Supporters’ dedication embodies Mayo team’s amazing will to win
W HEN Mayo played Kerry in last month’s All-Ireland semi-finals the best way of confirming a Kerry point was to wait for the sound of silence as it was the only time Mayo fans momentarily dialled down the noise.
Their vociferous support magnified everything on the pitch to such an extent that it seemed to create a fear among Kerry players of making a mistake.
As a Kerry fan sitting in the stand, I ended up not wanting Kerry to kick the high ball into the square in the replay because of the boost Mayo would get from winning or disrupting the ball. Mayo – their team and supporters – got inside Kerry heads that day.
The influence of the 16th man can be overplayed in sport but then there’s Mayo. Andy Moran’s rising rhetoric – “We’re Mayo and we’re in this together” – is indicative of their alliance. It’s hard to figure out who’s feeding off who – is the team feeding off the fans or are the fans feeding off the team?
In no other championship has this bond been more pronounced than this summer. In their extratime qualifier wins over Derry and Cork, Mayo stuck by their team especially when it seemed like their summer was in danger of sinking.
When Paddy Durcan scored a point in extra-time against Cork to give Mayo the lead, the waves of Mayo fans jumped up and celebrated. For those of us not from Mayo, it immediately repositioned you to an onlookers’ role and stirred the sense that we were missing out.
In return, Mayo players know who they are playing for. Their support isn’t tied up in a promise to only travel for the final, they see their support, they hear it, they feel it at every game.
You would never see this Mayo team break away from the parade before it reached the Hill like Tyrone did before their semi-final with Dublin because Mayo would want to show off the support they know they have. Let’s compare that to the Kerry team who barely got as much as a murmur when they ran onto the pitch last month so outnumbered were the travelling Kerry fans. Kerry ‘tradition’ never felt more out-of-sync compared to the pulling power of Mayo.
Irish sport boasts various kinds of supporters. There are some Republic of Ireland fans who love the excuse to party at a major tournament and promote the trademark image of them as the best supporters in the world.
There’s the Red Army who followed Munster around Europe. When they won the Heineken Cup at the third attempt, it released an incredible emotional response irrespective of the fact that the competition was only 10 years old.
Mayo fans’ enduring support for their county is in a different category. We love to use hyperbole in sport but exaggeration is redundant when it comes to Mayo because the truth doesn’t need embellishment. They have played in 10 All-Ireland finals, losing eight and drawing two, since they last won the Sam Maguire in 1951. This isn’t just a modern-day tale, Mayo’s story has roots which extends through generations.
Despite the final defeats, there is a refusal to check out, in fact, it feels like they’re more vocal than ever. Maybe the making of this current Mayo support was when exmanager James Horan mentioned the sound of silence from Mayo fans in the closing stages of their 2013 final defeat to Dublin.
Not many GAA managers would have the balls to say that. But it underlines the bargain; this team depends on the strength of what its support conveys which is they’ll never stop trying to win Sam. It’s like what the former US President Bill Clinton once said about America: “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.”
Mayo and Dublin are the only counties which have taken up their full allocation of Croke Park season tickets which is around 3,800 Mayo supporters. A spokesperson from Mayo said they could easily sell another 500 such is the demand for these tickets every October and November which shows how fast the hope returns despite any heartbreaking disappointment a few months earlier.
When Rob Hennelly posted a message on social media after he was black-carded during last year’s All-Ireland final replay, he was criticised for being a “celebrity loser”. Hennelly said: “I don’t know where I’ll be in a year’s time, but I do know that I’m not going to give up. I love Mayo and this team too much to do that.”
A year has passed and here Mayo are, back in another All-Ireland final irrespective of notices of doom, of near defeats, of GPS systems in overdrive, of public swipes and selfie-harm accusations. Mayo have started to look like a team which has forgotten how to lose despite all their previous September disappointments.
That’s steel, boy. That’s never giving up. That’s the power of their example.