Mayo were back... until a very Mayo thing happened

Not so very long ago, Mayo footballers took to the stage like Beyoncé; all angel wings, backing singers and brass bands. A battered band of brothers that were the toast of the nation. They were representing. They were woke. Men who knew them drank deep and were silent. They were the honourable, the unsullied, the beatified.

The beat poets of a sporting generation, fighting for breath in a pop culture atmosphere suddenly suffocated with the excesses of blanket defences, alleged financial inequality and ubiquitous endorsements. Dublin may have taken home the Grammys, but there seemed to be a million Kanyes grabbing the microphone saying it should have been Mayo.