JAYSUS!!
What an amazingly exciting Gaelic Football match yesterday afternoon! Cardiac level excitement. It was do or die for the lads of Mayo (Maigh Eo) as they faced a strong side of fellas from Co Fermanagh (Fear Manach). The Mayo team has been strong for the last several years, winning their provincial championship five years in a row and even making it to the All-Ireland Championship a few times. As you know, we attended the provincial semi-final a few weeks ago and watched Mayo fall to their arch-rivals Galway. Yesterday's match was the first step in the "back door option" and Mayo needed to win or their season was over - in mid-July, for a team that's used to playing until late August, and in the case of the All-Ireland, into mid-September. It had the potential to send our lads into a long wander in the wilderness before they could prove themselves once again on the pitch (field of play).
The first half was disheartening. Our boys seemed listless and out-of-synch. Fermanagh dominated, leaping to a six point lead by the interval (half-time). Each half is 35 minutes in length and the play is non-stop. And the pitch is immense - 80 to 90 meters wide, 130 to 145 meters long. As you know (and for the Yanks who don't know), a meter is approximately 10% larger than a yard - the pitch is so much larger than an American Football field. Looks just exhausting.
As I said, the lads seemed listless in the first half, appearing to accept the possibility of defeat. Even when they had shots on goal, their attempts would fly wide. One of our group characterized their attempts in the following manner - "they couldn't hit a cow's ass with a shovel." Not wanting to embarrass this person for their use of a somewhat salty metaphor, I'll not give their name, just their initials - Marion Duffy.
Luckily, after the half, Mayo came out to score two quick points to right the ship. In Gaelic Football the wind can play a quite important role. In the first half, the lads had the wind against them; in the second half it was at their back - a significant factor, no doubt. But they sure did seem to come out with a sense of renewed mission. Unfortunately, much of the game was characterized with questionable officiating. Mayo was clearly on the receiving end of many bad calls for the majority of the match. Gaelic is very physical and it's tough to distinguish aggressive, but fair, play from play that exceeds acceptable levels of physicality. This ref had an especially hard time balancing his judgments in fairness to both teams. And he called a significant penalty with little time to go which resulted in a penalty kick for Mayo that played a large role in deciding the game. I'm more than happy to say that a penalty such as this might have been called in Mayo's favor several times during the match - but the timing of this call, and the subjectivity of the call, marred Mayo's victory just a smidge. You can see from the screen captures below that the focus of the media coverage, and the Twitter barrage that followed the match, focused mostly on this call. It's unfortunate, because Mayo showed a great deal of fortitude in their come-from-behind victory. After all, they outscored Fermanagh 13 - 2 in the second half and deserved the win. For us, it was a great and exciting afternoon. Thanks to Padraic and Marion for overcoming their unspoken skepticism about the wisdom of attending the match (all good sense and judgment would have led one to the conclusion that we would be sitting in a torrential downpour for the full duration of the match). Regardless, they knew our enthusiasm, were willing to suffer through the weather with us, and we were rewarded with a beautiful day. Thanks M and P.
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| A little pre-game patriotism - look at that gorgeous green and red Maigh Eo flag! |
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| Raucous post-match celebration on the pitch. The players stayed on the field to sign autographs for their young fans. |
A great day!