My aim in putting together this results archive is to provide an easily accessible reference point for anyone looking for Mayo’s senior NFL and championship results, year-by-year, right back to when competitive matches involving the county began.
The main references I’ve used for this exercise are The Irish Times digital archive service and the Irish Newspaper Archives, which provides online digital access to back issues of the Irish Independent and the Irish Press and a number of provincial titles, including the Western People, Mayo News, Connaught Telegraph, Ballina Herald and the Western Journal. I’ve also made use of the wonderful public resource that is the National Library, where every Irish newspaper that has ever been printed is available for perusal, free of charge and with a minimum of fuss to any member of the public that wanders into them at Kildare Street in Dublin. At the National Library, I’ve consulted microfilm back issues of the Irish Press, Western People, Connaught Telegraph and the Mayo News.
I have found The Complete Handbook of Gaelic Games (Des Donegan ed., published by DBA Publications, 2005) to be of invaluable assistance, especially for those early results which otherwise might have been lost to the mists of time. Terry Reilly’s informative and entertaining history of Mayo GAA The Green Above The Red (Western People, 1985) was similarly useful in piecing together missing bits of this particular jigsaw. The results archive appended to James Laffey’s wonderful history of the Mayo football team from 1916 to 1951, The Road to 51 (Irishtown Publications, 2011), is the primary source I’ve used for team details of the matches played during that period.
The historical results database on the GAA’s own website was also of significant help to me in triangulating the results of those fixtures that date from the early days of the Association. Sadly, for some inexplicable reason, the latest version of the GAA’s website does not have this database, which means that historical results are not available at all from this source.
In addition, I am deeply indebted to fellow GAA results collector Padraig Ferguson who has very generously given to me details of all NFL and championship matches played by Mayo, which includes match information extending as far back as 1888. I have used Padraig’s archive (in conjunction with the other sources mentioned above) to fill in details of all NFL and championship results for all years prior to 1949.
Some of the research I undertook in compiling the county’s results for the period from 1950 to 2009 was used in the preparation of the results booklet Mayo – Sixty Years of Thrills and Spills by Mick Byrne and Donal O’Donoghue and I am very grateful to Donal for his careful cross-checking of the information I’d put together as well as providing me with the results and team details from a few years in the 1950s.
For each entry I’ve collected from 1916 onwards, I have provided the match result, the date the game was played, the location and, where these details are available, the Mayo team (including subs introduced), with the scorers (and their scores). For entries from 2007 onwards, I’ve also provided a link to the relevant match report on this site. For 1915 and years prior to this, I’ve provided just the match result, the date the game was played and the location.
I’ve compiled the archive with a separate page for each year, so just click on the appropriate link at the top of the page for the year that you want. The earliest year is 1902, as this was the first year in which Mayo took part in (and won) the Connacht senior football championship.
The convention I’ve adopted in compiling this results archive is to list match results in the year in which they were played but clearly denoting to what year’s competition the game in question belonged. This is only relevant for the early years of the Association when championship campaigns lasted longer than the years to which they related.
The archive consists of senior NFL and Championship results back to when Mayo first took part in both competitions, as well as senior FBD League games (back to 2000 – this is as far as I’m going with FBD matches). Also included are U21 championship results all the way back to when that competition first began, in 1964, and minor championship results back to 1930, which was the first year the Connacht minor football championship was contested.
Thanks to the invaluable work done by blog contributor Ultair, the results archive is now fully searchable, in a variety of different ways. Depending on the filters chosen, you can search by year, opposition, competition, grade and venue, as well as by individual player name.
Happy browsing!