Mayo’s curse: can they beat 66-year jinx?
In today’s All-Ireland final, the Gaelic footballers from the west are hoping for their first title since 1951
On Sept 23 1951, on their way back from winning the All-Ireland final in Dublin, the Gaelic footballers of County Mayo ran into a little local difficulty. Doctors and lawyers, policemen and farmers plus a parish priest, they had just lifted the Sam Maguire Cup for the second successive year. On the triumphant 145-mile return to Castlebar, so the story goes, much drink was taken on the team bus. And as it passed through the village of Foxford, it happened upon a funeral cortege on the main street. The bus failed to slow; the celebrations remained raucous; the mourners were obliged to take evasive action.
So incensed was the presiding priest by the half-cut footballers’ lack of respect, he issued a chilling ultimatum: if that’s the way this team behave in victory, then Mayo would never win another All-Ireland so long as any of their members were still alive.
The subsequent inexplicable ill-fortune to afflict Mayo suggests this was some curse. In 1989, they reached the All-Ireland for the first time since their 1951 triumph. They lost to Cork. In 1996, a freak point by Meath at the end of the final forced a replay, in which Mayo conceded another late score to lose once more. Kerry beat them narrowly in 1997, before hammering them by eight points in 2004 and 13 in 2006.
Mayo got themselves back to the All-Ireland in 2012. By now, even as the number of surviving victors dwindled, the curse was strengthening its grip on the collective mind.
On the final’s eve, then Taoiseach Enda Kenny, a lifelong Mayo fan, went to Rome to seek assistance from Pope Benedict XVI. If the Pope was moved to intervene, his efforts came to nought: Mayo lost again, to Donegal.
They lost again the following year, by a single, agonising point to Dublin, about to embark on a period of astonishing supremacy.
And it was even bleaker last year when – underdogs once more – they faced red-hot favourites Dublin again, out-thought and outplayed them, and somehow leaked an unprecedented two own goals, only to claw their way back to parity and force a replay.
In front of another 80,000 at Croke Park – the national stadium and Dublin’s home ground – with tickets on the black market costing up to €5,000 a time – Dublin eased home by a single point. In extra time.
And now, here we go again. This afternoon, Mayo are back in the All-Ireland final, the greatest of all sporting occasions in Ireland, a throwback to the days when sport was amateur and rooted in the community – when women and men, young and old, fans of opposing sides mingle alongside each other.
Again, they face the might of Dublin, the Barcelona of Gaelic football, chasing three titles in a row, and odds-on to do it. And once more, they face the fickle hand of Fate.
There is, though, one thing about the Mayo Curse: it is utter hokum.
There was no funeral cortege, no curse-issuing priest: in those days, the amateurs from the rural west could not even afford to charter a bus. Paddy Prendergast, one of two surviving members of the 1951 side, bears witness: “We travelled by lorry. We stopped in Foxford, but if there was a funeral, I don’t recall it. Certainly, there was no concern about a curse. The thing is, we haven’t won the thing since. We’ll all be bloody well dead unless we win it soon.”
Such a cultural phenomenon has the Mayo Curse become that six years ago Arlene Crampsie, of the School of Geography at University College Dublin, conducted a postdoctoral research project into its origins. She interviewed everyone she could find who was there at the time.
Dr Crampsie says: “Although it was over 60 years ago, there were a lot of people still alive who were there. While none of the team I interviewed could remember the curse happening, you could put that down to embarrassment. I was more amazed that nobody who was turning out to welcome them back remembers it. They recall all sorts of minor details, but nobody noticed a funeral.”
Which is, perhaps, of no real surprise. When Dr Crampsie examined the Foxford parish records, there was no funeral that day. Nor did the parish priest have a history of issuing voodoo curses. Which leads to one question: where did the story come from?
“Nobody seems to know,” she says. “When you talk to people in Mayo, it’s a relatively recent thing. When they were in the final in 1989 or 1996 nobody even mentioned the Curse.”
One theory is that the tale was simply purloined from elsewhere. In 1932, a renowned local faith healer known as Biddy Early wanted to travel with the Clare team to the All-Ireland final. They refused. In a fit of pique, she put a curse on the team, insisting that every one of them would be dead before Clare could again win an All-Ireland. When Clare finally lifted Sam in 1995, three of that team were still around. Which somewhat undermined the jinx.
Dr Crampsie says: “My belief is once Biddy Early was broken, the curse got adapted and transferred to Mayo. Supporters buy into their teams, and there’s a need to explain why things don’t go well. Fate is always a useful catch-all excuse.”
This year, there was even a feature film made about it. An Mallacht (The Curse), currently doing the rounds of film festivals, is a lovely Irish language comedy-drama about a doctor who intervenes when an elderly customer in his dad’s pub has a heart attack while watching Mayo win the AllIreland semi-final. When he discovers that this is the last surviving member of the cursed team, the film’s hero is thrown into an ethical dilemma: does he keep the old man alive or does he ensure the curse is broken by speeding the end of the final obstacle to victory?
Coilin O Scolai, the film’s writer and director, says: “Sport is full of curse stories. Everyone knows it’s a joke, yet we prefer supernatural explanation to fact. The truth is maybe Mayo haven’t been good enough to win the Sam. But that’s boring. Much better to blame Fate. I hope they win, though I admit it would probably be better for our film if they didn’t.”
Back in Castlebar, as he put his side through their final preparations, Stephen Rochford, the Mayo coach, preferred to talk about controlling the things he can control. The Curse, he simply ignores. “Nobody’s banned talk about the Curse, because nobody pays it any attention. Over the last 20 years, we’ve got to eight finals, so the novelty has gone. It’s a bit of craic for the media, but for us it’s a non-event.”
Instead, Rochford, a bank manager for the Allied Irish Bank, is concentrating on ensuring that his policemen, students, financial consultants, engineers, pharmaceutical industry workers and construction project managers – all amateur sportsmen – are at peak condition to take on the richest, most populous county in the Irish game. He has an experienced team, more than three-quarters of whom have been involved in the series of All-Ireland
Other great sporting hoodoos The Bambino
When hugely successful baseball outfit Boston Red Sox sold star player Babe Ruth, ‘The Bambino’, to the New York Yankees in 1919-20, they went 86 years without winning the World Series. The curse was finally lifted with victory in 2004.
The secession
years earlier – walked off the podium after coming third. They have not got back there since, with a curse said to last for 95 years.
The jealous boss
When Bela Guttmann was fired after asking Benfica for a pay rise following his second European Cup in 1962 he vowed: “Not in 100 years will Benfica ever be European champions.” They have appeared in eight European finals and lost them all. near-misses since 2012, including Aidan O’Shea, the talisman whose canny tactical redeployment in the semi-final enabled the side to triumph over Kerry for the first time since 1996.
Indeed, the arduous scale of this season’s campaign – after losing in the provincial championship, Mayo had to qualify via the play-offs, then had replays in the quarter- and semi-finals, so they have played nine hard matches rather than Dublin’s five – is thought by many to have hardened Mayo’s sometimes questionable resolve. Or, perhaps, tired them out.
No other Irish county has experienced emigration like Mayo, and the diaspora will be flooding in from across the globe to Dublin, convinced this time that they will witness the demise of the Curse. And in bars across the world they will be wearing the green and red of Mayo.
Paul Murphy, who is flying in from Washington DC, where he has lived for the past 15 years, says: “You meet Mayo people all over the world. I’ve got two friends from here going to the game, too. Curse or not, I bought a flight as soon as they won the semifinal. I didn’t have a ticket for the match but I figured I’d get one. And after a friend put an appeal from me in the local paper, I did. At face value, too. So maybe the luck’s changing.”
As Murphy points out, if this team were to overcome the odds, the Curse and 66 years of misfortune and win, they will become mythical figures in Mayo. This is the ultimate shot at glory, as one of only two Mayo men who know precisely what it means to win the Sam Maguire attests.
Paddy Prendergast, now in his eighties, says: “If you’re in the final you should be capable of winning it. I hope to God almighty we’re capable of winning. I would die happy. That’s all I can say.”
On the eve of the 2012 final, the Taoiseach sought help from the Pope, but Mayo still lost again