Hill 16 after the final whistle. Photos: Dualta Roughneen. 75 years of pain, hurt and disappointment all came to an end for Mayo on Sunday, July 26, as the apparent curse on my home county was finally put to bed with a confident, assured and almost comprehensive win against the Kingdom in Croke Park.
For 75 years Mayo failed to get over the line, since the 1951 final. For 38 years, we didn’t even get to the final. But since then, 11 finals, plus two replays, draws, one-point defeats, poor decisions, brute bad luck and a bit of farce thrown in, deprived the county of the promised land. What could go wrong, did go wrong.
And then it all changed. Mayo are All-Ireland senior football champions again. At last. I admit, after every defeat, I wondered to myself what it would feel like to win. I was often reminded of John 16:12 when Jesus said “I still have much to tell you, but you cannot yet bear to hear it.” I have been waiting to bear it for a while now. Not to overly dramatise the event, because it is after all just a football competition, but the chapter continues to “your sorrow shall be turned into joy”.
For Mayo, this happened on Sunday last. The sorrows were turned to joy. But that joy is the strangest thing. For so long, I wondered, I asked myself, how it would feel, if, instead of the pain of defeat, there was the joy of winning, just once. To win just once, the county asked itself. Over and over.
Strange
And now that it is here, it is a strange feeling. Mayo people of every stripe, asked each other, what we would do with ourselves, if we were to win one day. How would we react? How would we feel? Could we bear it? We had become so used to the disappointment that there was almost comfort in the familiarity. We had learned how to process it. To put it aside. To move on. And hope again. But what if the joy replaced the sorrow? Would it change us? Would hope be replaced by expectation?
But then it arrived. Victory. How did it feel? Putting words on it is not easy. The final whistle in Croke Park brought many to tears. I could feel the joy. But didn’t quite know what to do with it. But I wanted time to slow down. To pause. And the feeling to remain.
John Keats wrote that “thoughts return was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore.” This is the opposite. The thought goes away, and then it returns. And it feels nice. It is nice to win, just once.
Brilliant. The best word I could find to describe it.
The thought returns. And life feels good. Should a football tournament give that feeling? When it arrives, it feels like everything should be right with the world. But it isn’t. Wars still go on. Humanity continues to be humanity. And the victory is something of little significance in comparison to all that goes on in the world.
But these sorrows and joys are what make up life. They are what make life bearable. County sports are part of community. We feel because we are part of something. They are our players. And they are our team. Even though the victory is achieved by the team, it is a win for the county. It matters, not in any material sense, but it matters because it is part of who we are.
It is yesterday’s news for the rest of the country, but for Mayo, we can drag it out a little bit longer”
And it matters more in Mayo this year than it does in most anywhere else because of the sorrows that came before the pain. We can’t take it with us, as they say, but it is a feeling for today. I still don’t quite know where to package it, but I don’t want the feeling to fade either. Which it eventually will. It is happening already. It is yesterday’s news for the rest of the country, but for Mayo, we can drag it out a little bit longer.
But then the focus turns to next year. And our hope will be replaced by expectation. I don’t remember ever having the feeling of expectation. Is it different to hope? No longer do we dare to dream. Did we lose something in victory? Was it everything I expected it to be? I don’t know.
Ephemeral
You can’t touch it. You can’t hold it. It is ephemeral. It is there. Then it is gone. I want it to stay, just a little bit longer. But life has to be lived. My wife joked before I went to Croke Park, that I might be about to have the best day of my life. An exaggeration. The best day of my life was the day my daughter was born. The day we became a family. She is not fleeting. Not ephemeral. She is there every day but the love she gives me, sometimes, I can’t quite grasp. I can’t quite put my hands on it. But I feel it passing over me and in me. That feeling comes back again and again and again. There was sorrow before joy in that as well.
Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, wrote frequently in his theological musings of the different mysteries that come with the faith – there is the Mystery of Faith itself, the mystery of the Trinity, the Resurrection, forgiveness, the mystery of evil and many others. He asks: “The history of mankind, with all its imponderables and its impenetrable elements, just adds another entire world of mystery to the question, ‘Why did God make it like that?’ We cannot, of course, give any final answer.”
The joy is brought to life in song, in thoughts return that brings a small smile to the face, in hugs, and in community, as the day marches on, and things need to get done”
For all the depth of his thinking and teaching, there were many mysteries that he was unable to describe – because they are just that: mysterious. The transformation from sorrow, the feeling of whether we dare hope, the reality of joy – are intangible and words do not capture them. The joy is brought to life in song, in thoughts return that brings a small smile to the face, in hugs, and in community, as the day marches on, and things need to get done.
The Curse of Co. Mayo so the story goes—whether real or apocryphal—is that after the 1951 victory, the team was returning from Dublin to Mayo to celebrate when they came upon a funeral just outside Foxford. In their exuberance, they did not stop and pay their respects, overtaking the funeral procession, much to the ire of the local priest. “Damnation be upon every one of you,” he said. “As long as you all shall live, Co. Mayo will never win another All-Ireland.” What was once only a local legend became a national one as the country watched on, almost embarrassed for Mayo, willing them to win.
Loftus
The last remaining member of the 1951 team, Mick Loftus, died on April 22, 2023. It took three more years for Mayo to win, but did that curse ever exist? Like much else in this piece, it remains a mystery, elusive, untouchable. 75 years were real. 11 All-Ireland final losses were real. And victory – to win just once – was real.
GAA President Jarlath Burns said, on presenting the trophy to Jack Coyne “For 75 years you have prayed to Our Lady of Knock and today Our Lady of Knock has answered your prayers”. The Apparition at Knock, the power of prayer, the curse, the defeats, the win. John O’Mahony said “Keep the Faith” before the first All-Ireland final defeat in 1989. A devout man, he no doubt meant it doubly. Kept it we did.
Now, back to work. Life goes on. But we are winners. For today. Thanks be to God.
Dualta Roughneen is from Mayo. He lives and works in Dublin.