In the spring as 1936, just as the Mayo senior footballers were preparing to win the first half of a league and championship double, the writer F Scott Fitzgerald published a series of essays in Esquire magazine titled The Crack Up. The essays gained immediate notoriety and widespread ridicule from critics, as the collection was received as a very public expression of one man’s existential crisis in progress. The Crack Up opens with the ominous declaration “Of course all life is a process of breaking down . . . ” and that introductory paragraph and the many that followed, could easily apply to any person or team, as they feel themselves fall, not quickly, but very deliberately from the lofty pedestal the world around them has placed them upon.
The critics, incidentally, were right. Fitzgerald was having a very public crisis, and since the Mayo footballers fell to Galway in Castlebar a fortnight ago, you feel the Mayo public are on the verge of a Crack Up of their very own, which would make it existential crisis #278 since September 1989. A win in Tralee this Saturday night may allay fears in the short term, but a loss will tip everyone closer to the edge. For the players, it may matter less, as they have a process, a plan to stick to and to trust in, but for the Mayo public, a win would be morphine. The only process for them is blind faith.
Regardless of what does happen in Kerry, the bond between public and team will undoubtedly survive, given the countless challenges both sides have survived together these past three decades. What is showing signs of cracking, however, is the relationship between Mayo and the country at large. Where once they were the darlings of social media — back pages and endless Montrose montages about selfless heroism in sport — now there are signs of schism, which given the origin story of this iteration of “Brand Mayo” is a tale all too predictable: first they like you, then they love you, soon they’ll hate you.
As the wicked empire of Dublin has ascended to the throne these past eight years, Mayo have emerged as the Gaelic football embodiment of all that is good. This thesis was arguably propagated more by a wishful media and idealistic public rather than anything narcissistic from Mayo, and it reached peak adulation when they were anointed as the “Greatest Irish Sports Story of the Decade” last summer. Admittedly, this coronation was little more than barstool banter, but it fed the notion that this county was the greatest hard-luck story in sport, and yet somehow had them reaping more rewards — not in silverware but in respect and hyperbole — than those who defeated them.
This zeitgeist is emblematic of the shifting sands of the relationship between Irish sports media and the consumer. Often for the better, the traditional dynamic of the Fourth Estate being the binary communicator of all we need to know is dead and gone. Now, the power lies far more with the consumer and to a large extent, they set the tone for what it popular. So it became with Mayo. They have been a great story, all humility and honour in defeat; this is something you cannot contrive. Mayo never set out to courageously lose finals — any one of their players would swap all the glorious losses for one Celtic cross — but circumstances prevail, and instead they have become the most likely subject of a sports team documentary outside of the ubiquitous Irish rugby team.
The genesis of this fascination remains the 2006 All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin, a game which has become a sort of a March on Selma moment for Mayo fans, indeed fans from everywhere other than Dublin. Were you there? What did you see? Ciarán McDonald and the kick heard around the world. In the years that followed, the misery tourism of the Mayo psyche has become hip. From the celebrities in Mayo jerseys, to the talk of bizarre own goals, to the endless waffle about “sacrifice”, as if talking about Abraham on the Mount. No mention that there was no free socks and togs for Abraham, no sponsored car for Isaac, no holiday in Mauritius for either. There is sacrifice, yes, but there are also perks, and much more than that, there is privilege. No players would argue this, they wouldn’t be there if they did.
The problem is after all the adulation, there must come a fall. In today’s economy you can be the “greatest Irish sports story” one minute, and the punchline of a cheesy online gambling advert the next. Against the narrative the very beast we created in “Brand Mayo” is biting back now, especially at any reasonably expressed opinion that in 2019 Mayo may no longer be viable contenders. Those poor Danish cartoonists who sketched the Prophet a few years back got off lightly compared to the brave hack who had the stones to question whether Colm Boyle may be past it. Hell, it turns out, hath no fury like a Mayo fan scorned. The theory that Mayo have yet to win because their star players are too busy cultivating their Instagram profiles is lazy populist logic masquerading as punditry. That said, it is not at all unreasonable to assert that some of the more battle-hardened Mayo players are road weary, and their replacements may not be ready. Expressing that view is not a slight on the player or the county, but a rather arbitrary confirmation of the aging process. Mayo fans’ defence of their team and players is admirable, but objectivity, as is always the case in affairs of the heart, is often absent.
The most realistic parties in all of this may well be James Horan and his players. They are the ones living and breathing the recent loses to Dublin and Galway. They know their bodies, and Horan is quickly getting to know the depth of the talent pool. Smart money is they are much farther from crisis than their public.
Much like Mayo, F Scott Fitzgerald suffered for his art. In The Crack Up he contended “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise”. If Mayo deserve credit for anything, it is surely this
Colin Sheridan 