1. I do remember when the penny dropped. Every evening in Ireland camp the next day’s itinerary would be slid under the bedroom door. The next morning we gathered for a mandatory presentation by an independent doctor who explained how concussive impacts alter a person’s brain function. There was a video that showed Rob Kearney trying to get back to his feet and into the defensive line. Delayed neural pathways had Rob stumbling about like Charlie Chaplin. We would laugh about it now if the consequences were not so frightening.
The mood in the room was far from comical. Most people remembered another piece of paper that would be slid under our doors in previous years. All it said was: “Get In The Line.”
In the Irish Times, Gordon D’Arcy discusses his fears about dementia in rugby
2. Enda Varley was someone else who was treated to a few of those steaks and who was on that minibus which Howley owned and drove. To him there were a couple of upsides to being based in Dublin.
“In Dublin you can be anonymous. Mayo is a bit like Texas – there’s basically just football and religion. Coming up to big games, people will try to stop you to talk about it, something I had zero tolerance for. In Dublin it’s easier to have a separate life to football.”
Still, there was that road, and week by week, month by month, year by year, it could take a toll.
“I’ll never forget the day before the 2012 All-Ireland final we had a light session in Cuala and getting back onto the bus I was excited at the idea that the season was nearly over. Obviously, I was looking forward to the final – ‘Alright, all the preparation and shite is done, it’s showtime now’ – but I was looking forward to the end of the season as well. We’d have been on the go 10 months by that stage.
“I’d know someone who worked with Jack McCaffrey when he was a student doctor below in Kilkenny in 2019 and Jack had been basically saying that he could see himself giving football up at the end of that year because there wasn’t the same enjoyment level from all the travel and toil. And that was just one year. And Kilkenny is only an hour and a half away. Mayo lads have to do at least two and a half hours.”
3. Preparations for this interview afforded me an insight into Houllier’s schedule. On Wednesday morning, he was in New York on business, consulting for Red Bull’s football teams, and by early evening he had arrived in Rennes, northern France, for a Leaders’ in Football conference where he wisely informed attendees that “athletes of the future need more freedoms — but need to accept greater responsibility”.
It was very generous of Houllier to agree to meet me when he did. It was planned for the Friday at 10 am but when I called him upon landing at Charles de Gaulle the afternoon before to finalise the arrangement, he suggested we convene immediately — despite the arduous journeys he’d undertaken in the previous forty-eight hours.
“I will see you in sixty minutes,” he informed me moments after I emerged from passport control. It was the second hottest day of the year in Paris. The carriages on the Metro were sweaty and the tracks below hideously dry. Services were disrupted. I arrived at my hotel seventy minutes later in a panic. As Liverpool’s manager, Houllier was a stickler for punctuality as well as appearance. I suspected that when he suggests a time — considering how valuable it is to him — he really means it.”
4. So what if we lose again on Saturday? Well, Mayo will keep going on. I was training Mayo in 1995 and we took an awful trimming against Galway. Marty Morrissey asked me: what now? And I remember saying on television: what do you think we will do? Will we give it up and try cricket or something? This is what we do.
There is no choice here. Mayo will be defined by Gaelic football for as long as the game exists. There will always be another year. Toby McWalter is a famous Mayo supporter. We had lost a final again. It was ‘04 or ‘06 and he came up to a gang of us in Citywest. It was late. We were shook. And he said: “Come on lads. Chin up. I just checked. You are all under age again next year.”
And maybe I am just steeling myself here in this column. It’s a process you go through as a Mayo supporter. You rationalise why the team probably won’t win. Then, by Friday, you have produced a counter logic and you are convinced they can do it.
Kevin McStay beautifully captures what it’s like to be a Mayo supporter in the Irish Times
