Maurice Brosnan: The mad bastards that are Mayo win the 75-year war
NICE DAY OUT: Jordan Flynn and Kobe McDonald relax after winning the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship final. Pic: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile.
How did you expect it to end? Were this side ever going to follow any set of rules? Pain, a cursed history, the ghosts of heartbreak all around them. Mayo’s destiny was always this. The best way out is always through.
None of the supposed conventions mattered. Lose more kickouts? Fall into a significant hole at the start? A string of wides in the second half when the opportunity was there to really pull clear?
To boil it down to one moment would be to diminish the hundreds of mental, spine-tingling little moments that this glorious decider provided.
An extraordinary championship that repeatedly refused to follow expectation culminated in its absolute masterpiece. No one will forget the scenes they witnessed in Croke Park on the 26th of July 2026.
The sheer array of tears alone was staggering, from overwhelmed to overjoyed to those private tears reserved for a life-defining moment when your mind turns to someone else, who’s not there.
And yet, the scene as Keith Evans claimed a Joe O’Connor break as the game ticked towards the final quarter was still the defining image.
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As his flailing body slid across the turf, four white jerseys descended like birds of prey. This was the Mayo swarm in full flow. Seamus Moynihan said Tyrone’s noughties defence was like "Times Square at rush hour." Evans found himself sucked beneath a white wave.
That move ended in a wide. It scarcely bothered them. In all, they had 34 shots and kicked four from 13 two-point attempts. It was a high-risk strategy of heavy-metal football. Within two minutes of Evans being swallowed, Jack Carney took one look at the posts and considered his third two-pointer. Instead, he popped it back outside to the unstoppable Ryan O’Donoghue who took one bounce before splitting the posts.
This is a man who started the contest with a shot dropped short, being stripped by Jason Foley and hand-passing his next possession away. He went on to give an all-time final display of toil and total class. It was cast in their own image.
In recent months, there has been a resurgence of war in the big house. It has become Kerry’s soundtrack. Ever since An Ghaeltacht’s intermediate All-Ireland triumph last January saw West Kerry concertina player Cormac Begley play his ballad, To War, in the back of their victorious dressing room, it has played before Kerry games in Croke Park.
As both teams warmed up before this epic final, the song rang out. If its message wasn’t clear to Mayo’s players, it became unmistakable when they found themselves almost immediately 1-5 to 0-1 down after 16 minutes.
Dylan Casey’s aggressive welcome to Kobe McDonald, Gavin White dumping Darragh Beirne over the sideline, Sean O’Shea’s lofted handpass to the goal-bound David Clifford, this screamed of targeted conquest.
Mayo screamed back. Boy, how did they scream. It started with a magnificent two-pointer into the Hill from Carney. The sea of green and red in the terrace showed their full appreciation. All they needed was a spark.
“Once the chance comes, Andy gives you the full right to take the shot,” Carney explained afterwards.
“You are trusted by your team-mates and by him; you have earned the right to do it. You have practised enough times. It takes the pressure off. You can go for it, he says himself: Keep swinging. Just keep swinging.’”
In such a conflict, the path to victory for any underdog is to defy convention. Do it differently. They knew the champions were coming to defend the throne today. They had to go and take it for themselves.
“We wanted to be the hunters today. We obviously knew we were underdogs. We wanted to be authentic and play the way we think suits us, stepping up, not stepping back.”
Does it make sense? In its own mad way. As Carney spoke, the scene in the tunnel under the Hogan Stand was one of absolute bedlam. Backroom team members darted in shuttles with bottles from the bar to the dressing room. Players gathered in complete disbelief, still struggling to comprehend the scale of their achievement. A handler with a Harris's hawk walked by and no one batted an eyelid. Nothing is strange anymore. Anything is possible.
Mayo came with a mission to win that battle. They proved it at the start of the second half. Beirne followed up a delicate chipped point with a defiant push on Joe O’Connor. Kobe McDonald missed twice so elected to stroke over the 45. They had crossed too much water to retreat now. Burn the boats. There was no going back.
It brought Kerry’s stalwarts to an uncomfortable place. Twice Gavin White, Man of the Match in this fixture last year, hand-passed possession away. One of those turnovers ended in Beirne’s goal after a sublime O’Donoghue jink and a driving run from David McBrien.
In 25 championship appearances, David McBrien had never scored a point. His career tally was two goals, until Sunday. Then, when Kerry raced into a three-point lead and Mayo needed a response, he drove forward to fist over their opening score.
This group are not burdened by history. They are determined to make their own history. Their manager was once a romantic player and is always a dreamer. When he was asked during his own playing career whether he truly believed they would ever win an All-Ireland, he would reply with a smile: "I think we’ll win more than one."
It was noticeable that this Mayo crop spoke the same language. “We didn’t care about the length of time,” said Carney of the wait.
“We knew that if we kept at it, we’d eventually come to this day hopefully. Thankfully we have. Who knows, it could be a monkey off the back. Hopefully we can go on and get a few more.”
After so much suffering, after endless talk of their mistakes and mentality, Mayo beat the demons and the kings of football. The war is over. The rebels have won.
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