Ah – the things you do for love. Myself and my Tuam-ian fiancée met just one month out from the All-Ireland final in 2016. To be exact, it was the night before Mayo’s All-Ireland semi-final clash with Tipperary. On the weekend of the final she came to Dublin and met my sister for the very first time and, while she […]
I recently proposed to my long-term girlfriend and long-suffering Galway GAA fanatic (2017 aside). Unlike Mayo of the last decade, she didn’t leave me sweating and with my heart in my mouth and said yes after repeating thrice “you’re messing…is this serious?” No, I’m just on one knee for the good of my health. You would think that that moment […]
Seated between one of my best friends (and by complete fluke) the priest who baptised me, I watched as a scene I have seen several times before in Croke Park play out in front of me. If I wasn’t going to hell before this, the amount of effs and blinding at missed chances I let out beside the man of […]
Not one day goes by where I don’t think about Mayo winning the All-Ireland in some shape or fashion – no joke. It might be when I’m driving, it might be when I’m running/walking depending what sort of state of fitness I’m in. Sometimes it happens when a ball is in my hand but most of the time it’s when […]
I love my songs about Mayo and this time of year, if the Lord spares us, the demand for them in my music library increases tenfold. Famous singer/songwriter and long-time pal of The Saw Doctors, Padraig Stevens, has a song called ‘Up Mayo’. The starting lyrics of it go: “In ainm an Athair, aon athair De, something is starting in […]
It’s good to be back. Back writing for the blog. Back in a Connacht Final. Back against Galway. Back in Croke Park. The last one might tickle some people up the wrong way and in any other circumstance I’d be up in arms too but, for one year, we’ll take the road trip and loss of home advantage. In truth, […]
I remember the first time I witnessed Cillian O’Connor in action, I was maybe six or seven and Ballintubber school were facing Killawalla, my school, in a Cumann Na mBunscoil game on our hallowed turf. That team was full of what would become future well-known Ballintubber stars but Cillian stood out a mile. One of the teachers in our school, […]
You could wax lyrical about what the rivalry between Mayo and Galway is and I have done this in the past for this blog. But nothing sums it up better than what I was told in a pub in Liverpool at the start of this year, when the next game on the horizon was a crucial League relegation battle for […]
It’s been a while since I put pen to paper for this blog. April to be precise. David Brady’s Laochra Gael had just aired and we faced into an indefinite number of months without sport. It was a tough slog, we kept ourselves entertained with 5km challenges, zoom quizzes and reruns of Reeling in The Years and Love/Hate. My housemate […]
I don’t know about you, but David Brady’s Laochra Gael was the only thing that got me through yet another working week of what we now consider normal – operating from the kitchen table and practically seeing nobody except your housemate and the shopkeeper, if you’re lucky. Every couple of months, on a hungover day or a programme binge to […]