Diary of an Irish Summer: Romeo's on fire as Mayo pierce the Matrix.

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The final whistle blew and I trotted out to the back kitchen to fire up the kettle for a cup of tea. Quite suddenly, though, my breath choked on some thick, fluidy air. A wave of gentle but unexpected emotion rippled through me. There’s fair power in heartbreak at the moment of its intergenerational release.

Mayo had done it, finally.

Seconds earlier, a love dart pierced the dark matrix hanging above Croke Park, Dublin. This energetic flood burst river-banks here in North Galway and further afield before the kettle had a chance to warm the water. Food for thought that it wasn’t a sword, or a bullet, or machine-gun fire but a kind of grá and joy catapulted from the depths of never ending heartbreak that performed the magic trick. A wider lesson at play here than one grounded in football, perhaps.

In the final flowing, joyous movement of the game and with the last fisted point, Mayo discovered winning was about embracing love and not fear. After thirteen finals stretching back through the decades and with zero wins deposited into the safety deposit box, only a certain type of delusional lunatic is able to hold the crushing emotional weight involved and still soldier on smiling.

But sure that’s Mayo people for you.

Anyway, I knew there’d be little sleep in the night ahead, so threw two tea-bags into the mug, and sat down with the pen for a stroll. This torrent of invisible, gushing Mayo healing threatened to balm any who have felt heartbreak but self-medicated with a redefinition of love as mirage—as opposed to a closer examination of the organ blasted into smithereens. Mayo had done it the hard way but the lesson for all was on full display.

There was a way.

An honorable way of piecing the pieces back together and taking the multitudes with you.

All told, the tea tasted good and filled with the realised hopes and dreams of generations of old fears and tears laid properly to rest. However, if Mayo’s quest to win the Sam Maguire cup and claim All-Ireland football glory after seventy five years bore similarity to anything in this earthly realm it was to the love-story of Romeo and Juliet. Freshly scripted with a dazzling new finale.

I’ve long suspected Mayo and Sam earnestly loved each other without quite ever being able to touch down together in Knock airport. Sometimes endings are merely new beginnings draped in a temporary black veil. But, temporary can feel like forever, and then some.

One thing I’ve noticed about the Mayo football manager this year was his tactical genius in dealing with supporters and players alike. Advice that went something as follows:

Supporters feel free to go bonkers.

Mavericks feel free to be mavericks.

Athletes impersonate roving packs of mini-diggers.

Everyone else sit back, enjoy the show and try not to get the heads taken clean off your shoulders.

Now, this summer has been marked by my occasional interactions with the old television set in the kitchen. For sporting purposes only, I might add. Yesterday, I flicked it on just as Mayo marched onto the field. My eye was drawn to an oddity and great omen. Mayo were decked out in white and not their traditional green and red.

My mind was immediately drawn back to the 1982 All-Ireland final and Offaly. A match observed from pretty much the same kitchen table. On that occasion, Offaly were forced away from their natural jersey selection into something different due to the similarities it bore with the green and gold of the Kerry jersey. It didn’t do them any harm at all, at all. As Seamus Darby sank the mighty Kingdom and derailed their chase for a fifth All-Ireland win in a row with his last gasp goal.

So, the jersey omens were good. This was Mayo but not exactly the same Mayo. Romeo with a little white fire in his belly. No bad thing. Back in 2017, when I first put pen to digital paper publicly, Mayo lost that year’s All-Ireland football final to Dublin by a single score, I think. Another dramatic loss in the constant conveyor belt of soul destroying defeats of the time. I was working in a Mayo factory—seven years all told—and marvelled at the local population’s quick ability to handle defeat, get off the factory floor, and blindly support their county again in exactly the same exposed and vulnerable fashion. I don’t know how many finals they lost during this period of time but it was quite a few.

Curiously, they let pain hurt.

And wore it on their sleeves.

Even more curious, was that come spring-time they’d be signing up for more pain and exposing their hearts for all to see in blind faith. A hopelessly romantic bunch of fuckers, basically. It was around this time their quest for glory evolved into something more, an almost spiritual undertaking, I believe. In a country losing its faith here was a place doubling down on theirs. The more it hurt, the more they were sure they wanted it. I remember thinking I’d write about the day Romeo and Juliet finally walked away from secret ceremony and onto the public altar together. Or if the heartbreak outlived me, at least gift the daft writing notion to one of my two offspring in my final will and testament in lieu of a handsome property portfolio in south county Dublin.

The problem I detected in those years, though, was Romeo wasn’t for the turning in his approach to the task at hand. I was certain he was wrong but tonight I see something different.

Almost every county that’s ever broken Mayo’s heart on the football field and ran off with Juliet—over the last twenty five years in particular—in recent years have queued up to offer sage wisdom, and perhaps shortcuts, on how to overcome their heartbreak and win her hand. Almost embarrassed and ashamed to be part of the continued ill-fortune.

A ludicrous thought in hindsight.

For this hero’s journey to have its proper end it could never be about sleight of hand over hand on heart. Mayo’s quest was about generational pain and the ones who had fallen and gone before, along with the ones no longer around to see the last steps into the promised land. Only true love could succeed and heal such a fine predicament. So, insider knowledge, quietly whispered, from a host of different winning Romeos that Juliet occasionally likes to be spanked on the ass on a Friday night was only of use to the lustful and not resonant to a county starved of love. A little naivety and a certain innocence still seems to flourish amongst current Mayo players and supporters—a unifying umbilical chord echoing backwards and forwards through the Mayo ages.

After a drop of tea I treated myself to a smuggler’s run into South Mayo through the backroads for a packet cigarettes. Soon, I became mesmerised by the sight of solitary Mayo flags outside each and every homestead. Proud flags fluttering in the wind and not a person in sight. The skies were overcast and it was rather fitting that it was Mayo tears from the joyful heavens that bookmarked the end to six straight weeks of sunshine.

Mayo lost the right way in the past and so now in the present have won in a way I’ve not seen before. We’ve all felt the thrill and some of sadness’s retreat. No mean feat to pierce the matrix in this manner. To feel what it used to feel like in Ireland ten years ago, fifteen years ago, maybe seventy five years ago. That’s the power of an honest, heart wrenching quest—it reminds you that love can expand out of the darkest heartbreaks.

Until the recent past, you could talk with a certain colloquial confidence and generic truth about the population movements between Mayo and Galway. The same was true of other neighbouring counties no doubt. Huge demographic shifts have overshadowed and erased a lot of the natural and historic migration flows between different parts of Ireland.

Over the generations, North Galway was quite well infiltrated with substantial numbers of Mayo women of good stature—married into Galway men and the farming landscape for their sins. Ensuring the roving drink demons in the area were slapped away and the appearance of For Sale signs on the fertile lands were kept down to the bare minimum. So, I do like to drive these roads and fields of North Galway and South Mayo where the aroma of who and what we are still lingers in the air. And on evenings like the one just past carry an extra potent fragrance.

Mayo’s grief like many’s the love story gone sour was long and complicated and began in a time forgotten. Exactly how and when, no-one can quite be sure. But it ended, and at the end the answer seemed profound yet simple.

A seventy odd year drought was brought to serene conclusion once Romeo figured out how to set fire to his fears.

Comhghairdeas do mhuintir Mhaigh Eo.

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