FOR YEARS they wondered. What would it be like? When that whistle sounded and the game was one day called to a conclusion, and when a Mayo team were leading in an All-Ireland final, what would it be like?
It was a question that nurtured a thousand drives through the Mayo heartlands on Sunday mornings down the years, Croke Park beckoning and the wish germinating.
Maybe, just maybe.
And that question dissolved on those Sundays, made redundant by defeats that were by turns embarrassing and heartbreaking. The road home felt longer, the night creeping in and the image of a Mayoman on the steps of the Hogan Stand disappearing into the fug of a familiar disappointment.
And then it happened.
Jack Coyne, a schoolteacher from Ballyhaunis, stood on the podium and was handed the Sam Maguire Cup by the president of the GAA.
Jack Coyne lifts the Sam Maguire Cup
He took a hold of the cup, and he held it above his head, and 75 years of hurt vanished into the grey north Dublin sky.
This is what it was like.
There were streamers, there were roars, and there were tears, so many tears.
There were hugs with strangers and hugs with loved ones. And in the ground and in front of a million TV screens and mobile devices at points far beyond Croke Park and Crossmolina, the people of Mayo saw their team win the All-Ireland.
It will take days for the sensation to be fully absorbed, but it could take years and it wouldn’t matter.
Coyne’s speech was terrific, meeting the magnitude of the occasion. He acknowledged the efforts of those who went before him, and those not alive to enjoy this day.
He was gracious and jubilant, a delightful mix on a truly extraordinary day.
The story on which the legend is built revolves around a ferocious physical effort. The Mayo press unsettled Kerry in the first half, but we presumed it couldn’t last.
And there was a brief period in the second half when it looked like old ghosts would come screeching through Croke Park once more, taunting Mayo with the memory of past failures.
Jack Carney hit a brilliant two-pointer in the 45th minute to put them five points in front, and by then even the most cautious supporter would have realised that this was on. Then they didn’t score for 10 minutes, kicking four wides and allowing Kerry to close the margin to a point.
And then they rallied again, summoning energy to dominate the final quarter and out-score Kerry by five points to three.
Some judicious substitutions helped, but this was a win led by starters, and especially the outstanding Ryan O’Donoghue.
This was a win led by players like the outstanding Ryan O’Donoghue
He finished the game with 0-5, but the numbers can’t describe the intensity of his performance. He led that merciless press that didn’t give Kerry a second’s peace in possession.
His tackling was brilliant but so was the quality of his ball-carrying. There was no better example than him taking a pass inside his own half and then beating three defenders before playing in David McBrien, whose first-time flick to Darragh Beirne allowed the teenager to finish splendidly high into the Kerry net.
O’Donoghue is a shoo-in for footballer of the year, and this will go down as one of the enduring performances in an All-Ireland final.
He didn’t put Mayo on his back, though, because there were others who carried the load.
Jordan Flynn was off target with a two-point attempt in the first half, and then he miscued off his left in the second. Both incidents stand out because otherwise he barely put a foot wrong.
Mayo footballers have been slurred for years about their lack of bottle, as if mental weakness was passed through generations of a particular county like some gothic curse.
It was always a lazy jibe, but it was also an easy taunt.
That was dispelled yesterday, too, thanks to the work of O’Donoghue, Flynn and Enda Hession, who was outstanding as well.
Beirne and Kobe McDonald were the story of the build-up, the teenagers firing the unlikeliest dream. This, remember, is a team who were battered by 10 points by Roscommon in the Connacht Championship three months ago.
Jordan Flynn and Kobe McDonald, who dominated the match build-up
McDonald was one of the few figures to stand up that day, but a side reliant on an 18-year-old Championship debutant did not look destined for a long summer.
Beirne didn’t play that day at all, but Andy Moran’s rehabilitation work trusted in youth but also in the style that he had been trying to introduce during the league.
Moranball was the shorthand for a game-plan that essentially boils down to every player winning their personal duel.
There is no comfort in the collective here. And Beirne and McDonald thrived, albeit to differing degrees yesterday.
Where Beirne was ice-cold and a constant menace, McDonald’s game was more mixed. He tried an ill-advised two-pointer in the first half, and he made some rushed decisions in the second, but he also scored a tremendous point in the second period and was a vital outlet late on too.
There was a third teenager starting, with Eoin McGreal tagging Paudie Clifford to excellent effect for the first 35 minutes. Clifford wouldn’t be contained, though, and by the time McGreal departed, having given everything, the threat from Kerry was pulsing heavily.
And it was withstood. David Clifford, on another afternoon of routine brilliance, kicked a two-pointer in the 65th minute, with Paudie landing a single two minutes later.
The gap was down to two and the Mayo support felt the creep of a familiar dread.
Then Mayo countered and in the 70th minute Tommy Conroy got the last point of the match.
Kerry’s Sean O’Shea and David Clifford
It put three between the teams and it removed all doubt.
The game was won.
The whistle sounded and all those fantasies of what it could be like were surrendered.
There was no need for dreaming. The dream was now real.
It was a little before 7pm, with all the post-match media done, when the Mayo squad and backroom team came out on to the Croke Park pitch.
The stands were empty, save for greedy gulls picking off what had been discarded during the day.
Ground staff were dutifully picking up the golden streamers released when Jack Coyne lifted the cup, and they were stuffing them into bin-liners.
And the players all stood, lined up like they would for a pre-match picture, and the photographers knelt before them and captured an image that will remain imperishable for as long as football is played and loved in Mayo.
The lives of these players will be pushed and pulled in jubilant bedlam for weeks to come, but for those few minutes, they stood as one, the men that made the dream real.
That is what it was like.
