Defeat doesn’t define Mayo’s original trailblazers

In over 21 years writing for the Western People (and however many millions of words that might equate to) there’s one quote that has always stood out as more thought provoking than all the rest I’ve ever been offered.

Next month marks the 40th anniversary of Mayo’s victory over Waterford in the National Hurling League. I repeat. Mayo’s victory over Waterford in the National Hurling League. In Waterford. And it was while reliving that momentous occasion at his kitchen table that Johnny Cunnane, a member of that groundbreaking Mayo team and a scorer of three points, declared to me his conviction that if Mayo County Board had over the years placed all the millions it had invested in football into hurling instead, then the county would not only be ranked among hurling’s first division teams but that it would probably have helped Mayo win several senior football All-Irelands too.

His theory was that there were too many clubs and therefore “too many footballers scattered playing with poor players” whereas if Mayo had a half-and-half football-hurling divide, like Cork and Galway, the standard of player would improve.

The thoughts of the Tooreen stalwart were shared only months after Mayo had lost the first of their All-Ireland SFC finals under James Horan in 2012. And think about all the extra millions of euros and near misses that the county has spent and endured since then in pursuit of its elusive dream of landing Sam Maguire for the first time since 1951.

Johnny Cunnane’s conviction sprang to mind once again in the ice cool air of Croke Park last Saturday evening. What indeed might be possible if there was any genuine support in Mayo from they whose job it’s meant to be to promote hurling? And would the spinoff actually be success for the footballers too?

It’s doubtful we’ll ever find out; this is a Mayo County Board, remember, that only in December informed the Tooreen and Westport clubs that their county minor hurling final could not be played in Hastings Insurance MacHale Park because the pitch was in need of remedial work yet proceeded to stage the county under-21 ‘C’ football final at the very same venue the following day. The hurlers were sent to the Connacht GAA Centre of Excellence instead, leading one to recall something else Johnny Cunnane had once said.

“The famous saying, ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same’ constantly applies to hurling in Mayo as few clubs survive and the constant struggle to promote the game in so-called weaker counties continues,” he wrote in Tooreen’s 60th anniversary publication back in 2017.

They might not be All-Ireland intermediate club champions this week (quite how, we’re still struggling to comprehend) but Tooreen, on their own meagre resources, against the grain, with the tide against them and only one other team within the county able to offer some meaningful opposition, are doing more for the promotion of hurling than their own county board has ever done.

“Small kids, when they can go and play football or rugby or soccer, when they see the heroes they have in our dressing-room, and they want to follow them, with a hurl in their hand, and they want to play hurling, that’s what we do it for. It’s for the next generation,” declared Tooreen manager Ray Larkin from beneath the Hogan Stand on Saturday evening, so eloquent despite the obvious pain of his side’s defeat.

“It’s days like this, I know we didn’t win but still, the younger players will look up to [this team] and it’s the younger players who will drive on Mayo hurling in the next how many years.” 

In two All-Ireland finals (decided by the slimmest of slim margins) the Blue Devils have given every indication that they could compete in any senior club hurling championship in the country. Monaleen have comfortably made the transition to the Limerick SHC since squeezing past Tooreen in 2023 while having swiftly returned to the Tipperary SHC where they had spent 25 years, Upperchurch-Drombane manager Liam Dunphy, in the aftermath of Saturday night’s two points ultra-dramatic extra-time win against Tooreen, immediately challenged his players to now go and win the ‘Dan Breen’, Tipp’s senior hurling championship.

You’ll need no reminding either about what both counties have achieved at inter-county senior hurling level last year and before.

And Upperchurch-Drombane, remember, had beaten the newly-promoted senior teams in Cork, Clare and Kilkenny on their way to last Saturday night’s final, where only Gavin Ryan’s long-range point from a free with the last puck of normal time prevented Tooreen from becoming just the second team from Connacht (and first outside of Galway) to ever win an All-Ireland intermediate title.

“We’ll feel sorry for ourselves for a couple of days, the what ifs," admitted Ray Larkin. "It was the what ifs against Monaleen and it’ll be the what ifs again today, but it was a credit to get here in the first place and we just have to be proud of where we’re from and proud of the supporters. The generosity that is out there for us is incredible.

“The lads are dead on their feet in there. They gave it everything. We’re just proud of them. It’s an old cliché but they died with their boots on.

“They have to be proud of what they’ve done. A couple of months ago we were lucky enough to win the county final. They’ll be depressed for a while but that’s sport, there’s winners and losers. We need to hang together. We’ll lick our wounds and in a few weeks’ time we’ll go back at it again,” he assured.

Describing the match as a great game for the neutral and one where both sides “went at it hammer and tongs”, Larkin said Tooreen were “just unfortunate to fall the wrong side of it.” And he was right.

There’s disappointment but no shame whatsoever in Tooreen having lost two finals in four seasons, especially given that Galway clubs have lost seven of the eight All-Ireland intermediate finals they have appeared in, with every one of the defeats by greater margins than Tooreen’s pair of two point losses.

To further contextualise Tooreen’s competitiveness (winning six of the last eight Connacht titles is hardly to be sniffed at), it’s that of the 21 All-Ireland Club intermediate hurling finals now played, over half have been won by powerhouse counties Kilkenny and Cork. This is the sort of company an East Mayo village of scarcely 300 people is keeping. The village from where twelve men, a Wexford-born goalkeeper and his two Castlebar Mitchels clubmates once travelled and beat Waterford in the National Hurling League.

It’s why, when a very knowledgeable, dedicated and well-connected ‘Mayo Football’ man suggested with great sincerity to me recently that the county should dispatch a delegation to Kerry, Tyrone and Dublin to investigate just what ‘Mayo Football’ is not getting right, I told him the county board could save itself the time, expense and mileage and spend an evening or two learning from some of their own people. From their clubrooms and for 50 years before that, from Maggie Henry’s shopfloor, from the water-logged field they called the Turlough to the pristine surface of Adrian Freeman Memorial Park, Tooreen have built an empire based on hard work and commonsense. The heartache of what happened in Croke Park last Saturday night changes none of that.

Tooreen can become the county’s inspiration, for the margin that separates Mayo Football from its Holy Grail is – and has always been – miniscule in comparison to the chasm that Tooreen Hurling Club has been closing, inch by inch, puck after puck.

“The story of how a bunch of young men started a ‘hurling only’ club in a football-dominated parish and county and how they persevered against all odds is still as wonderful and remarkable as ever,” added Johnny Cunnane in his writings nine years ago.

The most glorious chapter of all was almost scripted on Saturday but if there’s one certainty, it’s that Tooreen Hurling Club won’t give up on their happy ending.