All-Ireland Countdown: Final bark would cap year of the underdog

In terms of the dark and terrible days as a Mayo supporter, Sunday, April 26, 2026 is up there with the very worst of them.

The bloody Rossies. You cannot beat them often enough or by enough but on this day in the Connacht semi-final, they had Mayo’s number, obliterating us on the ground and in the air.

Any day Mayo lose to Roscommon is a sad day but there was something about the timing of this which was particularly gut-wrenching and represented an incredibly low ebb.

With a starting selection that struggled to inspire, Mayo’s performance was dire and lacked much evidence or indication that Andy Moran was building towards something here. His post-match interview on RTÉ, in which he referred to being in the first-year of a three-year plan, sent many eyes rolling around the county.

Combine this with the hefty price of admission (€35 for fans of all ages, shapes and sizes to get into the Stand at MacHale Park) and it created a perfect storm of apathy and disinterest in Mayo football. There was not a flag to be seen on a lawn or a car window and no song to be sung in joy or lament. The feeling was similar to the one many a Mayo supporter felt walking dejectedly up Jones’ Road after the 2017 All-Ireland Final as The Boys Are Back In Town blared in the background.

The All-Ireland first round draw handed us Monaghan away and though we had them well beaten in the National League, their Ulster campaign was highly impressive and the task was daunting. Optimism was nowhere to be seen and it was hard to see the stars from the gutter.

The only positives to take from the Roscommon disaster, and it was a point made by James Laffey in this newspaper afterwards, was that Andy now had carte blanche to stamp his own identity on the team and importantly, he had time in which to do it.

Without a doubt, this is what the post-Roscommon period of this campaign has been all about, the crafting of a bold and bright new image of Mayo football with youthful exuberance as its cornerstone. This new identity has come in tandem with a string of impressive, high-scoring performances that even in defeat against Tyrone have given us all something to believe in once more.

The transformation has been a sight to behold. It reminds me of Antonio Conte’s Chelsea team across the pond in the 2016/17 Premier League season. They looked absolutely hopeless in the opening couple of games until the Italian rolled out his signature 3-4-3 formation which signalled a change in the club’s fortunes. The upward momentum brought about by personnel and tactical changes carried them all the way to their fifth (and most recent) league title.

Mayo are on a similar looking trajectory and the county as a whole has once again latched onto this current team, generating the sort of buzz around management and players to which we are accustomed. It is of little surprise given there are fresh faces and names to get excited about throughout this team.

If you take the team that started the 2026 semi-final and compare it to the team that started the 2021 final, Ryan O’Donoghue and Stephen Coen were the only players who started against both Louth and Tyrone. With a 5-year gap since our last All-Ireland final appearance, the sort of sea change we have seen in the Mayo team in the intervening period makes sense.

It is not the first time we have seen this kind of change happen and this is not to suggest that this new generation of Mayo footballers will fare any better to those who came before either. There was a similar changing of the guard in the seven-year gap from the 1989 final to the 1996 final with only Liam McHale and Dermot Flanagan starting both games.

Four players – Peter Burke, David Heaney, James Nallen and Ciaran McDonald – started both the 1997 and 2004 finals, another seven-year gap. Three players started the 2006 and 2012 finals, a six-year gap: David Clarke, Alan Dillon and Keith Higgins.

An air of giddy excitement has now encircled this current Mayo team. Everybody wants to know about the teenage trio of Darragh Beirne, Eoin McGreal and Kobe McDonald. There is great fascination in watching young players who play with little fear. Jack Livingstone is a little bit older but has been another revelation since his introduction to the starting panel.

Maybe it is their youthful age, but they genuinely play the game without the generational trauma that comes with the territory of being a Mayo footballer. The forwards miss a chance but it seems to be no matter. Like a bus there is always another chance coming as far as these lads are concerned. It is a mindset that will serve Kobe very well as a professional athlete in the coming years. McGreal has slotted seamlessly into the Mayo back six at corner-back and comparisons to Keith Higgins have thus far been well-earned.

They shy away from extraordinarily little. It is as if the thought that they might be just the next in an excruciatingly lengthy line of fantastic Mayo players to fail at the final hurdle hasn’t quite occurred to them yet. Their forthright display of this attitude makes it very easy to get behind them and yes, be an optimistic supporter of Mayo football once again.

It is an incredible thing to be feeling this positive again, to see the flags flying, the jerseys hanging out on clothes lines and to be having the chats to people on the street about Mayo football again. This feeling feeds back into the team. Andy Moran has spoken on several occasions about how the supporters got Mayo through that Monaghan game and other matches coming down the stretch to the All-Ireland Final.

Kerry are coming into the final as massive favourites and rightly so, but the good vibes make it extremely hard as a Mayo supporter to accept that being the one, true reality here. Jack O’Connor and company care little for our good vibes and are keen to cut our party short but while the Zodiac calendar calls this the Year of the Horse, it has been the Year of the Underdog as far as the GAA calendar has been concerned.

It would make you want to believe that Sunday, July 26, 2026 will be a much happier day than three months prior. The Boys Are Back In Town? Spread the word around.