Last Sunday I sat down to watch the All Ireland football final expecting traditions to continue and that the elusive All-Ireland crown would again slip from Mayo’s fingers.
Like many others, I thought that when the pressure was on, when the temperature was high, and when the demands of the day demanded unfailing excellence, Mayo would once more fight bravely but fall short. On All-Ireland day, the heat of the crucible demands the unflinching focus of born champions. Would Mayo blink, and see the prize slip away?
But what happened next overturned all of our expectations. The men of Mayo abandoned history and masterfully overturned what had become a tradition of failure at the final stretch.
Hardened by an unfamiliar steely resolve, and a will to last – to face down the final hour and those final unforgiving minutes – Mayo took to the field to dominate it on the day when excellence and competence, and above all else, the determination to succeed, was demanded.
A tradition of failure or of winning is a hard thing to break. When a team is on such a tradition – such as the Kilkenny hurlers were in their decade of dominance – the likelihood of it ever changing seems to get less likely every time it doesn’t. Mayo’s tradition seemed to take on the certainty of fate itself.
But this was a team determined to break with fate. So on Sunday, when Mayo captain, Jack Coyne, went up the steps of the Hogan Stand and raised the Sam McGuire aloft in triumph, he did so in a stadium swept away on a sea of euphoria. Nobody had left Croke Park. Everybody was there to witness this day to the end. Eighty thousand people caught up in euphoria and elation.
At home, hundreds of thousands of people watched on television; and around the world the Irish Diaspora watched this as if they were there – because even if they had never had contact with the GAA at the parish level, they could understand from this release of joy, and from the words of Jack Coyne, exactly the sentiment and the spirit of the GAA, and how it was that this magnificent occasion relates all the way back to those tiny parishes, those clubs, and into the homes that each and every one of those Mayo men were representing.
It was seventy five years since Mayo had won an All-Ireland, and as we look back at pictures of those men that took the Sam Maguire to the westernmost county of Ireland, they are of a very different era. Sinewy, broad shouldered, wiry men. Plank-hard men, who had the look of tough working tillers and diggers, wedded to that heavy work of small farming. The man who lifted Sam on Sunday, in his acceptance speech, spoke of all the sentiment and all of the values that reflect on the lives of the men of 1951. His speech could have been from seventy five years ago, but he has the sculpted physique of the modern professional athlete.
Mayo on the field were dynamic, were fierce – were hungry and powerful. They brought something new with them on Sunday.
Mayo’s full forward Ryan O’Donoghue was immense. Unrelenting in the tackle with a dazzling energy and forcefulness all over the field, an electric pace that made him look insurmountable, and above all else a transition from force and energy when not in possession to deft feet and mercurial skill on the ball. Such a performance level is only reachable through absolute dedication and a fierce determined professional approach to how you prepare yourself.
On a stage worthy of the whole world’s witness, he put in a performance which was worthy of this occasion, and a testament to the values referenced in his player of the match acceptance speech.
He talked about the nerves he had before the match, and how he would try to prepare psychologically for the occasion. How he started back in October putting in the hours in the gym.
He has a different look about him than the men of 1951. Honed for speed and strength in the gym, he has the physique of a panther. But the words and sentiments: they’re the same. He described gruelling lonely evenings in the gym of his club back in Belmullet with the winter storms lashing at the windows.
Belmullet is home. This is a place you reach if you drive down to the very far western reaches of Mayo until you have sea on both your left and right side, and then if you still keep driving, you’ll get there. That small parish, way in the far western reaches of the most westerly county, in a scarcely populated part of Ireland, was supremely represented by Ryan O’Donoghue in a hectic and frenetic day before the entire world. And his heart is back there, and that place is what he was there in Croke Park to represent.
He acknowledged the debt and gratitude he owes, first and foremost, to his parents. And that acknowledgement then goes to the club, and then to the county. This is the sentiment of attachment that drives the GAA. It is the same sentiment that Michael Cusack spoke highly of when he founded the GAA, under the principle that it was a sporting body, for the Gaels to unite under Gaelic culture.
Whenever we talk about the GAA’s ethos I am reminded of that empathy heat map that circulated a few years ago, inspired by an interview by the US Vice President J.D. Vance. Its animating values are ties of loyalty in concentric circles; first to family, then a broadening circle out to your neighbours and your extended family; and outwards to the village and the parish; and another circle beyond that to the county. And always the loyalty is closest to home, always the affection and the affinity starts at home. The GAA is essentially still that deep-rooted and traditional organization in both its aspirations and in its structures.
This is not to say that the athletes of the GAA don’t have the type of aspiration and ambition that drives young men and women. The ambition to achieve glory at the final stage. The desire for the respect and the esteem of their peers, their neighbours, and national public. The desire to compete at the highest level, to compete against the best, and to drive themselves to be their best.
O’Donoghue’s unassuming speech reflected a consciousness of the values of the GAA, but his display on the field showed that professionalism and competence, and that unflinching demand for excellence are core to what drives him. It’s refreshing to see this in the modern world of supposedly egalitarian organizations, and egalitarian societal ideals, where competence is treated with suspicion, to be replaced with ideals of representation. That egalitarianism is always, funnily enough, connected to money. In contrast, the GAA strives for, and rewards, excellence, but is run on an amateur ethos.
The unifying force “the gel” holding the GAA together is precisely this structure: starting local — family, club, parish, county — and radiating outward. It is what makes it such a dynamic cultural organization and makes it such an attraction for marketers who want to associate with the cultural and social movement of the GAA. And it makes the marketing of the GAA such an attraction to those who want to put their ideas and social issues into the marketing around the GAA.
The GAA would always do well to resist all of these things – to avoid putting global ideas within the structures of localized organizations.
Jack Coyne’s speech on Sunday, deferred to and acknowledged the work of prior generations, and a community of the entire county. He talked about doing honour to the generations that went before him. This aspiration, and this sentiment, and this value structure of the GAA, is the thing that unites everybody and enhances our affection for this old organization. It represents the best of Ireland. Not a new Ireland, but an Ireland that’s connected to its past, to its present, and has a clear vision for its future. An Ireland conscious of its own history, with its own unique society.
The GAA starts first of all locally. Founded on the basic unit of society, the family, and its place in a locality, in a community, and the community’s place within the country.
The GAA could teach us a lot in regard to how a country should exist, for how a country should be structured, for how loyalty, governance, and national identity might be built from the ground up rather than imposed from above.
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LORCÁN MAC MATHÚNA