“CONGRATULATIONS ON MAYO, you must be a happy man.”
This is not a sentence you expect to hear from a Scottish voice, not least when collecting bowls of jerk chicken and rice from a food stall behind one of the stands at Somerset Cricket Ground in Bermuda.
Yet everything about this week has felt surreal, so it’s fitting my memories of one of the strangest sporting events I’ve ever experienced, some 5,000km from home, will hold the Mayo footballers as a central character.
It has been four days since Andy Moran’s men ended the long wait for Sam Maguire and a Mayo storm has hit Bermuda. We’ve watched the match in full twice, the Sunday Game once and live-streamed the homecoming. We’ve spent evenings sending each other clips and photos from back home, where friends and family have been tearing around the county trying to catch a glimpse of Sam and Moran’s men.
I’ve been fortunate to visit this wonderful place many times, with my wife’s sister and her young family well settled a short spin from Hamilton, the central hub of an island which is home to around 64,000 – not far off the estimated turnout for the homecoming in Castlebar, as one of our party highlights while we tune into events in MacHale Park.
Oddly, this is my second All-Ireland final here. The first, 10 years ago, was a more straightforward affair, heavily outnumbered while supporting Dublin in the replay. This time around, the idea of either Dublin or Mayo reaching the final didn’t even cross our minds when booking the trip.
A few days before the match four of us flew in, joining my wife’s sister, brother-in-law and their three young kids.
John Michael (8) and Thomas (6) are World Cup-mad following the last few weeks, living in their favourite kits. Stickers are still being collected and there are hand-drawn portraits of Lamine Yamal stuck to the walls. When I come down wearing a Curaçao jersey, John Michael only needs a moment before informing me they lost 7-1 to Germany in the group stages. The first questions I’m asked on arrival are if I can do the ‘Maradona 7’ or the rainbow flick. Soccer is second only to baseball in this house.
For one week, that will change.
The final throws-in at 11.30am Bermuda time on Sunday morning. The living room is decked out in homemade bunting, the fridge readying bottles of champagne we hope to pop later in the day. We collect green and red cupcakes for the half-time feast, which will prove the main event for Henry (3). He’s in his kit from last year, while John Michael has avoided disaster, receiving what must have been the last kids Mayo jersey left in Dublin after stretching out of his old one.
The following hour and a half is full of fear, noise, elation, more fear and then, nervous quiet. With no real skin in the game I find my heart pumping. My own soft spot for Mayo first formed as a 16-year-old, sitting a few rows back from Ciarán McDonald hitting that sideline score against Dublin in Croke Park. Even in my devastation, I’d try to replicate the ‘McDonald point’ with my own, notably less cultured left foot.
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Ciarán McDonald celebrates a point against Dublin in the 2006 semi-final. Morgan Treacy / INPHO
Morgan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO
Full-time arrives and the house explodes. Phone calls are made, texts fly in, lost loved ones are remembered. Some leave the room. The boys get a quick FaceTime with their dad, watching on from a hotel bar in Budapest on a work trip. Within what feels like seconds after the final whistle Jack Coyne is delivering the opening lines of one of the great All-Ireland speeches. Everyone is asking the same thing, ‘Did you ever think you’d see the day?’
We swap our shirts for swim shorts and hit the pool. As the suncream dries, Thomas picks up an O’Neills and runs at me in the garden, warning: ‘It’s Ryan O’Donoghue!’ The Belmullet man bags a hatful on our makeshift Croke Park before we dive into the water.
The same songs are played on repeat, ‘The Green and Red of Mayo’ and ‘To Win Just Once’ getting regular spins alongside blasts of Christy Moore, the Cranberries, Mayo’s own Oasis and too many versions of ‘Lady of Knock’ to mention.
All the while, I have my eye on my own sporting day out. On our first night a bartender at Bermuda’s sole dive bar informed me that not going to Cup Match would be like visiting New Orleans and missing Mardi Gras. Sold.
Former West Ham striker Clyde ‘Bunny’ Best is the most prominent sporting figure on the island, but nothing is bigger than Cup Match. The annual cricket game pits the west island team of Somerset against the east island representatives, St George’s, the focal point of a two-day holiday which shuts down most of Bermuda leading into a four-day weekend.
A mural outside the stadium.
In the days ahead of the game DJs set up on Hamilton’s front street as shops are taken over with Cup Match merchandise and sponsors hand out free team-themed donuts and snowcones. People use “happy Cup Match” the way we would “happy Christmas.” The supermarkets are wedged with shoppers who know nobody around here is getting anything done across the back-end of the week, creating the closest thing I’ve ever seen to rush-hour traffic along the short run of road leading back out to the Parishes.
On Thursday morning I rope a reluctant brother-in-law along and we head west for the shared experience of our first live cricket game. It’s a wild, chaotic assault of the senses, fuelled by rum and seafood grills. It’s a world away from any sporting event I’ve attended and yet by the time we exit the madness to head home, we’ve watched feck-all cricket and are growing weary of being asked about Mayo.
Hours earlier we joined the snaking queue along Bat N’Ball Lane, a line which barely moves across the near two hours it takes us to make it inside. The delay is put down to safety checks on the battered scaffolding which serve as the stands, enforced by the moderate breeze sweeping in off the sea. We’re a long way from Jones Road.
The queue at Bat N'Ball Lane.
As a part-time St George’s resident, I’ve worn my Dublin jersey to match the blue and navy team colours. Conor is wearing his Mayo hat purely for the week that’s in it.
Within 20 minutes of making it inside we have our first Mayo exchange of the day. Moments later, an Englishman who has ignored the warnings to pace yourself sees our GAA identifiers as an invitation to join us at the bar. An elderly man stutters up to show us that his cousin is playing today. Later in the afternoon, people from Kerry, Galway and Dublin will call us over to chat Mayo. We’ll explain the significance to curious Bermudians who have never heard of Gaelic football and Bermudians eager to reveal the history of their Irish-leaning surnames. After all, today is Emancipation Day.
Taking in the match from one of the makeshift bars.
The event is like Gianni Infantino’s worst nightmare made real. Flags and souvenirs are available for free from large buckets. There is nothing to stop you moving from the lower, worn concrete blocks to third floor prime seats (a camping chair on a wooden plank) if welcomed in by the owners. Gates open at 6am, some seven hours before the first ball is bowled. Gallons of Rum Swizzle, the island’s signature drink, are allowed to be brought inside in large glass jars as families tow packed coolers of food, ready to set up stall for the day. A local asks how much my jerk chicken lunch cost and laughs at the ‘silly boy’ when I tell her $25. We then lose more dollars buying a Swizzle at a surprisingly quiet main bar before realising how it all really works.
Groups set up dozens of bars in makeshift suites along the scaffolding, hosting families, friends and strangers, named things like ‘We Not Leaving Until D’Rum Done’ or ‘Boundaries & Bottles’.
The back of one of the bars in the stands.
We’re invited into one, handed a couple of cold beers, and only after asking to pay are told four dollars in the tip jar is plenty. We chat with our host about the history of the occasion and his own Cup Match history, before he reveals his experience of playing World Cup cricket for Bermuda in 2007. He gets a short GAA history lesson while we’re informed Bermudian soccer is finally on the up again.
A list of rules at the Boundaries & Bottles bar.
Passing another bar, we’re beckoned in by a lively host curious about the Mayo hat. The first offer is always a shot, but we decide it’s too early in the day, the ongoing livestream potentially incriminating when we have a family dinner hours later. He fixes us a rum concoction as reggae blasts and invites us to sit, and again, there’s no pressure as we wait for a tip jar to work its way around the shack, hearing stories of the island’s slave history.
Out the back, a large tent is packed with patrons playing Crown and Anchor, a dice game which originated in the 18th century and is strongly linked with Britain’s Royal Navy. Cup Match marks one of the few occasions where gambling is legal on the island. Everyone has the winning feeling, the mood celebratory and vibrant. I find myself thinking of the scenes in Westport, Knock and Breaffy as the sun scorches my shins.
Watching on from behind the main stand.
While living the good life in paradise, every one of us has felt the pinch of regret across the week, wishing we were on Ireland’s west coast. To be so far away from home for such a seismic moment feels like the quintessential Irish sporting experience, but gifts us unique memories of our own. By the end of the week the three-year-old will be singing The Green and Red to himself as he splashes around the pool, unprompted. The older boys like to mix up the lyrics to celebrate Aghamore and Kiltimagh, the clubs of their dad and uncle.
Our penultimate evening is spent at the beach, where baseball and jumping waves prove the primary activities. Yet away from the adults there’s a moment where a football is picked up, a solo attempted, and two hands used to swing it over an imaginary tackler, ‘the Kobe McDonald’ being perfected by two young Bermudians to a backdrop of waves crashing into white sand.
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Mayo fever and Kobe's magic reaches Bermuda's biggest sporting day
“CONGRATULATIONS ON MAYO, you must be a happy man.”
This is not a sentence you expect to hear from a Scottish voice, not least when collecting bowls of jerk chicken and rice from a food stall behind one of the stands at Somerset Cricket Ground in Bermuda.
Yet everything about this week has felt surreal, so it’s fitting my memories of one of the strangest sporting events I’ve ever experienced, some 5,000km from home, will hold the Mayo footballers as a central character.
It has been four days since Andy Moran’s men ended the long wait for Sam Maguire and a Mayo storm has hit Bermuda. We’ve watched the match in full twice, the Sunday Game once and live-streamed the homecoming. We’ve spent evenings sending each other clips and photos from back home, where friends and family have been tearing around the county trying to catch a glimpse of Sam and Moran’s men.
I’ve been fortunate to visit this wonderful place many times, with my wife’s sister and her young family well settled a short spin from Hamilton, the central hub of an island which is home to around 64,000 – not far off the estimated turnout for the homecoming in Castlebar, as one of our party highlights while we tune into events in MacHale Park.
Oddly, this is my second All-Ireland final here. The first, 10 years ago, was a more straightforward affair, heavily outnumbered while supporting Dublin in the replay. This time around, the idea of either Dublin or Mayo reaching the final didn’t even cross our minds when booking the trip.
A few days before the match four of us flew in, joining my wife’s sister, brother-in-law and their three young kids.
John Michael (8) and Thomas (6) are World Cup-mad following the last few weeks, living in their favourite kits. Stickers are still being collected and there are hand-drawn portraits of Lamine Yamal stuck to the walls. When I come down wearing a Curaçao jersey, John Michael only needs a moment before informing me they lost 7-1 to Germany in the group stages. The first questions I’m asked on arrival are if I can do the ‘Maradona 7’ or the rainbow flick. Soccer is second only to baseball in this house.
For one week, that will change.
The final throws-in at 11.30am Bermuda time on Sunday morning. The living room is decked out in homemade bunting, the fridge readying bottles of champagne we hope to pop later in the day. We collect green and red cupcakes for the half-time feast, which will prove the main event for Henry (3). He’s in his kit from last year, while John Michael has avoided disaster, receiving what must have been the last kids Mayo jersey left in Dublin after stretching out of his old one.
The following hour and a half is full of fear, noise, elation, more fear and then, nervous quiet. With no real skin in the game I find my heart pumping. My own soft spot for Mayo first formed as a 16-year-old, sitting a few rows back from Ciarán McDonald hitting that sideline score against Dublin in Croke Park. Even in my devastation, I’d try to replicate the ‘McDonald point’ with my own, notably less cultured left foot.
Full-time arrives and the house explodes. Phone calls are made, texts fly in, lost loved ones are remembered. Some leave the room. The boys get a quick FaceTime with their dad, watching on from a hotel bar in Budapest on a work trip. Within what feels like seconds after the final whistle Jack Coyne is delivering the opening lines of one of the great All-Ireland speeches. Everyone is asking the same thing, ‘Did you ever think you’d see the day?’
We swap our shirts for swim shorts and hit the pool. As the suncream dries, Thomas picks up an O’Neills and runs at me in the garden, warning: ‘It’s Ryan O’Donoghue!’ The Belmullet man bags a hatful on our makeshift Croke Park before we dive into the water.
The same songs are played on repeat, ‘The Green and Red of Mayo’ and ‘To Win Just Once’ getting regular spins alongside blasts of Christy Moore, the Cranberries, Mayo’s own Oasis and too many versions of ‘Lady of Knock’ to mention.
All the while, I have my eye on my own sporting day out. On our first night a bartender at Bermuda’s sole dive bar informed me that not going to Cup Match would be like visiting New Orleans and missing Mardi Gras. Sold.
Former West Ham striker Clyde ‘Bunny’ Best is the most prominent sporting figure on the island, but nothing is bigger than Cup Match. The annual cricket game pits the west island team of Somerset against the east island representatives, St George’s, the focal point of a two-day holiday which shuts down most of Bermuda leading into a four-day weekend.
In the days ahead of the game DJs set up on Hamilton’s front street as shops are taken over with Cup Match merchandise and sponsors hand out free team-themed donuts and snowcones. People use “happy Cup Match” the way we would “happy Christmas.” The supermarkets are wedged with shoppers who know nobody around here is getting anything done across the back-end of the week, creating the closest thing I’ve ever seen to rush-hour traffic along the short run of road leading back out to the Parishes.
On Thursday morning I rope a reluctant brother-in-law along and we head west for the shared experience of our first live cricket game. It’s a wild, chaotic assault of the senses, fuelled by rum and seafood grills. It’s a world away from any sporting event I’ve attended and yet by the time we exit the madness to head home, we’ve watched feck-all cricket and are growing weary of being asked about Mayo.
Hours earlier we joined the snaking queue along Bat N’Ball Lane, a line which barely moves across the near two hours it takes us to make it inside. The delay is put down to safety checks on the battered scaffolding which serve as the stands, enforced by the moderate breeze sweeping in off the sea. We’re a long way from Jones Road.
As a part-time St George’s resident, I’ve worn my Dublin jersey to match the blue and navy team colours. Conor is wearing his Mayo hat purely for the week that’s in it.
Within 20 minutes of making it inside we have our first Mayo exchange of the day. Moments later, an Englishman who has ignored the warnings to pace yourself sees our GAA identifiers as an invitation to join us at the bar. An elderly man stutters up to show us that his cousin is playing today. Later in the afternoon, people from Kerry, Galway and Dublin will call us over to chat Mayo. We’ll explain the significance to curious Bermudians who have never heard of Gaelic football and Bermudians eager to reveal the history of their Irish-leaning surnames. After all, today is Emancipation Day.
The event is like Gianni Infantino’s worst nightmare made real. Flags and souvenirs are available for free from large buckets. There is nothing to stop you moving from the lower, worn concrete blocks to third floor prime seats (a camping chair on a wooden plank) if welcomed in by the owners. Gates open at 6am, some seven hours before the first ball is bowled. Gallons of Rum Swizzle, the island’s signature drink, are allowed to be brought inside in large glass jars as families tow packed coolers of food, ready to set up stall for the day. A local asks how much my jerk chicken lunch cost and laughs at the ‘silly boy’ when I tell her $25. We then lose more dollars buying a Swizzle at a surprisingly quiet main bar before realising how it all really works.
Groups set up dozens of bars in makeshift suites along the scaffolding, hosting families, friends and strangers, named things like ‘We Not Leaving Until D’Rum Done’ or ‘Boundaries & Bottles’.
We’re invited into one, handed a couple of cold beers, and only after asking to pay are told four dollars in the tip jar is plenty. We chat with our host about the history of the occasion and his own Cup Match history, before he reveals his experience of playing World Cup cricket for Bermuda in 2007. He gets a short GAA history lesson while we’re informed Bermudian soccer is finally on the up again.
Passing another bar, we’re beckoned in by a lively host curious about the Mayo hat. The first offer is always a shot, but we decide it’s too early in the day, the ongoing livestream potentially incriminating when we have a family dinner hours later. He fixes us a rum concoction as reggae blasts and invites us to sit, and again, there’s no pressure as we wait for a tip jar to work its way around the shack, hearing stories of the island’s slave history.
Out the back, a large tent is packed with patrons playing Crown and Anchor, a dice game which originated in the 18th century and is strongly linked with Britain’s Royal Navy. Cup Match marks one of the few occasions where gambling is legal on the island. Everyone has the winning feeling, the mood celebratory and vibrant. I find myself thinking of the scenes in Westport, Knock and Breaffy as the sun scorches my shins.
While living the good life in paradise, every one of us has felt the pinch of regret across the week, wishing we were on Ireland’s west coast. To be so far away from home for such a seismic moment feels like the quintessential Irish sporting experience, but gifts us unique memories of our own. By the end of the week the three-year-old will be singing The Green and Red to himself as he splashes around the pool, unprompted. The older boys like to mix up the lyrics to celebrate Aghamore and Kiltimagh, the clubs of their dad and uncle.
Our penultimate evening is spent at the beach, where baseball and jumping waves prove the primary activities. Yet away from the adults there’s a moment where a football is picked up, a solo attempted, and two hands used to swing it over an imaginary tackler, ‘the Kobe McDonald’ being perfected by two young Bermudians to a backdrop of waves crashing into white sand.
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Cricket GAA Gaelic Football Mayo Up for the cup