Mayo GAA Blog

Mayo GAA news, views and over a century of results

Where to now?

We are comfortable amongst our own. This blog is our blanket, our family, our haven. All our highs, our lows and doubts are ventilated and assuaged back into belief and faith. There comes a day, though, when we can look inward and forget that life outside our personal bubble goes on and maybe, just maybe, that the bus and journey […]

Under the radar

The recent success of the Mayo U21s ushered in the end of a long winter and the dawn of a promising summer. One of the contributors to the blog asked if those U21s were the first from Mayo since 1950/51 to have won two All-Ireland winners’ medals. Sometimes I am sad at the lack of connection and history we have […]

Reflections

“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words it is war minus the shooting.” So said George Orwell. So, are we serious about sport or are we sportsmen? There is a huge difference. For all Mayo’s frontline battling, […]

Knockers

Jose Mourinho fascinates me. Never a player of note, Jose started out as Bobby Robson’s translator at Barcelona. The rest is history. Like most ultra successful people, Jose has the bully’s streak. His great achievements come, often, tainted with cheapness. His treatment of the Chelsea doctor Eva Carneiro smacked of chauvinistic boorishness. His undoubted brilliance comes tainted with a price. […]

Sledging

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me”. Oh yeah? Well, let me tell you that as a child growing up, as a young man and as a tax serf in later life, words often left me completely bereft. Ireland in recent years has been convulsed with scandal after scandal. Clerical abuse, unmarried mothers hidden away, their children […]