Galway Shock Mayo in Castlebar

There are two ways of looking at Galway’s shock defeat of Mayo at McHale Park on Saturday. We can take the broad view, or we can take a closer look at the game in and of itself. Let’s try both, and see what we can learn.

The media spent the final weeks of the National League bemoaning that those league games were the last interesting things scribes would have to write about until August. This is because that same media, possibly dazzled by propaganda from the GPA, considers the Championship a fossilized entity, a killing field in which “lesser” teams cannot possibly gain by being exposed to the mighty guns of the Division 1 Super Powers.

Up to a point, Lord Copper. Last week, Tipperary of Division 3 unhorsed mighty Cork of Division 1. On Saturday, Galway of Division 2 unhorsed Mayo of Division 1, not only in Mayo itself but with fifty-two of Galway’s best and brightest missing from the muster-roll.

These things should not be happening. Sports science and the great god of the age, money, tell us that a commoner may never gaze on a crown in the Championship any more.

So what happened on Saturday? Is it possible that the peculiar magic of this fossilized Championship, no longer fit for the modern athlete and fan, somehow conjured dream into reality once more? Could it be that helpless Galway, with their missing players and dressed only their lowly Division 2 motley, somehow raised themselves at the sight of the green and red and channeled the spirits of their forbears to make themselves, for that one crowded hour, bigger than they thought they could be?

Could it be that there is something inherent in the very Championship itself, in the warp and weft of its history and tradition, that means Galway can raise themselves against Mayo in a Connacht semi-final in a way that is impossible to imagine them doing against Monaghan, say, in a round 3 Champions League style tournament so much more fitting to modernity?

Who knows? But it does seem legitimate to at least raise the question.

And what of Mayo themselves? This isn’t Mayo’s first time getting ambushed by Galway in Castlebar. May 24th, 1998 is a date that still lives in infamy in the County Mayo. Did Mayo think that sports science and money and TV ads would protect them from piseog, éigse and oidhreacht peile? What can a millionaire American basketball coach writing a motivational book know of the feeling in a Galwayman’s gut when he sees the green and red banners flying so proudly and arrogantly high?

The day was Galway’s and rightly so. While they and Roscommon prepare for Connacht’s banner day, Mayo have to ask themselves what exactly happened. Did they have a bad day at the office, and will they now scorch a path of devastation through the qualifiers in the hurt and fury of their response?

Oisin McConville suggested in the Examiner on Saturday that it was time for mutinous Mayo players to put their money where their extraordinarily big mouths are and, as sure as night follows day, there will be more than one why-oh-why column in the Irish Independent this coming week roasting the Mayo panel for what they did to the previous management.

Yes. And yet, no.

The mutiny is misunderstood by the national media. The mutiny was not a cause; it was a symptom. The mutiny was the inevitable result of the Mayo County Board’s failure to deal with the end of James Horan’s time as manager, a failure that, based on Saturday’s evidence, has yet to be fixed.

The situation at the moment appears to be that the Board wants Pat and Noel but wants no truck with James. Pat and Noel are unacceptable to the players but there is no way between Hell and Bethlehem the Board want Horan back. The only thing either party seems to agree about is that neither of them wanted anything at all to do Kevin McStay and Liam McHale.

Hence, Stephen Rochford. Rochford has no small job to do in the coming two weeks to reassemble the green and red Humpty Dumpty. Mayo were red-rotten on Saturday and, as the man in charge, Rochford has to fix them. Rochford will be forgiven any step he takes, no matter how drastic, so long as Mayo win the All-Ireland as a result. Anything short of that and he’ll be tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail, of course. Galway have their tradition, and we have ours. Up Mayo.

What's in a Name?

Is there anything that the Mayo County Board will not do for money? It was to be hoped, if there were any good to be gained from the continuing reality check the nation is currently enduring, that the current financial crisis would have reminded people of the value of money.

The news that the Mayo County Board are seeking to hawk the naming rights of McHale Park, currently under-going a process of development and refurbishment, to the highest bidder would suggest that we have learned nothing at all.

Mr Seán Feeney, Secretary of the Mayo County Board, remarks in an interview in the Mayo News last week that “the money has to come from somewhere.” He is correct in this regard, but he is mistaken if he thinks that there is that much available for naming rights. There’s a recession on – how much can a company possibly make from sponsoring the name of a provincial GAA stadium in a recession?

Mr Feeney is also quoted as saying that “we did a lot of research into what other counties had done to raise money, naming rights, and the selling of seats.” When that lot of research is finished, Mr Feeney is going to discover that there is only one other provincial GAA stadium in Ireland that has a sponsored name – Kingspan Breffni Park in Cavan.

This suggests two things. Firstly, there isn’t that much money in naming rights to a stadium in Ireland, because if there was there’d be more than one sponsored stadium in the country. Secondly, the fact that Kingspan is a building company and also the sponsor of the county team would suggest that the relationship between the Cavan County Board and Kingspan is complex, and therefore their stadium sponsorship may be part of a bigger picture.

Mr Feeney remarks in that same Mayo News interview that “in an ideal world, we’d like to have a Mayo company’s name on the stadium but that may not be possible,” and this is the most troubling remark in all of the interview. Because you have to ask yourself the question: why would a non-Mayo company want to sponsor the Mayo county ground?

The only reason that a non-Mayo company would be interested in naming rights to the Mayo county ground would be because they were getting it cheap. What’s to lose? And if the Mayo Board are selling the naming rights cheap then they should be run out town on the first bus leaving the station.

An Spailpín Fánach is sick, sore and tired of the riches of my county and my country being shilled for a bag of beads and nuts. Events at Rossport, fifty miles north of Castlebar, show exactly what happens when you sell out cheap. The Government neglected their duty of care towards the people in North Mayo when they made their sweetheart deal with Shell, and the Mayo County Board will equally betray their heritage if they sign over the naming rights to McHale Park for three gobstoppers and the string from a yo-yo.

The GAA, as has been mentioned in this space previously, is not just a sporting organisation. The GAA is a cultural organisation, for which the remit of preserving and promoting indigenous culture and heritage is every bit as important as running sporting competitions. And that is why the name of the stadium is important – because Archbishop McHale was a Mayo hero, and in naming the county ground after him Mayo GAA does honour to a man who stood for his people against pressures both within and without.

Archbishop John McHale’s time of influence is so long ago now – over one hundred and fifty years – that it’s difficult to remember what he did, and why the stadium is named after him. In even thinking of changing the name of the stadium the Mayo Board seems to have forgotten. A quick history lesson, then.

John McHale was born outside Laherdane in 1791. He went on to be ordained a priest during the time of the Penal Laws, rose to Archbishop of Tuam and his role in history is as one of the chief supporters of Daniel O’Connell in O’Connell’s campaigns for Catholic emancipation and Repeal of the Act of Union.

Emancipation was passed, Repeal failed, O’Connell died and McHale was eventually silenced by the new Cardinal, Doctor Cullen, who did not believe in rocking boats. The mother church’s policy was always to get along with whoever is in charge; McHale, by contrast, put his people – the people of Mayo – first, and suffered the consequences.

And that’s why the stadium is named after him. Because the GAA is also about heroes, about standing up for where you’re from and what you believe in.

If the Mayo County Board can generate a sum so sufficiently enormous to overcome this statement of belief in heroism and local pride in the name of future development, so be it. We have to live in the real world. But if the deal is anything less than that, if, come next summer, Mayo are playing a Championship game in the Iceland Foods Stadium, with the ball thrown in by Ms Kerry Katona, we will all have lost a great part of our souls.

But it won’t matter to An Spailpín, because An Spailpín will not be there. As a friend of mine remarked in regard to share prices recently, there is such a thing as a point of no return. An Spailpín will be monitoring the situation with a heavy and anxious heart.





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