O'Shea is a credit to Mayo people everywhere

Two pictures by James Crombie from the INPHO sports photo agency – one on the front page of The Irish Times and the other on last week’s Western People – provide a compelling and life-enhancing background to Mayo’s frustrating defeat by Donegal. The first picture was Mayo player Aidan O’Shea immediately after the match on his knees chatting to two young girls analysing what had gone wrong on the day. The girls, surely not long beyond First Communion age, listened attentively and waited patiently for the autograph of their hero, pens ready in hand. The second showed O’Shea surrounded by a clutch of children clearly delighted to be in the close presence of their football hero.

Mayo supporters are used to such images because O’Shea – in the many years he has given to Mayo football and the many times he has had to face devastating results as with Mayo’s extraordinary exit from the 2025 championship – is rightly famous for the attention he gives to young fans.

Over the years regardless of defeat or victory, when the crowds dispersed in Croke Park or Castlebar or wherever, O’Shea could be seen slowly and methodically and carefully signing every last autograph until alone he drifted back to the dressing-room.

I’ve watched that scene unfold for years because it seems as if O’Shea has always been there, in victory and defeat, throughout what we rightly see now as the golden age of Mayo football. Starting as a teenager as his physique, allied to his developing skill-set, helped him to make his mark, he became an inevitable fixture on every Mayo team during those golden years.

Those were the days when Mayo hungry for victory and buoyed up by the often unrealistic expectations of their supporters – ravenous for an All-Ireland success that might create a bridge over the seventy years or so since the last All-Ireland success in 1951 – had the misfortune to come up against what was by common consent the best county football team in the history of the GAA (Dublin).

In a series of extraordinary matches, Mayo and Dublin fought determined battles in Dublin’s home ground, and year after year often through a bizarre series of setbacks and mischances missed taking the Holy Grail home to Mayo by the narrowest of margins. To such a degree indeed that nonsensical explanations were sought out to explain what to most was simply inexplicable that, against the laws of averages, victory could be snatched so often (as the cliché has it) from the jaws of defeat even if it took (as on one All-Ireland final) two own goals to achieve it.

Those golden years were endlessly frustrating though strangely captivating as players, supporters and managers waited impatiently for the tide to turn, for lady luck to eventually balance the books with a long-warranted victory. We didn’t realise how well off we were when all we had to complain about was living on the crest of a wave of complacency as we made journey after journey, year after year, we headed off to Croke Park. Others, including counties who, through an annoying combination of circumstances succeeded in raiding a solitary All-Ireland title against all the odds, almost envied our extended apprenticeship in almost touching the Sam Maguire Cup for so long.

Inevitably frustrations abounded - despite the many benefits gleaned from the golden years. The modern tendency to blame managers created unreal expectations and inevitably unfair criticism.

The other modern tendency of supporters - raucous on the sidelines and convinced that they knew better than managers and players - meant that amateur players who gave the best years of their lives to Mayo football were often excoriated by supporters who never kicked a ball in their lives, much less wore the red and green on All-Ireland day.

What was surprising was that managers, players and supporters made such a sustained effort to get the team across the line. The resilience of Mayo supporters was remarkable though the unfair criticism meted out to players by a minority of supporters left a bad taste in the mouth. Mayo has the best supporters in the country, we’re told, but sometimes they can be the worst. Even today, after extended careers of extraordinary service to Mayo, players like Aidan O’Shea are often unfairly and gratuitously targeted, despite their extraordinary and undeniable contributions to Mayo football.

Now as Mayo’s visits to Croke Park are considerably fewer than they were, Mayo supporters have to make their peace with the obvious wisdom that golden ages of football are only golden because they are set in relief by inevitable dips in football fortunes that are by comparison less than golden. And when the memories of great days don’t provide a license to unfairly criticise those who struggle to keep the flame alive.

This year’s championship is a case in point. It was widely recognised that Mayo would struggle this year. That, in provincial terms, it was going to be Galway’s year. Yet Mayo went within a whisker of winning Connacht, beat a respected Tyrone team and went within even a closer whisker of upending a Donegal side who are among the strong favourites for the All-Ireland.

A blip against a modest Cavan team undid them, though their pulsating performance against Donegal affords clear evidence that a young spirited Mayo team has the heart for whatever battle is ahead.

In the welter of coverage that sport and particularly Gaelic football now enjoys, one commentator - in surveying possibilities before the recent quarter-final draw - concluded that, after Mayo’s sterling performance at Hyde Park, the last team any of the quarter-finalists wanted to meet at any venue was a buoyant Mayo. Part of the reason too is that Mayo play a brand or style of football that, in the words of another expert "thrives on chaos".

What this means is that Mayo have a ‘go for it’ mentality. It’s part of the DNA of Mayo football. They don’t give in. They keep going. They are different, exciting to watch, and you never know what they’ll do or even which Mayo team will turn up.

But whatever the future brings, that picture of Aidan O’Shea chatting to the young Mayo fans is enough to remind us of what, as Mayo supporters, we ultimately value. Respect.