Galway should brace itself next week for a variety of unexpected emotional responses from otherwise rational people. Grown men could burst into tears in the street, rip off their clothes and run naked through the Square; logical women might be seen muttering to themselves, staring at the skies, wondering how this thing has come to pass. Families could be torn apart from the demon drink; marriages ripped asunder as previously pleasant understandings become irreconcilable differences. In fact, one wonders if the Chamber of Commerce have made allowances for the fact that hundreds and hundreds of staff may not turn up for work, and indeed, may never be seen again, as they cast off the baggage of decades past. And this, the week after the camogie players of Galway slew all before them on the hallowed turf.
I’ve always said that if the day ever came that Mayo won the All-Ireland, that there wouldn’t be a tap of work done in Galway for months...and now this may come to pass. To be honest, nobody quite knows how Mayo people will react if we win the All-Ireland next Sunday. We do not know this because it would be a sensation to which we have been immune for a long time. I might burst into tears or just shrug my shoulders and say ' jaysus, that was a long time coming" or we might all walk stoically back to our car after the match and drive off into the sunset, secure in the knowledge that life doesn't get any better than this.
I can cope with a defeat. I’ve been there before. We’ve had the ‘last gasp’ defeat attitude which is the hardest of all; we’ve had the ‘gone in sixty seconds’ defeat in which Kerry annihilated us in two finals and we’ve had the ‘sure if we had ten minutes more’ defeat of last year, back in the day when Jimmy was winning matches.
Defeat, I can handle. They don’t produce tears anymore. Just a sort of clearing of the throat, a sort of sad folding of the scarf once back in the car. A kind of ‘the world has been righted and we’ve been put in our place sort of acceptance.” Defeat, bring it on. Give me your worst and I have the heart to face you. I’ve met you before and you haven’t broken me thus far.
But victory. That’s another thing. Because a Mayo victory could be the End of Days, the realisation of a lifetime’s ambition. It could drive us all crazy. It could produce a reaction unseen in the country because no county so ‘into their football’ and so skilled at their sport has had to wait this long for glory. We Mayos are a humble sort, the big happy heads on us full of an extra-average level of expectation and composure. We go through life just thankful for our lot, and this has been maintained by the constant sadomasochistic hidings that we get from time to time to keep us in our place. And because of that we tend to disarm people, to sneak under the radar, like sleepers, popping up in unusual places as the fella said, there’s always a fecker in a Mayo jersey. It’s like meeting a nun on a train. It’s sort of inevitable.
And so, it is not possible to enjoy the build up to Sunday’s game because I don’t know how it will leave me. Or where. Like Hangover 2, it has that creeping certainty that many of us will awake from a slumber, cocooned somewhere in a hotel room with a donkey wearing a Mayo jersey and a curious grin. Enjoy the match, the pain.
