Mayo on Top of the World After Nine Point Defeat

Kerry 1-20
Mayo 1-11

There’s only one way to win a game but it seems like there are a thousand and one ways to lose one. But as the shutter comes down on another Mayo summer, everyone with an interest should realise what a fantastic summer it’s been.

Even at the end. Nine points is a whacking, but it’s also a fair result. Mayo did nothing wrong, really, yesterday. They executed their game plan. The misfortunate thing about it was, so did Kerry.

Kerry found their feet after about twenty minutes and the longer the game went on the easier it became for them. They had an answer for everything Mayo threw at them, and Mayo threw them their all. It’s just that Mayo’s all wasn’t good enough.

Kerry is a great football county and they are currently blessed with exceptional players and an exceptional manager. People talk about weaknesses in the current team; we’ll see just how vulnerable they are come the third Sunday. Kerry will start favourites in An Spailpín’s book.

So where does the defeat leave Mayo? It leaves Mayo on top of the world.

Under the current Championship setup, a good Championship for Mayo is one where Mayo win their quarter-final. Not making a quarter-final is the only bad year for Mayo. Everything that happens besides winning that quarter-final is a bonus. Staying in Division 1 – presuming there still is a Division 1 – is a bonus. Winning Connacht is a bonus.

Mayo achieved their primary goal of winning a quarter-final this year, and the bonus goals of staying in Division 1, winning Connacht and inflicting a terrible, searing defeat on Cork, the All-Ireland Champions. That makes for a hell of a year in the ledger. Any other judgment is nonsense.

And not only that. This year has been marvellous for reminding the supporters of Mayo football – which means everyone in the county – of what matters. That getting beaten early is not in fact better than losing in the Final. That what counts is surviving for as long as you can, with still being alive at five o’clock on the third Sunday the greatest achievement of all.

And this year has been marvellous for reminding the supporters of Mayo football that we are legion, we are proud and we are not junk bond status.

Willie Joe, Mayo football’s Baptist and the man who runs the superlative Mayo GAA Blog, called his people to Bowe’s on Fleet Street on Saturday night. Reader, they came in their droves.

People that had never met before, from the north, south, east and west of the third largest county in Ireland, came together to celebrate the unique colours and heroic feats of Mayo football, looking back through the years and forward into the 21st Century. It was an extraordinary night, and one that will be remembered for years by those that were there.

Because that night spoke about Mayo, who we are and why we are. Mayo people turned up in droves on Saturday night because we’re not fools; we knew the likelihood of a big night in September was unlikely. But we wanted to celebrate the team and the people and the county in the here and now, because it is a team worth celebrating, we are a people worth celebrating and Mayo a county worth celebrating.

Naysayers will sneer about nine point hammerings and poor Mayo and all this other old blather but the fools, the fools, the fools – even last night, as the remains of another Championship returned across the Shannon the undertakers will have heard signs of life from the back of the hearse. Signs of life that will have grown louder and louder as they went deeper and deeper in the West until, returned among the yew trees and the true-hearted boys, in the gloaming and the heather, Mayo football sloughs off the defeat, rises once more from its bier and turn its head towards the FBD League and the 2012 Campaign.

There will always be a Mayo. Now and forever. Up Mayo.

The Role of the Pundit

Willie Joe, the eminence behind the Mayo GAA Blog, opined on Saturday that the opinion of the national GAA pundits doesn’t matter. “Such babble is simply noise, annoying and grating noise to many ears, but just noise nonetheless,” wrote that great and good man.

It is noise, of course. But it shouldn’t be. That’s the point. It shouldn’t be.

There are two types of people to whom punditry – pre and post match analysis of sporting contests, Gaelic football in our particular case – is aimed. The first is the general watcher who doesn’t follow the games and isn’t particularly knowledgeable but is watching because a child or a boyfriend is interested, or a neighbour is playing, or a team has gone deep in the Championship and the whole parish is now talking about nothing else.

The second is the actual fan, who goes to all games at all grades. He or she has maybe played at some level, or coached, or sells the club lotto on Saturday night. But that doesn’t mean that he or she has ever played in Croke Park before 50,000 people and knows what that extraordinary experience is like. He or she has watched Championships unfold year after year and likes to compare one year with another, one team with another, one player with another, one philosophy or experience with another.

In other words, punditry should reach out to everyone who watches the game, irrespective of the level of his or her own knowledge, experience or exposure. Neither of these needs is being met.

Part of it, of course, is because of our national refusal to ever take anything seriously. Sure it’s only a bit of craic. People think it’s a laugh to see Brolly and Pat Spillane getting stuck into each other.

If I want a laugh I’ll read the Program for Government. Football is serious, and due deference should be paid. Deference should be paid for those who don’t live and die by the game but are still interested for all the reasons listed above.

Deference should be paid for those who do live and die by the game and expect it to be analysed by those for whom the game has the same magnitude in their lives.

That’s the problem with the current level of punditry. It’s not that pundits are too harsh on players. It’s that they’re not harsh enough.

Pat Spillane rowed back on his (typically strident) criticism of Donegal in the very first game of the Championship after Donegal won their first Ulster title in nineteen years earlier this month. It’d be easier to respect Spillane if he said he still couldn’t stand it, matteradamn how many Anglo-Celts they win. At least he’d be consistent, instead of running with both hare and hounds. He’ll be back damning them again when – if – they lose again in the Championship, thus making you wonder if he only took a crack because he thought it was a free shot. There’s something kind of rotten about that sort of behaviour.

People think that controversy is better than the mind-numbing and stomach churning smugness of the BBC’s Match of the Day couch. But what’s currently served by RTÉ isn’t controversy. It’s lads acting the jackass. Lads who are just as capable of the BBC’s old pals act when the son of one of the guild is playing. For instance.

And it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a new generation of pundits now, men who call the game as they see it but who don’t rub players noses in it either. Anthony Tohill and Dara Ó Cinnéide on RTÉ, and Peter Canavan on TV3 are superb, to name but three. The sooner they take over from the washed out vaudeville of the current RTÉ front line panel the better off the game and the people will be.

Happy Birthday to the Mayo GAA Blog

These are strange times, my masters. The Cork crisis shows no sign of resolution, despite signs manifesting daily that there could, in fact, be a pair of them in it. Dónal Óg Cusack was talking to Miriam on Prime Time last week, talking like some 'seventies throwback apparatchik from some Glorious People’s Republic, explaining that the workers would never surrender. Dónal Óg Cusack isn’t old enough to remember those crazies, is he? How deeply distressing that he should be so fluent in their lingo.

In such distressful times, how very refreshing it is to focus on a man with a little more perspective than Comrade Cusack. The Mayo GAA Blog celebrated its first birthday last week, on St Bridget’s Day, and An Spailpín begs your indulgence to honour Willie Joe, the anonymous straw that stirs that particular drink.

Willie Joe himself reflected on his twelve months before the mast on Friday, and interesting reading it made too. I don’t know who this Willie Joe is (although I have noted, from the footage he likes to post, that he likes to stand in that same section of Páirc Mhic Éil favoured by An Spailpín Fánach and his little gang), but I have met the spirit before, in many places. I salute it, as it represents that to which An Spailpín aspires, but from which so often falls short.

Willie Joe is an idealist. Idealism is the rhyme and reason behind the Mayo GAA Blog. Willie is currently trying to post statistics on Mayo matches marching back to the time of the Tuatha De Danann - how fantastic, how worthwhile, how inpirational a venture is that? As well as his work as an archivist, Willie Joe likes to keep his finger on the pulse of this grand passion, this Mayo football team and their Grail Quest, and as such he makes it his business to post daily, religiously, such updates as he can track down. Every day there’s something fresh there, and it’s always reported with style and that certain panache that An Spailpín always associates with the county Mayo. There is a peculiarly Mayo way of looking at the world, a particular take of black humour that probably developed during the 19th century squeeze between the broad Atlantic at our backs and the advancing waves of blight before us. We learned to laugh in order to hold the bitter tears at bay.

And this is Willie Joe’s way. He tears his hair out as much as any over the team and its empty works and false promises, but he’s never mean about it. In a place like the County Mayo, where the good land has to be won from rock and bog and heather, it ill behoves thrupence to look down on tu’pence ha’penny.

The National League returned last weekend – Mayo lost, if you can believe it – but both Willie Joe and your own humble pensman are keeping their powder dry for the moment. The false dawn is no stranger to the Mayoman. But still Willie trawls the sites and mulls the possibilities, which is the only option open to those who are bitten by this bitter beauty, the team that is Nearly, and yet, Not Quite. So even though it’s only the league, there are still permutations to be sorted, tactics to discuss, places to fight for, prospects to savour. Willie is mulling Ronan at three, while An Spailpín remains faithful to what he saw in Monaghan two years ago. We don’t know how it will work out, but how deeply satisfying it is to wonder, and roll the prospects around in our heads for a while. Anticipation is always half the fun. Sometimes all the fun, when little accidents happen, as happened last year against Galway and Derry. Sigh.

Your faithful correspondent noted a couple of weeks ago that Willie is considering attending tonight’s meeting in the Garda Club, where the Mayo County Board are to give their benediction to a new venture where another supporters’ club is founded in the capital. An Spailpín is tempted to go, but the mention of a “Mayo fleece” brought back too many distressing memories. You don’t want to be putting notions in some bucks’ heads, you know. And the Cork boys think their county board is tricky. They ought to get out more.

But in the meantime – happy birthday Willie Joe, where-ever you are. See you some September evening when, on a blessèd day that is not far distant, all of us in Mayo shall see each other as we truly are. Champions.





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