All-Ireland Final countdown: Mayo coming to the Boyle for heavyweight showdown

“Does anyone here think we’re going to win the All-Ireland final?” Unlike in the Croke Park press room, you’ll find few, if anyone, in the printed and online pages of the Western People this week backing against Mayo on Sunday. Offering words of caution, yes. Pointing out the difficultly of the challenge before them? Of course. But willing to suggest there is no avenue for Andy Moran’s team to become champions? Absolutely not.

Nothing surprising about that I hear you say – no sense in turkeys voting for Christmas and all that – but the dozens of voices in our 56 page All-Ireland SFC Final preview supplement seemed to capture the prevailing atmosphere around the county at present, which is that anything is possible. And that feels like such a wonderfully refreshing place to be.

The expectation that surrounded our appearances in the 2016 and ’17 finals, borne out of that Mayo team being the best most of us had ever seen, only exacerbated the pain of defeat. However, a still hale and hearty Paddy Hyland (you can read about Paddy in our All-Ireland Final countdown blog) was 23 years old when he travelled from Swinford to Croke Park on September 23, 1951 to watch Mayo win a second All-Ireland SFC Final in 12 months. It was a game sandwiched by the births of Bertie Ahern 11 days beforehand and Bob Geldof 12 days after.

“Tell me why I don’t like Mondays,” asked Geldof in song. Mayo supporters have had a dozen or so reasons since ‘51. Our only homecomings have been wake like. Except Mayo has never died. Nor the dream.

“Sitting on the sidelines, cribbing and moaning is a lost opportunity,” Bertie Ahern once said about people talking down the Irish economy. A subsequent metaphorical suggestion about what those people should do with themselves later forced the former Taoiseach into an apology, but if there’s one thing the Mayo footballers have not done this year since the almighty setback of a thumping home defeat to Roscommon in the Connacht SFC is to crib and moan and lose an opportunity.

“Good players become better when they spend more time playing together. If they’re winning games, they’ll keep improving, and I think that’s what’s happened,” Colm Boyle told me last week.

The Mayo selector, one of the fiercest competitors this county has ever had, needs no introduction to All-Ireland Senior Finals. And yet for all the heartache attached to winning none of five, he said that standing on the sideline watching Mayo lose by 10 points to Roscommon in April ranked up there as one of his toughest days in football, playing or coaching.

“There are ways to lose games,” said Boyle. And that wasn’t of them. Indeed it wouldn’t take the greatest imagination to suppose what might have been said in the Mayo dressing-room afterwards. And how it might have been said.

“What really disappointed us was our reaction to mistakes.

“The second-half became an accumulation of mistake after mistake. That was the biggest disappointment," admitted Boyle.

“Did we learn from it? Absolutely. We had to hit the reset button. There have been a few personnel changes but, more importantly, the entire group has been outstanding in the way they've responded. Sometimes you just have to get back to basics, enjoy what you’re doing again and bring that onto the pitch. I think that’s exactly what’s happened.

“Obviously, the final is a different challenge altogether. We’re facing a different animal, but that’s the challenge we’ve earned,” he argued.

A lot has been made about the level of opposition that Mayo has faced on route to next Sunday’s All-Ireland SFC Final, the consensus being it has been inferior to Kerry’s, but for irrelevance you need only look back to the last time Mayo and Kerry met in the decider.

Whereas Mayo, in their three games leading into the final, had beaten Galway and Dublin and a Laois side that among other teams had accounted for Tyrone and Meath in the All-Ireland qualifiers, Kerry’s victory over Cork in the All-Ireland semi-final had come only after they had already drawn and lost to the Rebels in the Munster Final. Three of Kerry’s other four championship matches that season came against Waterford, Tipperary and Longford. And yet you have to go as far back as 1978 to find a heavier All-Ireland Final defeat than Mayo’s 4-15 to 3-5 loss to the Kingdom in 2006.

“The biggest difference compared to when I was playing is that we often had four weeks before an All-Ireland final, and you almost had too much time. We went on training camps on different weekends just to stay focused,” remarks Colm Boyle, loving that instead the team’s schedule now doesn’t change.

“It’s exciting, but now it’s all about producing our best performance. If you perform to your potential on the biggest day, you’ll always give yourself a chance of winning.” 

July 26 is already a significant date in Mayo sporting folklore. It was on that date in 1928 that Gene Tunney retired as heavyweight boxing champion of the world.

Tunney’s parents Mary Lydon and John Tunney had emigrated from Kiltimagh to the United States where their son gained fame for dethroning the legendary Jack Dempsey, who had been champion for seven years, and then retaining his world title in a rematch with Dempsey that afterwards was dubbed as ‘Battle of the Long Count’.

Tunney had been sent to the canvas for the first time in his career but benefitted from an extra-long 10-seconds count before rallying and dominating the last three rounds to beat the ‘People’s Champion’ for a second time. More than 220,000 people had turned up to watch both fights. Tunney fought just once more, knocking out Tom Henney in 1928, leaving him one of only four heavyweights ever to have retired as champion.

Boxing historian Jim Murray said Gene Tunney was ‘underrated… rejected by history… and the best advertisement his sport has ever had’. A little like the footballers of the county of his forefathers, perhaps?

This July 26, Mayo may well have to lift themselves from the canvas and take any bit of luck going. But if you don’t back your own to win, who will? So to answer Andy Moran’s question, ‘Does anyone here think we’re going to win the All-Ireland final?’ We do Andy. We do.