Tommy Martin: Maybe this really is Mayo's year...you just can't say it
THE ETERNAL STRUGGLES: Mayo fans have never had it easy. Pic: INPHO/James Crombie
Aside from dressing up in a gold lamé jumpsuit and dancing the Rumba on national television, the best way to make a fool of yourself in Irish public life is to tip Mayo for the All-Ireland.
At least with the Rumba you’d get some exercise and a JCB bucket of fake tan. Say out loud that you’ve been watching the Allianz League closely and studying the form carefully and JESUS CHRIST, THIS COULD BE THEIR YEAR and only derision and mockery awaits.
For good reason too. Only a fool extrapolates from encouraging league form likely All-Ireland success and only a certifiable mad person does it with Mayo. This is a county whose ability to find new and interesting ways to screw up All-Irelands is unsurpassed.
They are the Taylor Swift of All-Ireland flops, constantly reinventing themselves, evolving from the simple days of curses and hard luck stories to new, more challenging material involving own goals, goalkeeping rickets and the spectacular, synchronised flub of the 2021 final against Tyrone.
You can see it in the analysis of the season’s opening exchanges. Experts are looking at Kevin McStay’s unbeaten start as Mayo manager, which includes home thumpings of the last two All-Ireland champions, and treating the evidence like a scientist presented with a theory that the moon is made of cheese.
No, the smart money is on the usual story. High hopes followed by crushing despair. A thrill-a-minute ride on the rickety rollercoaster of certain death. An Evel Knievel motorcycle jump that ends up splattered on the floor of the Grand Canyon.
To predict anything else would be cruel and unusual towards Mayo’s supporters, for whom El Dorado always lies just over the next hill. Even they were reported to have thrown their hats at it after the 2021 final, like long suffering spouses who’d finally had enough and kicked that no-good jackass out. They’re trying to move on. Have a heart.
The best you can tell them is that while this may not be THE year, it will be certainly be a year. It always is with Mayo. Things will happen. Heroes will rise. Then they will fall, down a manhole like in a Mr Bean sketch. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. Mostly cry, to be honest.
All that said, while people who claim that the end of the world is nigh are clearly mad, one of them is going to be right sometime. So too, by sheer weight of probability, over the vastness of time, will Mayo win the All-Ireland. It may be too vague a basis to book hotel rooms in Dublin for the final, but the universe is backing the Green and Red. Mainly, Mayo will win the All-Ireland because they keep bloody trying. They are never going to stop. They are like coastal erosion – eventually the pretty fishing village will fall into the sea.
So, if some year is going to be the year, how will we know what year is the year? This is particularly important for Mayo people, who are famously scattered to the four corners of the globe. It is an especially trying aspect of the long wait since 1951 that whether you are toting roof tiles in Chicago or tapping software code in Singapore, you have to be there when it happens.
Being a Mayo fan means that if you were ten feet from the top of Everest and got news that Mayo were in the final, you’d be asking your Sherpa the quickest way from here to the Big Tree. You could be performing open heart surgery on the Dalai Lama and you’d tell the pimply intern to take it from here because you don’t want to miss the parade.
Naturally this must be a terrible inconvenience, given that Mayo have played in seven finals in the last decade. That’s a lot of time off to be asking of uncomprehending bosses in distant offices; a lot of snoring on long-haul flights just to see Cillian O’Connor in tears again.
We need better data here, as they say. If we are too afraid to say that this could be their year, then we could at least give them a steer. First thing to note is that we are still conditioned by the Great Team theory of the All-Ireland championship, mainly because Dublin were a Great Team and because they have won most of the All-Irelands since the invention of the iPhone.
This, however, is no longer true. Tyrone’s All-Ireland win in 2021 could have been masterminded by Ronnie Biggs such was its heist-like nature. Everyone wondering why Tyrone have not kicked on since then is missing the point: they are kicking back on the Copacabana, sipping caiparinhas with nightclub dancers, the loot stashed in a Swiss bank vault.
Kerry have a Great Player but can’t yet be viewed as a Great Team, with all the aura and mystique that entails. They were worthy winners in 2022 but never put in an irrefutable, statement performance. Like the Littlest Hobo, Jack O’Connor tends to toddle off into the sunset rather than build dynasties.
Dublin are making heavy weather of games in Division 2. Derry are coming but have to add a whack of big day poise to their arsenal of torture devices. Galway were like a Cheltenham runner fading up the hill in the All-Ireland final – can they get the trip this year?
Any of these teams could be All-Ireland champions, so why not Mayo? McStay seems to have gotten things right so far. With Aidan O’Shea he has followed ancient GAA scripture that says full-forward should be a big lump with soft hands. They had 12 different scorers against Tyrone and brought players like Paddy Durcan, Cillian O’Connor and Tommy Conroy off the bench. James Carr, Jordan Flynn and Conor Loftus have resurfaced and Enda Hession looks like the respawn of the departed Oisín Mullin.
Some year will be their year, therefore this year could be their year. Not that you’d ever say that publicly. Are you mad?
