The “pinballing” at the death was the kind of “health check” Kevin McStay could have done without.
In the end it was Eoghan McLaughlin - after a topsy-turvy game full of endeavour and spills - who pawed the ball off the goalline after Colm Reape had come out and missed it.
A goal would have won it for a Galway side who twice cleverly worked late frees to John Daly, their best foot passer, to launch it inside.
That meant they could enter the square once the ball was kicked - you can’t go into the square off a free until the ball lands in there.
Cillian McDaid got on the end of both Daly deliveries, with the first one diverted out to the wing by a diving Reape.
A third late Galway raid for the major they needed to stay alive ended up with John Maher blasting a shot that was deflected up and over the bar.
And so McStay’s boys were the pinball champions as they recorded a fourth straight win over Galway in knock out championship games (Galway beat them in Connacht last year when there was a back door in play).
The last time Galway actually ended Mayo’s summer was all the way back in 1998.
Last year’s All-Ireland finalists, who looked so composed and in control all year until the dying minutes of the defeat by Armagh nine days ago at Carrick-on-Shannon are suddenly out.
“Disappointment, not hurt,” was how McStay described Mayo’s surprise defeat by Cork nine days ago.
“We move on so quickly. You just have to. Training Wednesday. Get ready Friday.
“You can’t be hanging around feeling sorry for yourself. We are not that sort of group anyhow.
“I felt our reaction to what happened last week, to a certain degree, was Wednesday night.
“We got a great reaction. Friday just embedded that a bit more, so we came up here very confident about ourselves in terms of, we were going to play.
“The conditions were difficult. It was a good gut-check for us right down to the end.
“There was a lot of pin-balling going on in the last minute or two to keep your health check up to speed.”
Mayo ended up loading their team with old dogs for the hard road.
McStay labeled it “a golden trade off” for “a red hot battle.”
Kevin McLoughlin (34) started his first championship game since last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final defeat by Kerry.
In came Jason Doherty (33), while Cillian O’Connor (31) joined him on 45 minutes and hit a fine point one minute later to lift the Mayo crowd.
Their regular centre half back all year, Conor Loftus, was left on the bench and didn’t see any action.
The Mayo management also left out midfield lynch pin Matthew Ruane, although he did come in for the final 15 minutes, with Padraig O’Hora ruled out due to illness.
“We just had ideas during the week,” said McStay.
“The rule is Thursday morning. We don’t pick our team until Thursday night. Even then we’d be thinking about things up until Friday night.”
Galway’s inspirational skipper, Sean Kelly was noticeably limping in the warm-up and at the start of the game after being injured late on against Armagh.
When Tommy Conroy drove past him - and two other Galway men - to point on six minutes it looked like he might not last the pace.
But as the game wore on it was Kelly who looked most likely to pick the Mayo lock, laying on Paul Conroy’s super point - the longest of the day against the elements.
It was also Kelly who opened up the Mayo defence for a 48th minute goal chance but Reape was off his line at pace to block with his feet from Matthew Tierney.
On a simplistic level, you could say the game boiled down to a brace of goals chances.
The other one was buried by Mayo full back David McBrien on 43 minutes.
It came after Connor Gleeson’s attempted long kick out to the right wing into the breeze - where Galway had bodies - fell short and infield, going straight to Patrick Durcan.
Mayo were patient. Full back McBrien injected searing pace into the game for the first time, and one-twod with Aidan O’Shea before blazing to the net to level the game at 1-5 to 0-8.
McBrien even had the presence of mind to side foot home.
There were other huge moments, like Jordan Flynn’s massive hit on Ian Burke on 58 minutes after Galway had worked a half goal chance.
Mayo countered and Tommy Conroy pointed at the other end in a big swing.
Galway immediately changed their set up, from conceding the short kick to Mayo to pressing right up and duly won three long restarts on the bounce.
Reape kicked one over the sideline with Conroy and John McGrath winning the others.
Mayo, just like the first half, struggled to get short kick outs away but they were strong and resolute at the back as Galway dominated possession, but couldn’t work scores into the strong breeze.
Crucially, Mayo had just three misses playing with the breeze, while Galway had six - all of them wides and four of them from Shane Walsh - two from play and two from frees.
Galway played with a huge breeze in the first half.
Knowing Reape couldn’t kick over midfield, they pushed right up on the Mayo goalkeeper.
The tactic worked a treat as they won a whopping eight of Mayo’s first half kickouts, two which Reape kicked out over the sideline to his left as he struggled to get shorts off.
With Paul Conroy influential, and John Daly winning back to back Mayo kickouts on the right hand side of the visitors’ defence, Galway took control of the game hitting seven points on the bounce to lead 0-8 to 0-3 at half-time.
Mayo hit all their first half points in the opening seven minutes, failing to score for the final half hour.
But Galway also went 28 minutes without a score at one stage, such was the difficulty of playing into the elements.
Galway had two half sniffs at goal with Damien Comer blasting at Reape on 10 minutes.
The Mayo goalie stood up strong to save, grab the rebound and drive out.
On 17 minutes Matthew Tierney ran clear on goal after Jordan Flynn was turned over and Galway broke at pace with Peter Cooke involved, but Durcan chased Tierney down and he had to settle for a point.
Mayo had a second half goal chance, but Eoghan McLaughlin was adjudged to have charged just before lashing to the net on 52 minutes.
“We came with big expectations about the fixture,” said McStay. “We really did, because the history of this is generally a toss of a coin so why wouldn’t we come with big expectations?
“We wanted a big reaction from last week. We didn’t play that badly but didn’t play long enough.
“I think we’ve moved that on decently today, not significantly.
“There’s lots of room for improvement and we’ll try and eke out that improvement this week.”
“But for now the golden ticket was the passage to Dublin next week.”
Get the latest sports headlines straight to your inbox by signing up for free email alerts
