We’re right where everyone else wants to be

The 2026 All-Ireland SFC Final will take place on July 26 featuring Mayo and Kerry. That’s not a sentence I thought I would write after National League games against both Kerry and Donegal plus what feels like a decade ago battering by Roscommon in MacHale Park just 10 weeks ago. Like I said after our Cork win, hands up, I was wrong. But I wasn’t the only one. I would wager that most followers and interested parties hadn’t Mayo factored into this final equation.

A season where only one provincial champion made the quarter-finals and where two of the three favourites failed to make a quarter-final was going to leave a gap in the hedge for somebody. And yet strip away the last eight, Louth were the only real outlier in it. Mayo wouldn’t have been considered; I and many like me assumed them passable meat for Meath and Cork. I know Meath and Cork would have seen it that way. So too would have Louth. But when you did the numbers of the semi-final teams, those numbers did not bode well for Louth.

Kerry have won Sam Maguire 39 times, Dublin 31 times. Louth, the other semi-finalist, weren’t playing against Mayo, they were playing against history. The three most successful teams at reaching finals since 1989 were on site, with Kerry having played in 15, Dublin in 13 and Mayo in 11 (plus two replays) All-Ireland finals in that time. Three seasoned sides. Louth weren’t playing any old Mayo team, they were playing a Mayo who had made a few (enforced?) personnel changes where youth was given its fling. Mayo, for all their auld sins, are the most seasoned Division 1 league operators, having spent only a single season out of the top flight since 1997.

Louth’s last big day was 1957. A black and white sepia dripped era. The expectation would have been laid on heavy. We in Mayo know what that feels like but are now at a stage where we can finally deal with it. On their credit side, Louth would have seen their wins over Dublin and Armagh as cash in the bank. Mayo had the luck of the draw; even the loss to Tyrone was rewarded with a game against Kerry for the winners.

The Rossies had dialled Mayo’s number but Tyrone tore a massive hole in their currach. Monaghan, heading down to Division 2, were the ideal opponents for Mayo as were Division 2’s pair of promoted teams, Meath and Cork. Lucky perhaps against Meath, but sharp against Cork, for once Mayo arrived in town without all the honeymoon tin cans tied to the back of their wedding car making Coco the clown noises.

Louth arrived with hope. Louth arrived with expectation. Louth perhaps arrived with believing people, people like me, yes, a fully paid up member of the Doubting Thomas Club. Worse again, Louth arrived with the post-dated review of their wins over Dublin and Armagh. The Ger Brennan saga, we now know, sapped Dublin. And I’d say the only consolation within Armagh now is that Oisín McConville’s Wicklow ensures they have an All-Ireland winner within their 2026 tent. That last minute slip through the Armagh goalkeeper’s hands that allowed Louth advance via Monaghan was Mayo’s good fortune.

In truth, and on the safety net of rearview reflection, this win for Mayo panned out as did our semi-final wins against Tipperary in 2016 and 2020. Two nice teams that did well well to hit the stratosphere of white hot All-Ireland semi finals.

The first-half on Saturday was cagey enough, Mayo defying convention and playing into the wind. A tit for tat shoot out took place for a while. Ryan O’Donoghue’s goal was welcome. Then came Louth’s best passage. After missing a handy free they went and posted back-to-back two pointers after Jordan Flynn got a soft yellow against himself. Often this can rattle us but this Mayo outfit played themselves back into the match.

Kobe was pulling strings, Beirne tugging strings and Rod ripping the edges, and by the 25th minute a silence had descended over Croke Park as Mayo sucked the air out of Louth and more importantly, their followers. They did score twice but crucially Paul Towey kicked a hard-earned point and Darragh Beirne goaled a beauty. A Louth effort on the hooter for a two pointer drifted wide and in truth they drifted with it. They copied the Cork hurlers second-half implosion a week previous by not scoring until the 58th minute and totalling just four points. Mayo outscored them with a 1-14 return, the inside line running up 2-17 across the 70 minutes. The final score of 3-23 to 0-15 told us not to read the match tape too deeply.

So. We’ve been here before but we’ve not been here before like this. From such low winter expectations, we are now feet from where Padraig O’Hora planted his flag on Everest recently. Gone and be damned with the giddiness of toppling Dublin in 2021, or 2006, or the warm shock of Kerry getting a trimming in 1996. I almost forgot the Dublin match of 2012 where we were sublime but almost blew a once twelve points lead. This win was sober. Unexpected. Much to be grateful for, thanks for the lucky breaks, mindful of a few batterings en route. And yet we are where Jim McGuinness and Kieran McGeeney would have noted in their yearly planner wondering what hotels they would be staying in around Dublin late July. That cannot be bad.

I like Joe Brolly but I once had a two-page spread in this same section chastising Joe over Mayo. Mostly I tend to agree with his analysis on us. I wouldn’t be fan of Colm O’Rourke either; I certainly respect him as a player, excellent, but like Joe he don’t much like us either. They didn’t see us where we are today. Nor me. I recall back around early February when Joe was at Mayo’ win over Dublin in the league. His piece, I forget most of it, but I recall he said he met Liam McHale coming out after the game and Liam saying it might just be Mayo’s year. Joe didn’t add to it. Just left the remark hanging and allowed gobshites, me included, to do the rest. McHale and Mayo making fools of themselves again. Woe ye of little faith Joe, Colm, I myself. Liam McHale may now have the last laugh this season.

Well done Mayo, lid it and focus. One more game. A game that will define us as a people or another notch on our rosary of pain. Maybe like the two Ballina men, O’Hora on Everest and MacHale with Brolly, maybe they know something that pessimistic me didn’t. Maith sibh foireann Maigheo lads. From an unbeliever.

All Andy has to do now is find his inner Wellington, the Iron Duke, and cast Dublin or Kerry to Waterloo or Waterville with Napoleon.