Mitchels played the role of Goliath perfectly

Actors who play particularly heinous or unlikeable villains, if they are especially talented and they make the general public truly believe in their wickedness or depravity, have been known to draw no small amount of ire as a result, particularly in the internet era.

Cork native Jack Gleeson has spoken about some of the public reaction to his depiction of the Joffrey character in the Game of Thrones series, while Bob Hoskins, who played the title role in the 1995 movie ‘Nixon’ has been known to joke on TV that British actors such as Alan Rickman, Anthony Hopkins and himself often took on ‘bad guy’ parts because American actors wouldn’t be able to handle the reaction of some ordinary people in that country, even though they were only doing their job.

There’s no doubt that a lot of Castlebar Mitchels club players and members could empathise with that feeling this week, as they were cast in the role of the bad guys, the ones who wanted to spoil the fairytale, even though all they were doing was flying the flag for their own club and community. Flying it quite well, as it turned out.

Outside of Mayo, there aren’t too many people that could find Garrymore without leaning heavily on Google Maps – but put a stranger from outside the county into a car this week and tell them to drive around South Mayo, and even a blow in from Ennistymon or Enniscorthy would know that if they saw a pub or a shop, they were in the wrong place, since the story of the week was how this was a community with nothing else other than a GAA pitch. And now here were the big baddies of Castlebar, with their soccer, rugby, golf, racquetball and God knows what else, looking to deprive the poor Garrymore people of their one dream.

Paul Jordan didn’t exactly help this discourse when the Mitchels man appeared on the ‘Ah Ref’ podcast last week. He tried to play down their population advantage by saying that there were years where Castlebar might only have seven or eight minors that were in their final year, and like a good corner-back, pouncing on the corner forward’s failure to hold the long ball in, Enda McGearty was immediately in to point out how seven or eight minors that were ‘up to the age’ would represent a bumper harvest for Garrymore.

When it came to the PR battle, Garrymore won by a landslide, and that was a big factor in why the press box in MacHale Park was packed full of national newspaper reporters on Sunday, all of them hoping for a happy ending for the plucky underdogs.

And if a Hollywood scriptwriter with only a passing knowledge of sport was allowed to draw up the script for Sunday’s final, there’s a decent chance that they would have come up with something pretty close to how the action played out; or, how it played out for the first 50 minutes.

Mitchels played the role of Goliath perfectly.

Paddy Durcan won his early battles with Enda Hession, dealing a seemingly insurmountable blow to a Garrymore side that needed their talisman to lead the way with a heroic performance. And while the men in red laboured and limped through the first 20 minutes or so without registering a score, Castlebar were clinical and efficient, even letting traces of ‘townie’ behaviour creep into their play. Joe Forry’s subtle little dummy to set up the Cian Walsh point that made it 0-4 to no score was the type of ‘streetball’ that can only come from flashy town lads, while at the other end, Rory Byrne’s save to deny Trevor Nally and the collective smothering of Aaron Hughes as he tried to drive through on the Castlebar goal added to the sense that the red and yellow anaconda was slowly squeezing the life out of its prey.

But still there were crumbs of hope. Hughes got Garrymore off the mark, then just before the half-time whistle, Castlebar had a chance to clear their lines after a 45 didn’t quite get there, but they didn’t finish the job and Nally split the posts from outside the arc.

Only those within the Garrymore camp will know for sure what was said in their dressing-room at half-time, but it’s safe to assume that Hans Zimmer or his equivalent would have been tasked with writing the inspirational music that would have echoed around the room as a backdrop.

Eoin McGreal opened the scoring in the second-half only for Bob Tuohy and Paddy Durcan to hit back with scores, stretching the lead out to seven. But then, the darkest hour is always just before dawn.

Castlebar continued to look controlled and steady, but a couple of desperation plays from Colin Commins and Liam Óg Horkan were key to the rate of scoring drying up completely, and then when Darren Quinn came to life, firing over a two-pointer to make it 0-16 to 0-12 with a couple of minutes remaining, a most incredible rope-a-dope comeback was still on the cards.

And maybe if it was half an hour to Hollywood and a 15-hour flight to Hollymount, instead of the other way around, the fairytale might have played out. The options were endless – for example Enda Hession could have broken free from Paddy Durcan’s shackles to score a crucial goal and Andy Glennon might have shaken off his earlier wides to land the winning haymaker, adding the angle of a rare import coming to join this tiny, football-centric community and to later have a statue erected in his honour.

Except it wasn’t to be, because… well, reality.

For every story of a young hero putting his finger in the dyke to save a flood, there are hundreds where the dam breaks and the water breaks through, and this was one of those hundreds. John MacMonagle was that flood as he surged down the centre of the defence, drawing a desperation tackle from Justin Commins that led to a black card and a penalty, converted by Cian Walsh.

And so, the party poopers spilled onto the field to have a party of their own, while the assembled press corps tore up their scripts and tried to find a romantic way of writing that Goliath might have got hit with a few stones from David’s slingshot, but he still stomped the life out of his flyweight opponent.

And for Castlebar, onwards to the Connacht championship – where they’ll get to be the underdog, even the fairytale, for a change.