Light blue jersey is a red rag to a Mayo bull

MAYO people everywhere are easily recognised this week. We are the ones that are sweating. Sweating with a mixture of expectation, hope, dread, as well as the knowledge that we will get over it, no matter what happens, writes Fr. Padraig Standún.

We have been here before. Many times. We have not been broken. We are resilient.

This could be the year, but if not, so what? Supporters will continue to support, to love their football team. There are worse things than losing a football match.

If most commentators are to be believed, Dublin are already All-Ireland champions. All they need to do is to turn up and re-accept the Sam Maguire Cup, which is theirs at the moment anyway.

Mayo are welcome to add a bit of colour to Croke Park, to applaud the victors and acclaim them as the greatest team of all time, before going home as dignified and perpetual losers.

I heard former Kerry manager Jack O’Connor proclaim before the Dublin versus Kerry All-Ireland semi-final that that match was the real All-Ireland, and many agreed with that sentiment. In other words, Mayo are wasting their time, while their supporters are wasting their money travelling to Dublin.

Just give Dublin the cup now and get it over with. Give every member of their team and substitutes All-Star awards in this historic year of 1916. Make them Freemen of Dublin. Send them off on a round the world holiday in the hope that they can wear themselves out physically and mentally before next year’s championship in order to give a chance to all the other poor eejits.

This is not, of course, the thinking of Jim Gavin and his Dublin team, but it will be difficult for them to avoid the complacency of overwhelming favouritism.

The only chink in the Dubs’ armour is that the culchies are coming to get them. Culchies are a dangerous breed. We may claim that ‘culchie’ is short for cultured, but the Dubs don’t really believe that. They tend to think savage, barbarian, wild men and women coming from mountain and bog to upset the city applecart.

Mayo is a part of the country that throws up the occasional President or Taoiseach, when in fact such august positions are really more suited to Pale city folk.

The worst trait of the culchie as far as the Dub is concerned is that they believe in curses. Curses affecting themselves since 1951, the curse of being beaten by better teams, or not closing out a game they seem to have in the bag.

The biggest curse the culchie carries works the other way. It is the curse of not being afraid of the Dubs. If I can be allowed mix my metaphors, the light blue Dublin jersey is a red rag to a Mayo bull. They will actually delight in taking on and beating the unbeatables, in upsetting the odds, in proving the west’s awake, as well as sending their supporters to psychiatrists to ask: 'How are we going to live with ourselves without the misery of losing?'

Style, Mayo, style.

 

* Fr. Padraig Standún writes a weekly column in The Connaught Telegraph