THE question Mayo fans are asking is: ‘What will we do if we win?’ It’ll be a nice problem for them to have because they know all about disappointment. How many times have they walked out of Croke Park thinking of what might have been? Dropped balls, own goals, red cards, missed chances… They have been through it all and discussed it all on long journeys back west.
So what will they do if they beat Tyrone tomorrow?
Tom Byrne doesn’t know but he does know what it’s like to win an All-Ireland final at Croke Park.
The Mayo minors were trailing Dublin by five points in the 1978 decider when they threw on the young colossus from Kiltimagh and, in a flash, he stuck the ball in the back of the Dublin net.
Another Byrne major followed and the Mayo youngsters won by five at the finish. That game, 43 years ago, remains one of the county’s most famous wins at Headquarters.
Byrne progressed to the senior squad in 1980 and won a Connacht title in 1985. Dublin denied the westerners’ in the semi-final that followed (it went to a replay). Two years’ later, Mayo returned to the Connacht final but Galway won the day and on the Monday, Byrne was on his way.
He explains: “After the match Frank Broderick, who I was marking that day, came into the dressingroom and says: ‘I need a few players to go out to Chicago for the summer’.
“I rang the Guards in Roscommon and told them I wanted a six-week break. They said: ‘Grand’ and I took off the next day from Shannon. The rest is history.”
The six weeks turned into 20 years. During his time in ‘The Windy City’ Byrne worked in construction and the former Garda Siochana officer turned down a few offers to join the Chicago PD.
“They weren’t all big men like they were in Ireland – you had to be over 5’9” to be a Guard – so I thought: ‘Jesus, I’ll be the biggest target – I’ll definitely get shot! So I stuck to the construction.”
He watched the big GAA games in the south side of Chicago in Gaelic Park with a host of Irish diaspora that included many from the west. Former Armagh players like Kieran McNally and Fran McMahon became good friends and Orchard county players Cathal O’Rourke, Damien Horisk and Ger Reid stayed with him when their turn came to spend summers in the States.
Time moved on and he returned home in 2006, the day Mayo played Dublin in the All-Ireland semi-final.
He dropped his kids with a friend and hastily made his way to Croke Park.
“Ciaran McDonald scored the winning point and I thought that was the best I had ever seen Mayo play at Croke Park,” he says.
“I could not see Mayo losing the final against Kerry but sure we didn’t play at all… We just didn’t show up.”
It has become a familiar pattern in Mayo as the team stoke-up expectation by producing their best form in semi-finals.
“Since 2006 some of the stuff that has happened to us… You just couldn’t make it up,” says Tom.
“There’s no explanation for it and you’d be bitterly disappointed. My wife is American and she stays out of my way for two or three days after we get beat! But we’re fierce resilient in Mayo and we keep coming back.”
They showed that resilience against Dublin last month when James Horan’s men were written off at half-time and came back to win an extra-time thriller. Another brilliant semi-final performance, or at last the form needed to capture the Sam Maguire?
“I look at the match-ups and our midfield against their midfield and our forwards against their backs… I cannot see us getting beat. If we play to our potential, if we play at our best, we won’t be beaten,” says Byrne.
“We’ve had so much disappointment over the years and people around here are saying: ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do if we win! How are we supposed to react?’ I tell them: ‘Look, we’ll react when it happens.”
IT turns out that Mayo’s last All-Ireland win in 1951 would not have been possible without a pair of boots from Armagh which belonged to Orchard county footballer Gerry Murphy.
Gerry was goalkeeper in the Armagh minor side that beat Kerry at Croke Park in the curtainraiser to Mayo’s senior final against Meath.
“We thought that game against Kerry was the All-Ireland final but Croke Park decided to change everything (Fermanagh lodged an objection relating to a Cavan player in an earlier round) and made us play the Ulster final all over again,” said Keady native Gerry who will be 88 this year.
“After we beat Kerry a fella came into our dressingroom and said: ‘Would any of you lend me a pair of size eight boots?’ I said: ‘Yeah, here you are’ and it was either Sean Mulderrig or Mick Flanagan.”
Why he didn’t have his own boots with him remains a mystery but the grateful Mayo player posted the footwear back to Gerry after the final and he wore them in the 1953 senior decider which Armagh lost narrowly against Kerry.
Former baker Gerry will of course be watching tomorrow as Mayo seek to win their first Sam Maguire since he lent the westerners his boots.
“The form team is Mayo,” he said.
“They beat Dublin and that took a big effort.”
CROAGH Park loomed large in the haze of a sultry September evening when I met Mayo football devotee Chris Duffy at Mick Molloy’s in Westport.
Chris, from Ballintubber, has been to every All-Ireland final since 1997 (apart from last year of course) and, like the rest of football-mad Mayo, he has his fingers crossed that the long wait for a Sam Maguire will come to an end tomorrow.
“We’ve been there so many times and we’ve tried everything so I don’t think any superstition works,” he said.
“We need a 70-minute performance on Saturday and hopefully we’ll come out on the right side of it. I think it’ll be dogged and hard, I don’t see anyone has hot favourites but hopefully we’ll have enough.
“We’re tentative even though it’s not Kerry or Dublin and we’ve beaten Tyrone every time in the Championship since 1989 apart from 2008.”
Amazingly, Mayo have been able to cope without the loss of his ‘Tubber clubmate Cillian O’Connor and Chris admits it would “nearly break my heart to see us win it without him”. Nearly.
“I don’t think there’ll be a bigger cheerleader on Saturday than Cillian but it will be a huge thing for him to miss out,” he said.
“We’ve won five county titles in Ballintubber and we wouldn’t have won any of them without Cillian. I feel for him but if we get over the line on Saturday I know he’ll be delighted.”
