Mayo are All-Ireland champions on the very first time Reek Sunday coincided with an All-Ireland football final.
It’s happened. It really happened. And it will happen over and over and over throughout the rest of the summer, autumn and into winter.
For some, it will happen forever.
Nobody tipped them. Nobody. Even in the partisan surrounds of your local media, where some were advancing cases, building a narrative or a particular set of circumstances whereby, if only, should it go this way, and if such and such were curtailed, and if by some miracle you could draw level on kickouts…
All reaching, optimistic, shot-in-the-dark stuff.
This is the county of blind faith and apparitions. You don’t have to search far for religious fanaticism or moving statues.
Mary McHale believed. Dan Sheridan / INPHO
Dan Sheridan / INPHO / INPHO
This is the county where John O’Mahony’s wife Geraldine erected the sign ‘Johnno Says Keep The Faith’ on their residence of Tower House in Ballaghadereen.
And there it stayed through many flickers of hopes, days when it appeared an article of faith. There when it appeared a sick joke and was only begging to have a stone pegged at it.
Those that mattered, believed.
Fans like Jim Zoldy.
Living in Connecticut where he is a financial adviser, his roots are Hungarian and English, with a faint whiff of Irish somewhere. On a trip by himself to Ireland he became aware of the Mayo story. He’s been on this trip with them for years.
For 2026, he had flights booked to see them in a Connacht final, only for Roscommon to take care of that business. He returned to Croke Park for the quarter-final and semi-finals.
He had no guarantee of a ticket for the final and he even Tweeted that he was willing to swap his Dublin marathon entry for a ticket.
On Saturday night, he was in the air with his brother Bob. There was the merest hint of a ticket. A half promise. And then they were there. On Hill 16. Losing their shit.
His maternal great-grandfather was Patrick Griffin from Kilvine near Irishtown in South Mayo.
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He left for the United States in 1888. Jim was very close to his son Daniel, his own grandfather, a sports enthusiast.
“I developed a spiritual connection in 2016 to Mayo,” he told me on Sunday.
“Back 23 times. Can’t describe it.”
Jim (left) and Bob Zoldy.
**
All around the stadium, people did not know what to do.
The game was in the final minute. Five minutes before that, Ryan O’Donoghue appeared to do something rash for the first day when he horsed a sideline somewhat aimlessly towards the Kerry goal.
It skidded in the path of Jordan Flynn. He got his palm to it and directed it goalward. It struck the crossbar and hadn’t the decency to glance into the net, nor the least of going over. Instead, it smacked it flush and finished in Kerry hands.
Clifford Bros Inc were open for trade. From the next play, David Clifford hoisted a shot off his right foot over the bar. Two points.
Three points of a gap.
From Jack Livingstone’s kickout, the ball dropped among a forest of men and squirted out to Joe O’Connor. With his jinking and weaving and appearing to run on four legs backed up by four-wheel drive, Paudie Clifford scores.
Two points of a gap.
It was at that point that everything that has gone into Mayo for the duration of Andy Moran’s career was brought to bear.
Moran has suffered like the rest. A cruciate injury kept him out of team in 2012. He was around the panel for the 2004 and 2006 disasters. Dublin used Mayo as their measure and never failed to exceed them in the many years to follow.
And he was slapped with all the bizarre, cheap insults that were thrown at Mayo from former players, pundits, selectors. In an arena like Mayo, even someone with a habit of being recorded on barstools and bookies gets airtime when it’s time to vent the frustrations of defeat.
You could see the Donie Buckley school of tackling in Ryan O’Donoghue – pound for pound the biggest hitter in Gaelic football. You could see James Horan’s fondness for ballsy half-backs passed down through another generation.
Mayo got their luck. Seán O’Shea’s shot didn’t make it. The ball broke around the house and David McBrien ended with his hands on the leather.
Instead of nervously trying to run the clock down, they looked up and spotted tons of space.
Once it was up there, they had it.
Had Sam.
Mayo fans drink it in. Tom Maher / INPHO
Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO
**
It was at that point that many just couldn’t take it.
Beside me in the press box, Michael Gallagher of The Mayo News took leave of his seat. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He just wanted to drink it in. His eyes went red and the shock, the joy, the hurt all came from his shoulders, huge wracking convulsions and tears flowed.
When he regained his composure slightly, he told me of his father. He isn’t doing too good these days. He played football for his club and the last time he lined out, he was in his 60’s.
Behind us, Anthony Hennigan stood rooted to his spot behind his desk. His legs wouldn’t carry him. The tears just flowed.
As the hooter finally sounded, a crew of Mayo men wrestling for the ball on the deck, the dam opened for Shane McGrath of the Daily Mail. An explosion of tears.
All around the stadium, it was a similar sight. The day had come. On a day when many were saying the game was over after 15 minutes, before Ryan O’Donoghue’s two-pointer changed everything.
The speech from Jack Coyne took things to another level. Now, he maintained, people could stick out their chest and say that they were from Mayo, and proud of it.
"STICK YER CHEST OUT AND BE PROUD TO BE FROM MAYO."
Jack Coyne caps off one of the greatest captain's speeches of all time.
The songbook was brought out. Green and Red of Mayo. To Win Just Once. It was hopeless, destitute romance.
The speakers in Croke Park are formidable. They amplified the kick drum of Florence and the Machine’s ‘Dog Days Are Over’ as Andy Moran snapped the trophy and handed it to Enda Hession to encourage a lap of the field.
Their knees never stopped pumping. The lap of honour wasn’t doing enough for some and they would break off into a mini jig. Players took babies and children out of the crowd.
It felt like ages from the great mingling at Fagan’s of Drumcondra, a pub a thousand Mayo fans seemed to conquer hours before the game and spill out onto the green on the banks of the Tolka River. The babble of a thousand exited and giddy conversations all going at once. A murmation of sorts.
Mayo conquer Drumcondra.
Along Jones’ Road, there was a gentleman with a walking stick. We’d put him in his late 70s but he could be in his mid 80s. Gently inquiring of the throngs as they went by if they might have a spare ticket.
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Longing.
At the press media entrance, a distinguished man was attempting to gain entry. Dressed in a suit, with a healthy sheen of silver hair, he is telling the Croke Park employees that he is Jimmy Smyth from the BBC and wants in past the barrier.
He’s not Jimmy Smyth.
And Jimmy Smyth, once the voice of BBC NI with his machine-gun mid-Ulster rattle, hasn’t commentated on games coming up to two decades. Yer man is pulling a fast one.
Everyone wanted in.
You’d wonder what the poor oul’ shower across the Irish Sea made of it all if they happened to flick over from Last of the Summer Wine or Songs of Praise or whatever it is they do between cutting the lawn with nail scissors and rolling cheese rolls down steep banks.
The BBC coverage can be somewhat grating for those already familiar with the games, but it could be a hard enough sell to propose to the Tarquins over in White City that this amateur sport is deserving of the eyeballs of Great Britain, even in a time of Netflix.
If they invested, then they couldn’t fail to have been rewarded.
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To win just once: Mayo become the greatest story ever told
THE PILGRIMS HAVE climbed the Reek.
Mayo are All-Ireland champions on the very first time Reek Sunday coincided with an All-Ireland football final.
It’s happened. It really happened. And it will happen over and over and over throughout the rest of the summer, autumn and into winter.
For some, it will happen forever.
Nobody tipped them. Nobody. Even in the partisan surrounds of your local media, where some were advancing cases, building a narrative or a particular set of circumstances whereby, if only, should it go this way, and if such and such were curtailed, and if by some miracle you could draw level on kickouts…
All reaching, optimistic, shot-in-the-dark stuff.
This is the county of blind faith and apparitions. You don’t have to search far for religious fanaticism or moving statues.
This is the county where John O’Mahony’s wife Geraldine erected the sign ‘Johnno Says Keep The Faith’ on their residence of Tower House in Ballaghadereen.
And there it stayed through many flickers of hopes, days when it appeared an article of faith. There when it appeared a sick joke and was only begging to have a stone pegged at it.
Those that mattered, believed.
Fans like Jim Zoldy.
Living in Connecticut where he is a financial adviser, his roots are Hungarian and English, with a faint whiff of Irish somewhere. On a trip by himself to Ireland he became aware of the Mayo story. He’s been on this trip with them for years.
For 2026, he had flights booked to see them in a Connacht final, only for Roscommon to take care of that business. He returned to Croke Park for the quarter-final and semi-finals.
He had no guarantee of a ticket for the final and he even Tweeted that he was willing to swap his Dublin marathon entry for a ticket.
His maternal great-grandfather was Patrick Griffin from Kilvine near Irishtown in South Mayo.
He left for the United States in 1888. Jim was very close to his son Daniel, his own grandfather, a sports enthusiast.
“I developed a spiritual connection in 2016 to Mayo,” he told me on Sunday.
“Back 23 times. Can’t describe it.”
**
All around the stadium, people did not know what to do.
The game was in the final minute. Five minutes before that, Ryan O’Donoghue appeared to do something rash for the first day when he horsed a sideline somewhat aimlessly towards the Kerry goal.
It skidded in the path of Jordan Flynn. He got his palm to it and directed it goalward. It struck the crossbar and hadn’t the decency to glance into the net, nor the least of going over. Instead, it smacked it flush and finished in Kerry hands.
Clifford Bros Inc were open for trade. From the next play, David Clifford hoisted a shot off his right foot over the bar. Two points.
Three points of a gap.
From Jack Livingstone’s kickout, the ball dropped among a forest of men and squirted out to Joe O’Connor. With his jinking and weaving and appearing to run on four legs backed up by four-wheel drive, Paudie Clifford scores.
Two points of a gap.
It was at that point that everything that has gone into Mayo for the duration of Andy Moran’s career was brought to bear.
Moran has suffered like the rest. A cruciate injury kept him out of team in 2012. He was around the panel for the 2004 and 2006 disasters. Dublin used Mayo as their measure and never failed to exceed them in the many years to follow.
And he was slapped with all the bizarre, cheap insults that were thrown at Mayo from former players, pundits, selectors. In an arena like Mayo, even someone with a habit of being recorded on barstools and bookies gets airtime when it’s time to vent the frustrations of defeat.
You could see the Donie Buckley school of tackling in Ryan O’Donoghue – pound for pound the biggest hitter in Gaelic football. You could see James Horan’s fondness for ballsy half-backs passed down through another generation.
Mayo got their luck. Seán O’Shea’s shot didn’t make it. The ball broke around the house and David McBrien ended with his hands on the leather.
Instead of nervously trying to run the clock down, they looked up and spotted tons of space.
Once it was up there, they had it.
Had Sam.
**
It was at that point that many just couldn’t take it.
Beside me in the press box, Michael Gallagher of The Mayo News took leave of his seat. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He just wanted to drink it in. His eyes went red and the shock, the joy, the hurt all came from his shoulders, huge wracking convulsions and tears flowed.
When he regained his composure slightly, he told me of his father. He isn’t doing too good these days. He played football for his club and the last time he lined out, he was in his 60’s.
Behind us, Anthony Hennigan stood rooted to his spot behind his desk. His legs wouldn’t carry him. The tears just flowed.
As the hooter finally sounded, a crew of Mayo men wrestling for the ball on the deck, the dam opened for Shane McGrath of the Daily Mail. An explosion of tears.
All around the stadium, it was a similar sight. The day had come. On a day when many were saying the game was over after 15 minutes, before Ryan O’Donoghue’s two-pointer changed everything.
The speech from Jack Coyne took things to another level. Now, he maintained, people could stick out their chest and say that they were from Mayo, and proud of it.
The songbook was brought out. Green and Red of Mayo. To Win Just Once. It was hopeless, destitute romance.
The speakers in Croke Park are formidable. They amplified the kick drum of Florence and the Machine’s ‘Dog Days Are Over’ as Andy Moran snapped the trophy and handed it to Enda Hession to encourage a lap of the field.
Their knees never stopped pumping. The lap of honour wasn’t doing enough for some and they would break off into a mini jig. Players took babies and children out of the crowd.
It felt like ages from the great mingling at Fagan’s of Drumcondra, a pub a thousand Mayo fans seemed to conquer hours before the game and spill out onto the green on the banks of the Tolka River. The babble of a thousand exited and giddy conversations all going at once. A murmation of sorts.
Along Jones’ Road, there was a gentleman with a walking stick. We’d put him in his late 70s but he could be in his mid 80s. Gently inquiring of the throngs as they went by if they might have a spare ticket.
Longing.
At the press media entrance, a distinguished man was attempting to gain entry. Dressed in a suit, with a healthy sheen of silver hair, he is telling the Croke Park employees that he is Jimmy Smyth from the BBC and wants in past the barrier.
He’s not Jimmy Smyth.
And Jimmy Smyth, once the voice of BBC NI with his machine-gun mid-Ulster rattle, hasn’t commentated on games coming up to two decades. Yer man is pulling a fast one.
Everyone wanted in.
You’d wonder what the poor oul’ shower across the Irish Sea made of it all if they happened to flick over from Last of the Summer Wine or Songs of Praise or whatever it is they do between cutting the lawn with nail scissors and rolling cheese rolls down steep banks.
The BBC coverage can be somewhat grating for those already familiar with the games, but it could be a hard enough sell to propose to the Tarquins over in White City that this amateur sport is deserving of the eyeballs of Great Britain, even in a time of Netflix.
If they invested, then they couldn’t fail to have been rewarded.
Mayo, All-Ireland football champions.
It’s the greatest story ever told.
**
Check out the latest episode of The 42′s GAA Weekly podcast here
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At last GAA Mayo SAM GOING WEST Sam Maguire