Is national media narrative around Mayo football finally changing?
Is the national media narrative around Mayo football finally changing for the better?
The question deserves to be asked in the aftermath of Eamonn Sweeney's tribute to Lee Keegan and Mayo football, in general, in his column in the Sunday Independent today.
He wrote: "Lee Keegan isn’t the best player never to win an All-Ireland.
"Mayo aren’t the greatest team never to win it.
"They’re both much more than that. They were Gaelic football’s Boys of Summer.
"Keegan’s retirement feels like the final falling of a curtain as a glorious show reaches the end of its run.
"But the temptation to see that show as a tragedy should be resisted.
"Mayo won’t be defined by their lack of an All-Ireland title or their best player seen as a failure. History will be kinder.
"There’s much more to sporting history than bare statistics.
"With all respect to the Cork, Donegal, Kerry and Tyrone teams which won the 2010, ’12, ’14 and ’21 All-Irelands, all of them put together didn’t make the same impact as the Mayo team which couldn’t win one.
"Mayo’s perpetual quest for a breakthrough was the best story in Irish sport.
"It charged the summers with drama. Dublin were the greatest team in the history of the game.
"Mayo played well enough to beat anyone except the greatest team in the history of the game.
"The 2017 All-Ireland final was probably the finest match in football history.
"They could have won that day. And they should have won in 2016 when a combination of freakish bad luck, the two own goals in the drawn game, and self-inflicted wounds cost them dear.
"Nothing was more fitting than Mayo being the team which finally brought Dublin’s reign to an end in 2021.
"Their loss to Tyrone in that year’s decider is the saga’s one genuinely tragic moment.
"Applying the term ‘long-suffering’ to Mayo’s fans was wrong.
"We used to marvel at their loyal insistence on turning up in huge vociferous numbers year after year.
"But Mayo fans were members of the supporting cast in the best show in town. How exciting must that have been?
"The team didn’t feel like a failure to them.
"Not only were there all those great battles with Dublin, book ended by wins in 2012 and 2021, you had the long run to the 2017 final with its replays, extra-time victories and culminating semi-final defeat of Kerry, the shock 2019 Super 8 win against Donegal, the 2016 quarter-final nail-biter against Tyrone, the gallant 14-man show against Kerry in the drawn 2014 All-Ireland semi-final and the destruction of All-Ireland champions Donegal in 2013.
"Great wins and great players who always gave great value. Keith Higgins, Colm Boyle, Andy Moran, David Clarke, Aidan O’Shea, Cillian O’Connor (the last two still there but much diminished by time.)
"And Lee Keegan, who was the greatest of them all."
Hats off to Mr. Sweeney on his assessment.