Eight years after first job interview, Kevin McStay gets dream Mayo job

The length of his term is a real show of faith from the county board.

Kevin McStay is the new manager of the Mayo senior footballers, and his backroom team will soon be confirmed. The Ballina native, who played eight years with Mayo in the 1980s, and won an All Star in the process, has been given the task of trying to bridge an ever-lengthening gap between All-Ireland success for the county. A short statement from Mayo reads:

'Kevin McStay [has been] ratified as new Mayo GAA Senior Football manager following a meeting of the Mayo GAA Executive committee and Mayo GAA County Board, this evening in Castlebar. 'A four year term has been agreed with Kevin McStay. Mayo GAA would like to wish Kevin all the best.'

The length of the term - four years - is a big show from the county board that McStay is being fully backed for a long-term process. [caption id="attachment_270497" align="aligncenter" width="800"]  Mayo manager Stephen Rochford shakes hands with Roscommon manager Kevin McStay, in 2017. (Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile)[/caption]

Kevin McStay finally gets dream job

The job for Kevin McStay comes more than eight years since he first interviewed for the role, when he lost out to the coaching ticket of Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly. "The interview I did, perhaps, I might have been too honest at it," McStay told Off The Ball, in 2021. "When I say the interview, it wasn't really an interview because I had the job, because I was the only candidate. "Yet, 24 hours after that interview, one or two friends of mine in Mayo were able to tell me 'you are not going to get the that job'. That there are other people who are in the race but not saying it. That was very disappointing for me." During his spell as manager of Roscommon, McStay led the county to a 2017 Connacht SFC title. During that successful summer with the Rossies, Enda Smith spoke of the respect he and his teammates had for McStay, after the Mayo man had been criticised for coaching a close rival from his playing days.

"We're a very close-knit bunch and we had seen and read and heard all the stuff that had been said about Kevin - about him being a Mayo man and how could he manage a Roscommon team, a lot of rubbish like that," Smith told The GAA Hour. "We've massive respect for Kevin McStay and everything he's done for us. We really did believe in him. I know a couple of players left throughout the league but that was just personal stuff, it wasn't anything to do with Kevin himself. It was just themselves not feeling like they were fitting into the team or just not going as well as they thought they would. It was nothing to do with Kevin. "We fully back Kevin and you saw it [against Galway], that was a massive performance and it was definitely, in a way, for Kevin for all the grief he's taken over the last five or six months."

It has been reported that McStay's backroom team could include former Mayo boss Stephen Rochford, Donie Buckley, Liam McHale and Damien Mulligan.

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