The quest goes on but nothing will change if nothing changes

Next season, 2026, marks 75 years since Mayo last won the All-Ireland senior football title. Three quarters of a century. As luck, ill or good, would have it, I’ll be entering my 74th year then. Born a year after the feats of ’51, like many others of my ilk, condemned to an eternal search with the vestiges of time dimming on us. If not soon, when?

The following is not scientific, nor a PowerPoint presentation, but a breakdown of the 75 years into two sections from my perspective. I’ve chosen as a start 1952, the year of my birth, until 1989, the first 37 years. I’ve then looked at 1989 onwards, the second 36. Almost an even split. A plethora of facts, figures mixed with fiction to be played with, beaten into a shape, a form that makes sense of us as a GAA county.

Between 1952 and 1989 we won seven Connacht senior titles and played in a single All-Ireland senior final. We made five league finals, winning twice. Our minors, then U18, played in nine All-Ireland finals, winning five times. Our U21s, now the U20 grade, saw us win three All-Irelands from five appearances. That competition didn’t start until 1964. The concept of the All-Star arrived in 1970 and Johnny Carey made the inaugural team, with nine more awards between that and 1989: Joe McGrath, Dermot Flanagan, twice (1985 and ’89), Willie Joe Padden, twice (1985 and ’89), Kevin McStay, Gabriel Irwin, Jimmy Brown and Noel Durkin.

What stands out in that period is the amount of senior Connacht titles won. Seven in 37 years. Sliced and diced we can count five between 1955 and 1985. Yet in that era we produced some of our finest ever footballers, legends. Barren patches from 1955 to 1967 followed by a gap that included a full decade from 1969 to 1981. After our one point All-Ireland semi-final replay loss to Dublin in 1955 we were knocked out first round in Connacht in 1956, ’57, ’60, ’61, ’62, ’63 and ’64. That’s seven years of a single championship match season. And yet, we had our legends, names familiar to Mayo followers of a certain age.

I choose the name of the late, great and legendary John Morley as an example from the period of his debut in 1962 to his finale in 1974. Thirteen football seasons. His first three seasons amounted to three championship matches in total. His career spanned 26 championship matches, an average of two a season in his career. To put Morley into context, it’s generally accepted that he’s probably rated the best St Jarlath’s College player ever. In a time we existed on crumbs, John won two Connacht titles and a National League medal. John Morley’s name is writ large not alone in Irish life for his sacrifice but also in Mayo GAA. Yet over thirteen seasons we saw little of him and other legends. Today the average inter-county player would expect, being in Division One and Two, to play up to at least five championship games a season, the successful ones up to nine games a season. That multiplied over thirteen seasons would equate to between 65 and 117. Most wouldn’t be fit to tie Morley’s boots.

So we maybe didn’t achieve what we should have in that era after winning three All-Irelands inside a fifteen year spell between 1936 and 1951. But that would be wrong. Life was different then, especially in the 1950 to 1970 era. Emigration tore Mayo asunder. Clubs bled their youth to England, Scotland and America. The miracle was that Mayo continued turning out All-Ireland featuring minors in 1953, ’58, ’61, ’62 and ’66. As one group left the county, another replaced them. Thanks to Donagh O Malley’s Free Education initiative in 1967-68, education became accessible to our youth and combined with the then EEC (EU) investment in national infrastructure, our youth found roots deep enough to, in the main, have a shot at staying at home.

*********

One could say that the market leaders in the brand back then, Kerry, and still today, suffered the same as Mayo regarding emigration. True. One could say Galway equally were decimated with youth emigration; between 1956 and 1963 over 17,000 between 14 and 21 left the Mayo-Galway regions. Why did Galway win four All-Ireland seniors between 1956 and 1966 and Kerry win six between 1953 and 1970? Galway and Kerry men are no more shielded from the Atlantic’s ravages, the mountains, harsh hills and the boggy terrain than us in Mayo yet they found a way.

Reading Dan O’Neill’s memoir might give us a partial answer. O’Neill, a garda in his younger days, found little or no support from Mayo County Board. Having to take hard earned rest days off to travel from his station in Louth to play for Mayo and then having to battle for his meagre travelling expenses, O’Neill, a Connacht champion in 1955, a National League winner a year earlier with us and still in his early twenties, threw his lot in with Louth. His Mayo midfield partner Seamus O’Donnell, another Mayo garda stationed in Louth and equally peeved with Mayo machinations, was cajoled into the Louth set up. An improbable All-Ireland resulted for Louth and O’Neill and O’Donnell in 1957.

Around 1962, by now in a new career and back in Mayo, Dan O’Neill was accosted on the street by a member of Mayo County Board who curtly informed him that he, O’Neill, wouldn’t wear the Mayo shirt ever again. O’Neill did, playing three successive league matches in 1963 at full-forward, scoring 1-9 over the matches before a serious leg injury ended his county career. That stalwarts like Jimmy Curran, Mick Mulderrig, John Nallen, O’Neill and O’Donnell were deemed surplus to what Mayo saw as requirements, tells its own tale and shows perhaps why that period from 1951 to 1967 saw us a lagoon of still water.

The 1970s were barren but we won a league title, played in four league finals, winning one, the minors won two All-Irelands, and we added an U21 crown. But not a single Connacht senior title. It defies explanation and I’m not going to try here. Liam O’Neill laid down the foundations culminating with a break out Connacht title win in 1985, drawing with Dublin in that year’s semi-final. What O’Neill showed was that Mayo were alive and well. John O’Mahony arrived in 1988, continued O’Neill’s work and in 1989 we made an improbable All-Ireland final. Looking back today, it was there for the taking but we didn’t. However, we had now finally arrived back in the big time after 37 long years.

Looking at 1990 to today, the second-half of the 75 year famine for Sam Maguire, we analyse the facts and figures. Garnering fifteen Connacht senior titles, including a five in-a-row from 2011 to ’15, winning three league titles from eight finals, one All-Ireland minor title from six finals, and at U21/U20 we won two All-Ireland titles from seven finals. But it’s in All-Ireland senior finals that we dwelled between a rock and a hard place. Ten finals, two replays, no wins leaves us in a place no other county inhabits. Massive success – only Dublin and Kerry match us for appearances in that era at senior level – yet that glaring zero on the debit sheet renders us the great pretenders.

More games means more exposure for the county player. So how does the second-half, post 1989 compare with pre 1989? There is a big shift to codify the intercounty senior team as the main show in town. More games with the drift towards a form of semi pro is definitely the desired goal down the line. Minor and U21 have been relegated to development levels with the reduction of a year in each grade. The minors no longer are the undercard for the senior day out giving the follower a chance to see the future and the youth a chance to aim at that future. We have the narritive that U17 are classified as ‘children’. Maybe it’s me and the generation I come from but I worry about overprotecting a youth that actually are more than capable of traversing life’s slings and arrows.

********* 

Senior Connacht titles have doubled in the second-half of our journey. Minor final days out have fallen through. Bearing in mind that the U21 grade only came into being in 1964 and up to 1989 we made five finals, since ’89 in the U21/20 grade we have made seven finals. We have certainly stalled at underage with the likes of Kerry and Tyrone taking our place at that level. National League finals have increased but unfortunately those now come with a health warning attached. Once upon a time winning a league title was an achievement to be celebrated. In Mayo recently it appears to be welcomed like a dose of the flu with us worried about the looming opening game of the Connacht championship. Strangely, Kerry, Dublin and Mayo are one, two and three in the league winning stakes. Transferred across into championship All-Ireland wins, Kerry and Dublin still are one and two but we aren’t third. Indeed since 2000 Tyrone went from zero All-Irelands to four and Armagh zero to two. Cork and Donegal, two teams that are around our fighting weight, have also added to their lists.

We out perform them all in getting there but sadly only winners are feted today. We teem with All-Stars, twice getting players awarded Player of the Year, a status usually reserved for All-Ireland winning players. So. We are relevant and feared, up to a point where our opponents know we will crack. Worse, we know it ourselves but it’s not something that cannot be changed. How? I haven’t a clue.

Like many, I have random theories. We have the players, the fan base, we have had good managers. John O’Mahony left us first time round near the summit – was it lack of official support or meddling that saw him go to Leitrim first where they won a historic second ever Connacht title. His Galway catalogue was fated and scripted. We were the dark reflection of what might have been. Like Junior in the Sopranos said, we weren’t able to close the deal.

Micky Moran’s first and only year was as good as Micko’s six in Kildare, each taking their adopted county to an All-Ireland final. Why the need to move him on? Johnno MK2 wasn’t Johnno MK1 but the county board held firm. It near sunk us, culminating in Longford 2010. Who wants the blame for that era – the players, the management, the board? A combination? Sometimes one could scream for total change but then one knows life doesn’t move in straight lines.

Reading last week’s Western People I noted Edwin McGreal grazing on the same patch as myself with as many questions. Ed noted ‘Management may be blamed for that, so too the players. But there are far more existential questions to ask’. I’ve attempted to highlight the same above. McGreal added: ‘Off the field why are we always in the news for the wrong reasons? Whoever becomes the next Mayo manager has a huge job in front of them. But that’s only part of the jigsaw’.

The next manager will be appointed by more or less the same board that appointed the last. Where is the evidence that this upcoming appointment will seal the deal? Currently Mayo are manager-less across all grades. This might be as good a time as ever for the other parts of the Mayo jigsaw to ask should they too let in fresh and new thinking? A continuation of our downward trajectory since that All-Ireland final loss of 2021 cannot be countenanced. The followers can only chatter. Those with access to power need to ask the hard questions otherwise we will continue to be a sportswriter’s gift.