After the famine, what now for Mayo?

What do we do now that we are All-Ireland champions? I don’t know. Let it come to us, embrace it, feast on it, enjoy it, wallow in it, savour it, release long held pain and pride. Remember the finals we lost, the semifinals we lost, Connacht championship pain back over the years? Believe it or not, we had pride then too. Yes, anger and rage at times but pride streaked through our marrow in adversity thus tempering us for that final release.

Everyone seems to love us now. We are hot. On Instagram, I’d call her an influencer, had a piece, comedy. She pretended to be doing face time with a group of her friends. It went like this. ‘I’m from Galway…you know…the place closest to Mayo…they’re our best friends and us theirs…we slip back and over all the time’. Continuing to her imaginary friend: ‘and where did you say you were from again ?…Waterford …ooh no…no, no…too far away…you wouldn’t be close at all…no, no …us in Galway are Mayo’s besties’. That, folks, is what this nation looked around for the last two weeks. What is my connection to Mayo?

We know our win unlocked something deep in the soul of the nation, something deeper than sport and football. It was the final removal of a block, that plug, that held back 75 years of unfulfilled dreams, pain and seeking acceptance and status. That we had a Mayo president, a Mayo Taoiseach, many senior government ministers, the captain of two successful winning Irish rugby teams, a Garda commissioner, the late and morally grounded Colonel Micheal Hefferon, the man who told the truth in the Arms Trial at great personal cost to himself. Across business, building, education, the arts, music and banking, Mayo men and women led. But there always was a caveat, a final but.

That final seal of approval, that stamp of acceptance was with withheld from us because we hadn’t Sam. And now that we have, suddenly we inhabit a brand new world. Strange really because they day before we won the All-Ireland, we were still the same Mayo but nobody would state it, acknowledge it. We hadn’t the pragmatism of Boylan’s Meath, the concrete of Harte’s Tyrone, the cuteness and allure of both Kerry and Dublin, the Matt Talbot traits of Armagh, the steel of Donegal. Because of our final day failure, we became a lightning rod for the fear that many counties carry over their own inability to trouble All-Ireland final Sunday. ‘Look what happens to Mayo…we wouldn’t be able to cope with it’ kind of vibe. Fear of failure is the worst fear. We never feared failure. We faced it down, rime and time again. Because it was the way we are made. We have no choice.

So the mea culpas started. With the mea culpas came confession. First into the confessional box was Shane Ross in the Sunday Independent, columnist and ex-politician. I’ll let Ross talk for himself here. ‘To my eternal shame, I neglected many areas when I was Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport. My mainly rural critics eagerly pointed out that I had a blind spot about the west of Ireland, that I had never bothered to visit Knock Airport, let alone Knock Shrine, that I had no background in the GAA and that I hadn’t a word of Irish…The criticisms must have stung, probably because there was, as usual, plenty of truth in them’.

So there you have it. The man has little or no background in the GAA, had the good fortune to be in Mayo when we won and admitted that as a minister in three areas deeply concerning Mayo, Transport, Tourism and Sport, to his eternal shame, he neglected our region that badly needed that expertise and support in those three areas that deeply pertain to the county. I mean, what does the third largest county in Ireland with the Wild Atlantic Way as its coastline need to boost it but a vibrant transport, tourist and sporting department backing and selling it. It took the warm woozy feeling of Mayo magic to admit that the former minister may have taken his eye off in the wheelhouse.

The next for the kneeling mat and dark confessional box was Colm O’Rourke in that same paper. Let’s be very clear here. Whilst the Sunday Game pundits often gave us the cat of nine tails, verbally and openly from Brolly and others, O’Rourke took a mainly non-verbal route. A smile, a smirk, a knowing glance regarding our efforts. He didn’t rate us. His few words that he bestowed upon us often damned us. As a footballer, I rate him as possibly the only non-Kerry man who would have made that great Kingdom team 1975-1986, plus he had his own two All-Irelands grittily won, so Colm had the licence and credentials to strong arm us. So too had Joe with his one All-Ireland. It was a painful Sunday Game for us as so often, we became fair game, the hunted. Judged to a standard of no other county.

So I’ll let Colm’s words talk for themselves here. ‘Our Meath team of the 1980s had four great men with close Mayo connections, Mick and Padraig Lyons, Liam Harnan and Bob O Malley. Without them, we would have not won All-Irelands, and if they had played for Mayo, they would have not have waited 75 years. So all the Mayo jokes, jibes and unkind words, perhaps even a few from myself, have been washed away by a group of heroes who won the best possible All-Ireland by beating the champions.’ So that’s it then? Until we won an All-Ireland, we were a free target for ‘Mayo jokes, jibes, and unkind words’ and were fair game for outsiders? That’s not nice and now slipping off the hook by belated mea culpas won’t earn absolution from this pastor.

O’Rourke actually understates the west of Ireland seaboard influence on Meath football. Donegal, Galway and Mayo migrants eastwards brought their Irish language, music, singing and football with them. Meath, its rich land and plains was pragmatic but with a possibly plain cultural outlook. There was an initial resistance, unwelcome and suspicion towards the men and women of the west who enriched their adopted county and that county reaped a rich harvest from its ‘migrants’. Not just the 1980s Meath-winning teams but the 1996 and 1999 All-Ireland winning teams were well sprinkled with Mayo bloodlines. As the old Meath man interviewed by LMFM radio back in 1996 said, ‘ah there was no real football here until the Mayo crowd brought it over with them in the 1930s’.

All the nice things said about us now, the now open recognition our continual struggle with emigration, our population fell by two thirds after the Great Famine and never recovered, our scattered diaspora, our deeply rooted cultural bounty, our national influence, our remoteness, our soft and craggy bog lands, tall majestic hills, the ocean that kisses Ireland. Our Green and Red attributes were always there, but it took winning Sam to have them acknowledged, to be set free. It’s sad in one way, but gratifying in another that we needed Sam to finally free us.

So what now? Do we want to be like Cork in 2010, a single All-Ireland like a palm tree on a desert island, nice to look at but infertile? Aiden Walsh was their fine midfielder that year and was just 20 when they won it. Back then he believed he could win it very year. They didn’t. He’s 36, had a successful year with Kerry’s An Gaeltacht winning an All-Ireland club Intermediate title this year. That 16-year hiatus showed Aiden how destiny won’t be bent.

And us? Can we become like a Clare fashioned by Ger Loughnane, nationally loved in the breakthrough year of 1995, the banishing of their own alleged curse, Biddy Early. That Clare shout…yoohoo…yoohooo!

By 1997, they had morphed from being loved to having a target on their backs, hunted by a hungry pack, irking traditional counties like Kilkenny, Cork, and Tipp, royalty were not liking the new kids in town stealing their thunder and crowns. Loughnane’s greatest achievement wasn’t winning the ’95 final. It was transitioning that team into unbending steel, disliked maybe, but deeply respected for a second All-Ireland in 1997. The warmth and love generated in 1995, though needed and welcomed, was fused into something deeper and respected by 1997, winning again but this time without the national love but something more important gained: eternal respect.

We have the minimum of at least two All-Ireland’s within us with this squad and management team. Careful handling and panel integration and flow will be the difference of being a Cork or a Clare. Different codes I know, but from the same gene pool. Onwards and up Mayo.