Mayo’s drought ends but ours goes on — let it rain somewhere else now

The fourth and final day of the official homecoming saw the Mayo team travel to Claremorris and Ballaghaderreen.

Seems appropriate these days to talk about droughts. While many of us are waiting for any drop of rain at all, Mayo finally got a deluge. Mayo winning was one of the most genuinely happy moments that united a country.

Maybe it was the size of the county, the length of the drought, the number of near misses. When a drought is over, it’s good for us. It frees up a bit of brain that we didn’t know we’d devoted to wondering if Mayo would ever win an All-Ireland.

I remember the same feeling when Joe Canning got his medal, when Limerick won their first All-Ireland, although it’s got out of control now and that’s enough of that now, thank you very much.

There are droughts that haven’t inspired universal outpourings of yearning yet. Kilkenny’s 11 years is the longest in their history, but it’ll take another generation before people will care. Many are still
recovering from the trauma of the ‘Inevitability of Brian Cody’. The bit where you get hope for a while and the Henry Shefflin/TJ Reid score 2-8 in three minutes without reply.

No one outside of Cork cares about our 21-year one either.

Part of it is Corkness, which people don’t like. But how could we expect them to? They’ll never know what it’s like to be from Cork.

If you look at all the droughts, there are a few categories. Counties Who Never Won Nothing Never. In hurling that’s Antrim, Armagh,
Carlow, Cavan, Derry, Donegal, Down, Fermanagh, Kildare, Leitrim, Longford, Louth, Mayo, Meath, Monaghan, Roscommon, Sligo, Tyrone, Westmeath, and Wicklow. In football, it’s Antrim, Carlow, Clare, Fermanagh, Laois, Leitrim, London, Longford, Monaghan, Sligo, Waterford, Westmeath, Wicklow.

I’m sure they must feel pain? “If you give us a shnaky belt of a hurley under the helmet, do we not bleed?” to paraphrase Shakespeare.

Then there are teams that won so long ago it might as well have never happened.

It’s tough to muster sympathy for the longest droughts, which ironically are for Limerick footballers and Kerry hurlers. London bate Cork out the door in 1901 – double scores. 1-5 to 0-4. We gave Laois their only win in 1915.

Then there are the hard luck cases and king of these are the Waterford hurlers. It’s too recent. They had too many characters. Dan The Man Shanahan, the other Fella With No Teeth, Every time John Mullane commentates, we think back to “I loves me county”, mad Munster matches but then getting absolutely ridden sideways by Kilkenny.

Dublin would be great, but they have the football. A Waterford All-Ireland (the year after a Cork one, of course) would do nicely. Then maybe Offaly. In football, it’s Louth, Cavan and Roscommon but to be honest neither occupies much space in the brain. They haven’t been robbed, cheated or near-missed. I think we need Kildare, player-managed by a 60-year-old Johnny Doyle.

If you look back at those early results, you see how much has changed. Kerry beat Wexford by a point 2-3 to 1-5. After Extra Time!! What were they doing during all that time? On sabbatical? It was held in February, in Clonturk Park, and there were 4,000 at it.

But given how far the game has travelled in that time, what will 120 years from now look like? Who will be suffering from droughts then? The All-Ireland will become a World Championship. Mayo’s win has shown us that everything happens eventually. We will see a commentator on a back-door match in Suva say: “Father from Fermanagh, mother from Fiji, both traditional hurling strongholds”. There will be a time when Berlin dominates the championship too much; there’ll be a call to ‘split Berlin in half’. One drought is over. Let it rain somewhere else now.

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