Like the Chicago Cubs, glory surely beckons for the GAA's great pretenders
The husband swelled with pride. The wife wore a smile that could light darkened streets. Less than a week before so much turned sour in the US, everything felt just right.
Hazarding a guess, the couple have been around for almost 60% of that long wait. They would have known sporting heartache like few others. They would have known what it was like to follow a team that for so long were perceived to be as windy as the city from which it came.
Watching them, you couldn’t help thinking what it would be like for a Mayo couple of a similar vintage when the county eventually claims the Sam Maguire Cup. Or a Waterford or Limerick pair when their captain walks the Hogan Stand steps to acquaint himself with Liam MacCarthy. When it happens for them, the sensation will be euphoric.
Not everyone will be around to experience those highs, of course. Renowned ESPN writer Wright Thompson perfectly captured the bittersweet feeling for Cubs’ fans whose family members didn’t live to see their beloved team beat the curse.
However, for those who are fortunate to be around when the times comes, the glory will be extraordinary.
It’s one of the reasons why people shouldn’t feel too sorry for the likes of Mayo, Waterford and Limerick. Not many more supporters in Gaelic games have been licked by the flames of hell but ultimate victory will more than quench those burns even if it does feel like Mayo have been left out after the Cubs, Western Bulldogs and Leicester City pulled off epochal achievements this year.
It’s been said here before and it will be said again but Mayo don’t want pity. Nobody but they know what they are going through. So many neutrals live through them vicariously without having to carry the baggage or experiencing that seemingly unending sense of final torture.
Perhaps it’s for that very reason Lee Keegan rejected the compassion that has been directed towards him and his team from outside the county. In an interview with Newstalk last week, he said: “People say it’s a hard luck story with Mayo. I kind of find that a bit of a farce, to be honest. There’s 30 teams out there that could be in the same position as us but they’re not. We’re there every year challenging. People say there’s a hoodoo with Dublin but we’ve beaten Dublin before in the semi-final and in league games. People tend to think it’s this hard luck Mayo story. That’s not the way we think. We’re a very ambitious, young group that are striving to be at the top end of things.”
Dare it be said but there appeared to be a touch of kindness shown to Keegan by his peers in selecting him as footballer of the year as there might have been among the hurlers in choosing Austin Gleeson as their best of 2016.
Obviously, that neither Dublin nor Tipperary had a true stand-out performer helped Keegan and Gleeson’s causes and votes seemed to be split between Brian Fenton and Ciarán Kilkenny in football and Seamus Callanan and Pádraic Maher in hurling. Could it even be said the backing for Keegan was a protest vote against the black card?
What Keegan said isn’t anything different to what his team-mates uttered after their 2012 and ’13 final reverses. Mayo will be alright but it’s like they have to telegraph that message similar to stuntman Captain Lance Murdock in The Simpsons who is barely alive after falling into a tank of water filled with great white sharks, piranha, electric eels, alligators and a lion but still manages to give the thumbs-up to the crowd.
If anyone is unsure about the difference between sympathy and empathy they need look no further than Mayo.
What neutrals feel for them isn’t next to near what they feel for themselves because nobody but they can understand what they have gone through or are currently attempting to reconcile with in their heads.
The Cubs’ newly-earned title as world champions is one of the grandiose in sport but somehow it fits them right. That couple the morning of last Thursday week? The world was theirs. In time, it will be Mayo’s too.
It will be Waterford’s. It will be Limerick’s. And their rapture will be something to envy. Their elation like no other.
Cork GAA needs its Mecca
I had the great fortune of being invited by Paul Cronin and Moira O’Brien to speak to sixth class students in Ballyhea National School late last month. Their general brightness and inquisitiveness were something to behold; their love for sport of all kinds so heartening.
The redevelopment of Páirc Uí Chaoimh was mentioned by one pupil. As he spoke, it dawned how much the county’s youth need a place to strive to play in if not be in. It may seem like there is little romance in bricks and mortar but it was to Wrigley Field that the majority of Chicago Cubs fans gravitated towards for game seven against the Cleveland Indians.
There have been some salient remarks made about the large amounts of money that have been ploughed into the new Páirc Uí Chaoimh but the funding structure overseen by county secretary Frank Murphy has been quite an astute bit of business.
Those following the stadium’s official Twitter account will have seen how things are coming together nicely. The roof is in place, the grass has been sown and tomorrow the media get a sneak peek before the board executive presents its premium seat scheme “Priority” in Rochestown Park Hotel.
It’s people that will make the new Páirc Uí Chaoimh what it is but having somewhere to call home again, a brand spanking new one to boot, is something to be excited about.
Tyrrell departure epitomises Kilkenny’s grace
It’s not just how Kilkenny win that makes them so damn admirable but how they fall too. We think back to Peter Barry and how he bowed out of the inter-county game without a word. Tommy Walsh’s exit was just as humble. Ditto JJ Delaney. Henry Shefflin had to organise a press conference because he would have been inundated with requests for his time.
The Cats show as much grace under fire as when they are giving it. At the end of last week, Jackie Tyrrell announced he was stepping away with impeccable dignity.
Given Brian Cody is a James Stephens club-mate of his, he might have felt he had to bite his tongue a bit about how his manager kept him on the sidelines this year but he was in the main diplomatic.
“I thought I would have been brought in at some stage, but management obviously thought otherwise and made other changes and unfortunately we didn’t win,” he told RTÉ. “But it wasn’t about Jackie Tyrrell, it was about Kilkenny trying to win an All-Ireland and unfortunately on the day we met a very strong Tipperary team, who beat us fair and square. I felt I was in good shape. Everyone wants to play in the championship and particularly in Croke Park on All-Ireland final day and I was no different.”
As some of Cody’s plans for 2017 were revealed last night, it’s their modesty that will serve them best again.
Email: john.fogarty@examiner.ie
