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For all the think tanks out there, we don’t have a lot of quantitative research to pass on on the old hatreds at GAA.
Perhaps some college academic or data journalist will take up the challenge, embarking on a project similar to the one Emmet Malone did with Irish soccer fans earlier this year.
Poll a reasonable sample of hurling and football fans from every county and ask them who, in their hearts, they hate the most.
We don’t have it yet.
At this stage, we rely on what we might grandly call qualitative research, also known as random conversations and social media outbursts.
These would not pass in an academic setting, but this article must be written nonetheless.
Obviously, the general rule of thumb is that most fans hate the closest county as long as said county is not a complete minnow and is therefore easily ignored.
Gaelic game fans, and sports fans in general, have notable bad luck in the sense that they invariably find that the most hateful and arrogant rain on the planet lives in the neighboring county or parish. As our hate researcher would say, this happens all the time.
Some rivalries have a historical foundation, built on tough past encounters.
Others are of a slightly darker and personal origin. Trying to establish a pattern here is almost impossible. Especially since GAA fans are given to instinctive pronouncements and are capable of making six pence.
Get into a heated discussion with an opposition supporter at a game and your average fan will quickly conclude that the supporters of said team of gentlemen are, without exception, the most horrible people to ever stalk the earth.
However, if you fall into a long, polite and discursive conversation with an opposition supporter in a bar, many fans will be convinced to accept that these people are “not the worst, anyway.”
The Galway-Mayo rivalry should fall into the classic category of border disputes.
It is one of the top three major provincial rivalries in Gaelic football, alongside Kerry-Cork and Dublin-Meath.
(Ulster is a complicated picture in which no traditional ‘big two’ stand out from all the rest. Cavan was so dominant in the pre-TV era that they are still miles ahead on the honor roll. despite winning a provincial title in the last half. -century.)
The rivalry between Connacht’s two greats had been the only one that remained adequately relevant in the decade that had just ended.
The one from Munster has just returned roaring with a vengeance. Cork footballers were everyone’s favorite punching bag for a few years, but that’s already a distant memory now.
Dublin and Meath has long felt like a period piece, sadly. Back in the ’10s, Meath’s decent performances were only available to watch at Laochra Gael, where a variety of hard chews from the ’80s and’ 90s laughed indulgently over all the slaps that were thrown and the many more digs the referee got. lost.
In general, the greats of Leinster and Munster are seen as wanting nothing but ill when they escape the province.
Cork goalkeeper Ken O’Halloran once described the Kerry-Cork rivalry as the ‘Celtic and Rangers of the GAA’, presumably without the warmth.
We recall an anecdote from the 10-year RTÉ documentary ‘Galvinized’, in which Paul Galvin came to a Kerry pub at the end of the 2010 Irish final (he didn’t bother to watch the second half himself) to find a group of boys leaned against the outer wall in a pose of sullen despair.
“What happens?” I ask. “F **** n ‘Cork,” one spat in response, tilting his head into the pub where Graham Canty could be seen lifting Sam up on television in front of a row of empty stools.
This kind of petty and interprovincial grudge is accepted as the standard in the South and is replicated with Dublin and Meath.
And it probably now applies to Galway and May as well.
Except, and personal perceptions aren’t everything, it hasn’t always seemed the case.
“They were great people. You never cared to see Galway win,” May 1960 shooter Joe Corcoran told Keith Duggan on ‘House of Pain’, an impressive statement given he endured many victories in Galway.
An Irish Times columnist lamented that her Galway mother was cheering for Mayo during an all-Ireland final a while ago, demanding to know “what about the people of Galway and their affection for neighboring counties?”
I myself have sat on the Croke Park dais with two headers watching the people of Galway and Mayo leaning out loud.
Even the Saw Doctors anthem (we’re legally required to reference them in this article) hinted at the underlying genius of the relationship.
“Will Galway hit Mayo? Not if they have Willie Joe” not exactly from fan song school “You suck and you know you are.”
Like the main lights of the Irish Mezzogiorno, the two counties seemed to be linked by the traditional underdog complex of Connacht.
In the ’80s and’ 90s, the two may have been big bad oppressors when they faced Sligo and Leitrim in the west, but by the time they reached Dublin they were generally insurgents fighting through thick and thin.
But that spirit of warmth seems to have evaporated.
Galway-Mayo games these days are consumed with niggle, while social media is full of teasing and schadenfreude.
Naturally, people will tell us to be careful not to attach too much importance to Twitter, but the old question still applies. Does social media just reveal something that was there all along? Or has the medium itself propelled the rivalry to a new place?
Either way, I can’t be the only person who has repeatedly heard the chorus, both online and offline, “I used to support Galway / Mayo when they came out of Connacht. Never again …”
One Galway supporter tells us that “it’s gotten completely toxic, it used to be a big rivalry” before embarking on a lengthy soliloquy about the shortcomings of the Mayo supporters and their various offenses against good neighborliness over the years.
These, he tells me, include voting against Tony Keady in 89, raising the score against a group of young Galway boys in 2013, having too many talking heads in the media, and dressing up all the Z-list celebrities who pass by. Swinford in a May cap.
Some Mayo fans seem annoyed at Galway’s once-cool supporter’s change in attitude, but for others, the complaints go back further. A friend at the Mayo table has not forgotten the aftermath of the 1998 Irish final when a Galway fan, in the first wave of triumph, decided to mark the moment by leading the entire pub in a moving rendition of ‘Stand up if You hate Mayo ‘(sung with Joe McDonagh levels of emotion also by all accounts). There has also been a lot of talk about the provocative ‘Sam stops here’ graffiti around the border at the time.
Jim Carney, whose antennas are always prepared for any subtle change in mood down there, told Keith Duggan a while ago: “In the era of three in a row, it was a very healthy and friendly rivalry … I think a little bit of evil has crept in. ”
2013 may have been a watershed moment in the modern era. Galway football had been around nowhere for the previous half decade, usually coming out of the championship on a nice Saturday night in early July following a one-point loss in qualifying to a mid-range team.
The investigations never seemed serious enough as a consequence. The county tended to shrug off these repeated abject losses.
“Surfing uncles, modern traditional musicians, who don’t take their soccer too seriously,” was Joe Brolly’s verdict on that era of Galway soccer.
Connacht’s 2013 championship loss was a completely different kind of shakeup.
Mayo, with one of the fittest and most powerful teams ever dispatched, delivered a hideous beating. 4-16 to 0-11 was the final score. A margin of 17 points, in Galway. It was all terribly public. At least all of those one-point losses in the rankings in previous years had been eliminated in two-minute reports at the end of The Sunday Game. This match, however, was live on television.
Second captains Ciaran Murphy best captured the sad mood in Galway when he tweeted, “Today was tough, but we are a county still capable of greatness,” accompanied by a poignant close-up of a box of Supermac snacks.
This was Galway’s lowest point, as low as the early 90s, when beating Leitrim often turned out to be a step too far.
But in the darkness came a defiant roar. It came in text form to Des Cahill on The Sunday Game, and where better to utter a battle cry?
“Today was a bad day for Galway, but remember my words, Galway will win an All-Ireland before May.”
At the time, this seemed like a fanciful analysis of public talk. Now? Who the hell knows?
The brown people resolved that Mayo would never embarrass them like that again (well, for a while anyway) and within a few years they were regularly beaten up.
The games between 2015 and 2019 were narco affairs and resentment levels increased both on and off the field. Cillian O’Connor and Damien Comer quickly became black beasts for rival supporters.
It could be pointed out that the fact that the two counties appear to play each other at a rate of about once every fifteen days cannot help improve the situation.
On the Mayo News GAA podcast a couple of years ago, the consensus was that Galway hated Mayo more than Mayo hated Galway and this gave Galway a major advantage.
In the wake of another league loss to the Tribesmen in 2018, Mayo podcasters wondered aloud what was going on, plaintively posing the opposite of the question the Black Eyed Peas once asked: “Where’s the hate?”
Recent evidence suggests that Mayo has caught up on the risks of hate. They finally ended their drought in last year’s knockout game in Limerick and took Galway with delight in last month’s league game.
In spring league games, Galway’s forwards got back to having fun like 1998. Since the restart, they let a video clip slip while they performed a hand pass drill with Jim McGuinness, and they sent Mayo a hideous beating ( of 2013 proportions) and suffered another defeat against Dublin.
As far as Mayo fans go, Galway is diving at the right time and they now see a clear path to the final in Ireland. The number of Galway fans wishing them well in their quest for the holy grail has been steadily decreasing. They would love nothing more than ruining the dream.
There will be no audience, but Connacht’s first “traditional” final in six years should not be without a grudge.
Follow Galway v May (Sunday, 1.30pm) via our blogs live on RTÉ.ie and watch live on RTÉ 2 and RTÉ Player (coverage starts at 12.30pm)
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