involved more recently in a coaching role, that probably somewhere in between is where my experience has the best benefit.”
Experience is the word. Rochford is still only 46 but he’s been involved in coaching teams in Mayo and beyond for over two decades at this stage. He put down three seasons as a selector with the Mayo minors in the mid-2000s, including an All-Ireland final in 2005 when he was only a few years older than the players in his charge. He went for the Mayo under-21 job in 2012 but didn’t get it. He was 36 when he steered Corofin to the 2015 All-Ireland.
By the time he was appointed Mayo manager later that year, the county was going through the usual rumble-tumble on and off the pitch. The 2015 season had ended with a replay defeat in the All-Ireland semi-final and a player-heave against the management. Rochford came in to clear all slates and wipe all debts. Nobody has come closer to paying off the longest one of all.
Facing Dublin in their imperial era ought to have been a hospital pass for anyone, not to mind a first-time intercounty manager still in his mid-30s. But Rochford took that Mayo group and repeatedly tested them with new thinking and fresh ideas. Most of them worked, too. According to Keegan, even the occasional one that didn’t still impressed the players for their sheer ballsiness.
“Aidan O’Shea playing full back on Kieran Donaghy – that was 100 per cent Stephen Rochford,” Keegan says. “Changing the ‘keeper between the final and replay, that was 100 per cent Rochy. Go back to 2016, we beat Tyrone in the quarter-final, he started Alan Dillon and used Kevin McLoughlin as a plus-one, which we had never really done that much by then. And it worked a masterstroke – Alan Dillon was man of the match in the first half. So there was so much good stuff.
“But in a way, some people in Mayo will never forgive Rochy for certain decisions. The goalie thing will be held against him, changing out David Clarke after the draw in ’16. I think it’s harsh but a lot of the Mayo public made their decision on it. When it doesn’t go your way on the biggest day of all, people are quick to point it back at you.
“We respected the fact that he was up for trying things. He’s a deep thinker on the game and he wasn’t shy about coming up with a different way to do things. That’s not to say you always agreed with him. We were getting ready to play Kerry one year in the league and I was going, ‘Yes, finally I’m going to get to mark the Gooch’ who was out playing centre forward at that stage.
“But he put me in at full back and switched Ger Cafferkey out. I was inside on Darran O’Sullivan and I got absolutely toasted. And Caff got run ragged too! I was going, ‘You bastard’. But it worked okay in the end – we used it later that year at times. He knows what he’s talking about.”
The end of the road with Mayo came in the “Newbridge or Nowhere” game against Kildare in 2018. As is often the case with Mayo managers and their county board, the dealings were messy and filled with he-said-they-said. Rochford was keen to keep going and had proposed a fully new backroom staff. The county board weren’t sold on the names he put forward and so Rochford walked away.
When news of his departure came out, Declan Bonner’s ears pricked up. In truth, the then Donegal manager had been nursing the kernel of an idea ever since Mayo’s defeat to Kildare that summer. He and Rochford were on good terms, as the two counties had regularly facilitated each other on the challenge match circuit, away from prying eyes. Bonner presumed Rochford would stay on with Mayo but when that didn’t turn out to be the case, he wasted no time.
“The funny thing was, they relegated us in the league in 2018,” Bonner says now. “Kevin McLoughlin scored a point in injury-time – he took about 12 steps for it. But myself and Stephen were always chatting on and off and I just sensed that the coaching end of it was something that he might be very interested in going back to.
“That was how it came about really. I was looking for an experienced coach at the time. Someone to work alongside Gary Boyle and Karl Lacey, who were only in their first year. So it kind of all fitted very well.”
At the time, it was seen as a serious coup for Bonner and Donegal. They won Ulster in Rochford’s first year and were unbeaten after their opening two Super-8 games against Meath and Kerry. But they faltered in, of all places, Castlebar. On a wet night against his former charges, Mayo kept Donegal at arm’s length throughout and progressed to the All-Ireland semi-final.
Rochford stayed for the remainder of Bonner’s time in charge, four seasons in total. Two of those were the Covid years, which at least cut down on the mileage involved for a while. But as Donegal’s star waned and they became less of a factor at All-Ireland level, it wasn’t always obvious why Rochford kept signing up for the five-hour round trip.
“I think he definitely found Ulster interesting,” Bonner says. “He wanted to get a better insight into Ulster football and all the madness that it involves. It was definitely an eye-opener for him. Because it’s so competitive between all the counties up here and everything is such small margins.
“We lost two Ulster finals in that period but probably losing the 2021 semi-final to Tyrone was the one that really stuck with us. We just felt we were on the cusp of making a really big breakthrough that year.
“But unfortunately, events in Brewster that day – we lost Michael [Murphy, to a red card] and we missed a penalty – it went Tyrone’s way. Ultimately, they went on and won the All-Ireland and because there was no second chance during Covid, our year was over. But that championship had so little between the teams.”
Keegan likes to razz Rochford that he’s won more titles in Ulster (one) than in Connacht. But those four seasons heading up and down the northwest coast give him enormous insight going into this weekend’s all-or-nothing clash. Of the 15 who started Donegal’s last game against Cavan, the only new players since Rochford’s time are Finnbarr Roarty and Ciarán Moore.
Nothing Donegal do will surprise him. Rochford’s instinct, always, is to make sure it’s the other way around.
“I don’t think Donegal’s game plan has changed all that much under the new rules,” says Keegan. “They’re still a running team. I don’t think they’re going to suddenly become a kicking team in the space of a fortnight. So Rochy will have a fair idea of what they’re going to bring.
“But you can be sure he will have something up his sleeve for them. That’s the way he thinks about games. Whether it be match-ups that wouldn’t occur to someone else or something to disrupt their running game, he will definitely try something.”
Mayo and Donegal. Donegal and Mayo. To borrow from Joni Mitchell, Rochford has seen these teams from both sides now, through so many dreams and schemes and circus crowds.
With the season on the line, no better place for him than right in the centre of it all.
