Mayo fear losing it all in hyperspace

THEY, whoever they are, say no one can fight quite like family. “Stand between them when they’re at it,” the same ‘they’ say, “and see how quickly the worm can turn.”

The Mayos have been fighting this past week or so. And not just under the comfort of their own roof, but in the searing heat of the Twitter sun. It all started in the days after the victory over Cork. All-Ireland champions felled, the county suddenly found itself — quite unexpectedly — eyeing up the prospect of All-Ireland glory once again.

Now, if there’s one thing to trouble a county more than a sudden exit from the championship, it’s the even more sudden onset of an All-Ireland semi-final with a fresh gust of wind in the sails.

Revisionism has sought to claim that hype has contributed to Mayo’s downfall in a number of All-Ireland finals. It’s not a view we share here — we see more fundamental reasons as the cause of the famine — but that’s not relevant to the point at tweet.

With Cork barely cold in their graves, someone, we’re not sure who, possibly someone on the secret payroll of the hype police, peppered a #mayogaa post on the tweet machine with a #nohypeplease exhortation. With what must be seen as a supreme triumph of irony, it spread like wildfire, arguably faster than any campaign of the pro-hype kind might have managed.

And it stayed like that for a couple of weeks. Even local journalists, who might be deemed to have a vested interest in the propagation of hype, got in on the act, commending one and all on the success of the #nohypeplease movement.

It reminded us of the Evening Herald front page strapline a colleague badly wanted to write back in 95, but wasn’t let: “Dublin must guard against hype — see 16-page special report inside.”

Back to the Plain of the Yews though, where an existential crisis has been created whereby hordes of these mad-for-road, bursting-at-the-seams, let-us-at-the-Kingdom Mayo people took to Twitter to divest themselves of all manner of views about the forthcoming match, whilst adding the #nohypeplease tag each time.

It has led to many troubling questions.

What weight of anti-hype does it take to actually create hype? If I urge people not to hype up the Kerry game in any way, am I, in fact, guilty of contributing to the hype myself? Do two wrongs make a right? This week, there were clear signs of splintering in the ranks. Someone from Donegal came on asking if they could borrow the #nohypeplease hose to put out a raging fire up their way.

Another northerner came west looking for an envelope of unmarked notes (preferably sterling, hard to blame him) in return for what he called ‘the perfect solution to kill all hype’. Turns out he was from Tyrone. “Get beat,” was the central element of his foolproof scheme for dampening down that deadly, corrosive hype.

“Get out,” was the reply he got.

By Monday, we’d spotted the first sign of emerging anti- anti-hype momentum when #hypeplease got lumped in, albeit a touch apologetically, at the end of a #mayogaa tweet. Then Willie Joe of the peerless mayoGAAblog.com put digit to keyboard to tell the citizens of the county that it’s “time to stop thinking about hype and start believing”. When he’s cranky, he doesn’t mince his words, Willie Joe (to clarify, he’s not the real WJ, just named for him).

He wrote: “The lazy punditry, which in advance [of the quarter-final] was all about how we’d get the s***e roundly hammered out of us by Cork, now moved on with equal confidence to predict that after every win of this kind we always took leave of our senses and only recovered them after we got the s***e roundly hammered out of us in the next match.

“The earth-shattering advice imparted to us was that our best defence against future disappointment was that we should vigilantly guard against hype. It’s for your own good, you poor dears.”

Later: “The greatest enemy facing the team’s supporters the next day isn’t any exaggerated sense of self-worth, instead it’s a chronic lack of self-belief.”

So there you have it. Can Mayo do it? We defer to @Maigheoforsam: “The most rewarding things you do in life are often the ones that look like they cannot be done — Arnold Palmer #nohypeplease.”

Larry Ryan is away this week.