I said Mayo would lose. I was on the ball
I said I was not writing a sporting yarn at all, but still was driven to predict the infinitely sad reality that, yet again, the Mayo footballers would not win the All Ireland final of 2014.
I correctly forecast that they would, once again, come storming out of the West like young lions, that they would look a terrific team of mighty footballers in the crucial, later stages of the championship, but somehow, as they have been doing now for decades,they would yet again fail to bring Sam Maguire back home with them, to the banks of the Moy, this month.
I went further than that without even mentioning the alleged Foxford Curse, which is claimed to be the real reason for their long litany of losses.
I said they would, again, somehow manage to drag another defeat from the jaws of a victory, as they have often done before and I clinched my argument by promising to go up to Mayo, grovelling, in the event of them winning the title, and apologise by licking the toecaps of the entire panel and management team. The pure truth, yet again.
In the state of New York, six weeks ago, I almost had to pay dearly for my forecast. Three large Mayo men, who have spent almost all of their adult lives in the USA, yet are still the most ardent of followers of their team, strongly took issue both with my opinion and with my qualifications to utter any opinion at all on the upcoming semi-final and, frankly, I was lucky enough to escape from the lively debate unscathed. It is another sad reality that no county has such loyal and faithful supporters as County Mayo.
And no supporters suffer as much as they do because, strange as it may seem, the county produces magnificent teams that would win the All Ireland final if they hailed from any other county. I’ve seen it happen time and again and the reason remains a mystery to me still.
Anyway, as we all know now, I will not have to make my grovelling trip up to Mayo this year. For what it is worth, I will not have to make it next year, either, nor anytime soon.
It would, at the same time, be churlish not to heap praise on the men from Mayo for converting that titanic replay in Limerick into a most memorable battle. They can hold their heads high, because they gave all they had to give, right to the last second, and never folded.
One has to be sorry for this latest, sad chapter being added to their troubled GAA history. They will have another management team next year. Am I being too bold in suggesting that they hold all of their training sessions next season in Knock. They could do with a miracle.
Changing tack briefly, at a time when our incoming political season is commencing, I cannot let this week pass without paying homage to the elected members of Clare County Council for the brilliant manner in which they have handled the county’s vital tourism industry this summer.
We recently learned that the pub experience is the element of our tourism offering that visitors most enjoy. We also know that the musically famed rural pubs of Clare, as in the rest of the country, have been hard hit by the recession
Nobody knows this better than the Clare councillors, many of whom would frequently hold ad hoc clinics in their locals.
The current mayor, John Crowe, is like his predecessor, Joe Arkins, a balladeer who has raised the rafters in many’s the bar and another very recent mayor is Pat Hayes, of the famed Tulla Ceili Band family, brother of fiddle maestro, Martin.
I applaud these men and their cross-party colleagues for subtly seeing to it all summer that boil notices in relation to tap water were constantly deployed in the tourist zones of the county to the great benefit of local pubs. In my view, that was great thinking altogether and greatly boosted the sales of beer and whiskey and the publicans’ coffers. Who wants to drink brackish water, instead of a good, healthy pint ?
Well done all round.
