Come full-time, Pat Spillane (and this is a line you’d never have anticipated typing) was sending a message to Mayo by quoting Samuel Beckett. “Try again, fail again, fail better, I can’t go on, I will go on,” he said, which Beckett scholars, or those of us with access to Wikipedia, will know was a slight mutilation of his original words, making them sound a bit more like Celine Dion warbling My Heart Will Go On.
But whatever about hearts going on, they’d certainly have gone out to the players of Mayo while they watched Pádraig Hampsey triumphantly thrust the other Sam in to the Croke Park sky. There’s a chance that, at this precise moment, they were thinking of an entirely different Beckett quote: “That’s how it is on this bitch of an earth.”
Some, of course, would argue it was down to the curse again, others would say it was simply about Mayo being cursed by the inability to take their chances, that penalty miss the most cursed moment of them all.
Others might suggest that Tyrone were actually rather quite up for it themselves, fuelled by a ‘no one likes us, we don’t care’ kind of notion.
“I mean, there’ll be 31 counties supporting Mayo today,” said Seán Cavanagh, forgetting New York and London, so it was actually 33. He conceded that Mayo beating Dublin in the semi-finals had made the other 32 counties love them even more because, he alleged, “Dublin had slightly ruined the craic”.
That feeling, he revealed, was even to be found in his home place. “I spoke to a couple of Tyrone people during the week who said ‘och, it wouldn’t be so bad if Mayo were to win’ - I’m thinking, keep your mouth shut, take it easy.”
He sensed, then, that there was a nigh on consensus that it behoved Tyrone to lose to Mayo because if they didn’t it would be akin to stealing candy from a baby. At this point Pat interrupted, as Pat has a habit of doing, all the while forgetting he had a microphone so there was no need to holler.
“I’m the voice of reason here today, I’m the neutral,” he said.
“Good God,” Seán and Kevin McStay replied.
“Pat’s definitely not neutral,” said Seán.
“You can read my mind now?”
“As per usual,” Seán replied, “it’s quite easy.”
Unbowed, Pat talked about his love/hate relationship with both counties, recalling the time he was “beaten up by a woman wielding an umbrella outside the Hogan Stand”. “A Mayo lady,” he added.
(“She didn’t beat you half enough,” said Kevin).
“I remember hiding in Ger Canning’s car, under an overcoat, from a baying Mayo mob,” he recalled, Pat, by now, coming over as the Rosa Parks of GAA punditry.
Joanne Cantwell intervened lest the examples of his struggle continue until half-time. “A love/hate relationship? I think you’re half right.”
Prediction time. Kevin fancied Mayo, by a point. Seán tipped Tyrone. You could have downed us with a feather. The casting vote went to Pat. Mayo. That worried Kevin, but he kept the faith. “There’s nothing left for Mayo to do in an All-Ireland final but go on and win the bloody thing. They’ve shown us every way how to lose them.”
And then - and, admittedly, this is quite a brief synopsis of the game - Tyrone won.
“Let’s spare a thought for Mayo,” said Pat, before he proceeded to list how many All Irelands they’ve lost since 1951, as if they needed reminding. Sean was too busy beaming to pay any notice. “Talk amongst yourselves,” he said to the panel while he busied himself sharing the love with the Tyrone players on the pitch below him.
If he hadn’t been so distracted he could have pointed out that, until Sunday, Tyrone had won precisely the same number of Sams as Mayo: three. So it’s not like a behemoth of Gaelic football had mowed the minnows down. So the narrative was, perhaps, a touch Mayo friendly, to the point Tyrone might have been tempted to say ‘hello, we’re in this final too - and we’d quite like to win it, if you don’t mind.’
Not that they’ll fret about that, Sam’s heading north, and they’ll give him the warmest of welcomes having not seen him since 2008.
Mayo’s hearts, meanwhile, will be shattered all over again, but they’ll heal. And to quote Celine, they’ll go on.
