Football

'Don't you think we deserve one?' Mayo fan Mick dreams of Sam Maguire

This ends now? Mick Byrne outside his pub in Castlebar
This ends now? Mick Byrne outside his pub in Castlebar This ends now? Mick Byrne outside his pub in Castlebar

MICK Byrne was going through his pub with a tray of white pudding, black pudding and bacon when I arrived on Monday night (it’s one of the things he’s famous for).

“Hello me oul friend,” he says: “You’ll take a bit of puddin’…”

Of course I’d never met him before but that’s the welcome you get in Byrne’s bar in the centre of Castlebar. He is the third generation of his family to run what is the unofficial epicentre of Mayo football and, as you can imagine, he’s counting down the seconds until 5pm on Saturday.

Mick has been running a 54-seater bus to Mayo games (League and Championship and he even went to Gaelic Park a couple of years ago when his beloved county drew New York in Connacht) since 1981.

The ‘Byrne’s Babes’ bus has been to every county in Ireland except Waterford and he recalled great days throughout the country including a visit to Casement Park where he was amazed to find himself seated next to Gerry Adams.

His first Connacht final was the famous 1962 decider when Roscommon’s Aidan Brady famously broke the Galway crossbar. He has a better recollection of the 1966 final between Mayo and Galway but there wasn’t a lot for Mayo fans to shout about for almost two decades after that.

You think they’ve had it bad in the last decade? Through the 1970s Mayo rarely won a Championship game and, after they finally captured a Connacht title in 1981, Kerry ripped them apart in the All-Ireland semi-final and Mayo failed to score in the second half!

“We were the laughing schhtock of the country then,” says Mick.

It wasn’t until 1985, when Willie Joe Padden and Padraig Brogan emerged under manager John O’Mahony that Mayo emerged as a force capable of getting to semi-finals and finals. Winning them is a different matter of course.

“It’s hard to believe that since 2010 Mayo have contested 13 All-Ireland semi-finals including replays and played in eight All-Ireland finals,” says Mick before adding with a smile: “Now do we not deserve to win one?”

Of course they do but ‘deserves’ means nothing and Mick knows that.

He won’t be at the final and didn’t go to the semi-final win over Dublin because of concerns over bringing Covid-19 back to his bar (he was closed for 16 months during the pandemic) but says the “emotion was unreal” as Mayo’s second half comeback gathered unstoppable momentum.

“People left the pub at half-time that day,” says Mick.

“But Mayo people keep coming back. It’s the passion, the passion… It grew from 1989 on.”

He admits that he’d have “taken your right hand off” if he’d been offered Tyrone, not Kerry, in the final but still, there's a nervous tension in his voice and his manner. He'll have butterflies in his stomach this week.

“Some of the experts said that when the old hands like Keith Higgins and Ger Cafferkey and Donal Vaughan and these boys retired, Mayo football would go into a slumber,” he says.

“But sure we’ve gone from strength-to-strength and they’re lovely, down-to-earth fellas, Paddy Durcan is a gentleman, Aidan O’Shea is one of the nicest you’d ever meet…

“If Mayo win on Saturday it’ll be the greatest occasion of my life. It’ll be something that I’ve never seen before and from 7 on Saturday evening it’ll be electric here in Castlebar.

“There’ll be times during the match that’ll go for a bit of a walk, I get very emotional when Mayo are playing! I’ve cried my eyes out on numerous occasions but I genuinely do think that we will do it on Saturday.”

He calls to his barman as he goes back to work: “Tony, give Andy here a meejum.”

I must admit, I’d never heard of a ‘meejum’ before. Turns out it’s two-thirds of a pint of Guinness.

Cheers Mick…

THROW a stick down here and chances are you’ll hit someone with a tale to tell about Mayo football.

In a little shop in Castlebar on Monday, the elderly shopkeeper was engrossed in reading newspaper build-up to the final.

“Are yous gonna win?” I asked, as I went to pay.

“Ah, sure I don’t know. Hopefully they’ll do it – I was nine the last time they won it.”

I asked him if he was at the match in 1951.

“No, there was no such thing as tickets for young fellas then but we got a day off school the next day.”

A queue was forming behind me so I said my goodbyes and as I was leaving I thought I heard him say: “The teachers were bastards then”.

“Sorry, what did you say?” I asked.

“I said: THE TEACHERS WERE BASTARDS THEN,” he replied.

They must have been.