Have Mayo missed their chance? No, they haven’t
ALL- IRELAND final week brings out flags in every county as families nail their colours to the mast.
This time the mast is outside their very own front doors. Kildare in particular has Mayo blood running right through the county, as every second house seems to have the green and red flying high.
You might ask why that is so. The simple explanation I was given by my father- in- law Pat Cosgrove, who hails from Mount Jubilee, Geesala in the county of Mayo, was that in 1957, a number of families moved to various parts of Kildare under the Land Commission. Pat’s family travelled east to Staplestown, which is the parish I live in.
Pat tells me that the Land Commission was on offer to families throughout Connacht and indeed the entire country, to avail of better farming land in other counties. So families like the Cosgroves, back in 1957, moved to better land and I suppose maybe better opportunities for their families.
My own parents hailed from Limerick and Kerry and it was Bord na Móna that attracted their families to the midlands around the 1950s.
So, when you take both the Land Commission and Bord na Mona into account it’s not surprising that during All- Ireland final week you will see a scatter of flags from the competing counties whether its football or hurling. You don’t forget where you came from and this week, families show off their true colours, and rightly so.
This week it was the turn of the red and green of Mayo and the sky blue of Dublin to have their flags flying high. In Kildare and especially in my area, Mayo certainly won this battle of who was flying the most flags.
On the field of play Mayo certainly won most of the battles around the field but unfortunately didn’t win the war yet. I felt their tackling was immense as well as their workrate. Usually when you nail these two key ingredients you come up with a victory.
However, the one other key ingredi- ent that Mayo were missing was luck. As players and management you have absolutely no control over this.
We will probably never see two own goals in our lifetimes again in an All- Ireland football final. This was the piece of fortune that Dublin got on Sunday and that keeps them alive for the next day. In contrast Mayo got no luck, because if they did, they would have run out winners by five or six points. Mayo were the better team by far on Sunday but unfortunately this counts for nothing when they meet again in two weeks’ time.
Have they missed their chance? The answer is no, because they still have another bite at the cherry in two weeks’ time. What we all have to remember is that the next game will be completely different, full stop.
In my opinion Dublin should learn a hell of a lot more than Mayo and this will possibly sway it for the Dubs to retain the All- Ireland for 2016.
To finish off, I never thought I would compliment the three musketeers in their balanced view of the game on Sunday. In fairness, I have been critical of Brolly, O’Rourke, and Spillane in the past for having agendas against different managers and teams. And there is no doubt about that when you think about what they have said about Tyrone and Seán Cavanagh and Kieran McGeeney.
However, this time, they had no agenda and nailed everything. So, give credit where credit is due, ye played well on Sunday. But in fairness, ye were due a good game at some stage.