Couple on pony express to final

SOME people will go to any lengths for All-Ireland tickets, but dressing up a pony and then forcing it to watch GAA videos in the family home could not be beat.

Co Mayo couple Mary Mahon and Nicholas Hughes were so desperate to get their hands on tickets for the sell-out clash, that they decided to enlist the help of Dell the pony to enter a local radio competition for tickets.

“Dell is our hero now,” said Mary, from Clogher, Ballintubber. “We were in a very bad way for tickets for the match, and when we heard MWR-fm were running a photo competition for fans, with a prize of two premium level tickets. We got the brain-wave of bringing Dell in to watch the Mayo-Dublin game on video.

“He was surprisingly interested, and kept looking at the telly — I suppose that Mayo-Dublin game was one of the best matches ever played so it’s no surprise he was keen,” she said.

Meanwhile in Kerry, looking at the colourful array of county jerseys hanging in one of the county’s best-known pubs, you could imagine yourself in any Irish bar in the world.

But, Eddie (Tatler) and Bridie O’Sullivan, of the Tatler Jack, in Killarney, are in no doubt about their individual loyalties on All-Ireland football final weekend: he’s Kerry and she’s Mayo.

“We’re going to the match together, but whether we come back down together or not is another thing,” joked Eddie, a former Kerry selector at senior, under-21 and minor levels.

The couple met and married in New York, in the ’60s, and returned in 1975 after buying the Killarney premises.

Bridie, who hails from the Belmullet area, has always been a Mayo supporter and the couple will be heading back to her native heath for celebrations should the westerners claim the Sam Maguire Cup for the first time since 1951.