Brendan Hoban: A glorious festival of joy, pride and gratitude

Western People 4.8.2026

Here’s a question about the recent experience of Mayo as All-Ireland Champions. How can we explain the enormous, frustrating and compelling (even inexplicable) experience of the present outpouring of emotion that is almost swamping our ability to dissect the varied elements of the phenomenon we have for years casually referred to as the mystery of ‘Sam’s’ reluctance to visit us for up to 75 years?
The phenomenon of ‘ Sam’, as the Sam Maguire trophy became known, taking us by storm, representing the Holy Grail of Gaelic footballing success for the counties of Ireland, has now achieved such mythical  proportions in Mayo that its recent arrival within a week or so ago has radically transformed our image of ourselves and what our footballing future might now entail. 
It’s easy to understand our sense of relief that we seem to have been able to put behind us the long debilitating nightmare of defeat after defeat in a series of All-Ireland finals. 

That the frustrating history of the greatest team not to win an All-Ireland no longer hangs over us as a wet blanket determining an almost inevitable dismal future for Mayo football. 

That politicians like Joe Biden can in retrospect claim credit for previous specious remarks predicting that a claim to use what has become the standard shorthand formula that ‘Sam would be returning next year to Ireland’ carried some weight because he assured us that he ‘really meant it’. 

That a devastating period of three-quarters of a century of an almost established tradition of defeat could be overturned by the completely unexpected transformation, indeed miracle, that a new manager and a young team somehow managed to extract in a matter of a few weeks from such unimpressive levels as that reached in the embarrassing dissection of Mayo ambitions as the defeat, indeed humiliation, represented by Roscommon a few months earlier. And not least that the nonsense of a curse can at last be put to bed. 

And yet here we are transforming, it could be argued, an experience of the promise delivered by a few games in a few weeks into a secure future for expected even presumed All-Ireland victories. And drawing possibly extravagant conclusions from the present hype surrounding the fortuitous though totally unexpected and ambivalent space we now inhabit. Is it any wonder that we are struggling to understand what has happened and what it means?

And after so much frustration and pain attending the narrative of Mayo’s recent footballing history – not just historically but socially, sportingly and almost on any and every other available metric – that we are now desperately plumbing the depths to explain what has actually happened and more to the point what it means. 
There’s no questioning the level of emotion that this All Ireland victory has unleashed even though what it means is difficult to fathom. 
When a hoarse Marty Morrissey, now the official voice of the GAA, struggled to put words on what appeared to be – in the dying seconds of what has already being feted as the greatest All-Ireland final of all time – a Mayo victory with Kobe McDonald transferring the ball to Tommy Conroy who had astutely placed himself in pole position for another score and a definitive victory, Marty found the unforgettable words that gave substance to the enormity of the event. Effectively, that the game would be remembered and discussed by future generations parsing and analyzing its implications. 
What we didn’t realise was how difficult it would be to understand what it meant and to put words on what was happening.

There was no denying the extraordinary release of emotion when the buzzer went off. The instinctively animated almost hysterical reaction of the Mayo players – like young calves beside themselves with joy being released into a green field – became a template for joy and for tears spreading like a wave through the stands of Croke Park and extending through to (it seems) many of the one million-plus television audiences in homes and pubs and gatherings around Ireland and our extended world-wide diaspora. There was no doubting this overwhelming truth. We wept tears of utter joy and unrestrained delight.

The reasons for the emotion can be listed but the intensity and unrestricted nature of its application was stunning. The Kerry team, officials and supporters remained in place to honour Mayo’s achievement, a profound and moving tribute by a proud footballing county. Complete strangers embraced one another. Family members with tears in their eyes sought each other out across the stands to remember deceased fathers who had brought them as children on the bars of bicycles to county matches, and the indelible memories cherished of the life-long gift for which that they felt impelled to register their gratitude. Families at home remembered family members for whom Gaelic football was a central focus of their lives and love. Croke Park and the events that followed became a family fest of joy and pride and gratitude.

The Croke Park experience with those present enjoying a close-up, immediate witnessing of the unfolding of a dream was predictable but nobody, I suspect, imagined that it would transfer so smoothly in the following days to Castlebar, Ballyhaunis, Ballina, Crossmolina, Belmullet, Claremorris, Charlestown and Ballaghaderreen where thousands and thousands of people filled the roads and streets to witness with unrestrained emotion to the Sam Maguire being carried by Mayo players designated to formally carry that iconic trophy into their native parishes. And later to those who attended the open-top bus tour of Breaffy, Ballintubber, Ballinrobe, the Neale, Kilmaine, Garrymore, Ballindine, Hollymount, Balla and Kilmeena and hopefully too in the future to other parishes, like my native Ballycastle. 

I don’t hesitate to encourage representatives of the present Mayo team to include a future visit to my native parish which still basks in the reflected glory of Tom Langan, who starred at full forward on the Mayo All-Ireland winning teams of 1950 and 1951 – and who famously was designated as the greatest full-forward of all time by his inclusion in the  GAA Football Team of the Millennium in 1999 by a panel of former GAA presidents and sports journalists to honour the greatest Gaelic footballers from the foundation of the GAA in 1884 up to the year 2000.

It’s a Mayo thing to be faithful to the different faiths of our fathers – and of our mothers.