Colin Sheridan: Mayo football on the off-season agenda once more
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A GAA off-season would not be an off season at all unless there was a Mayo football story bouncing around the sky like a mesmerising murmuration of migrating birds. You don’t need to be embedded in the local community to have picked up on the rumours and counter-conjecture these last few weeks. First, there was talk of defections, legitimate as it happens, as future Hall of Famer Cillian O'Connor decided to take a knee in 2025. A 32-year-old scoring forward “opting out” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence amongst a fanbase recently browbeaten by curtailed summers, especially since scoring forwards in Mayo are as rare as mince pies on Christmas Eve. Once it was the hope that killed. Nowadays it's the hopelessness. With Dublin’s slow decline, All-Irelands have never been more winnable for any one of about eight teams. On recent evidence, you’d be hard pushed to include Mayo on any list. This despite a talent pool that should rival Armagh, Galway and Derry, and a management team that includes about four intercounty managers, and a stylist.
And that’s just the playing side of it. Yesterday, the Sunday Independent gave oxygen to the other rumours. The hearsay that has been passed around like snuff at a wake for quite some time, if we’re all being honest. Chief business writer at the Sunday Independent Ferghal O'Connor confirmed that “an analysis of Mayo GAA accounts over the last 11 years has shown a big post-covid jump in gate receipts,’ even, as O’Connor correctly points out, Mayo has “floundered on the pitch.” The reporting confirms that Tim O’Leary, a one-time benefactor of Mayo GAA, had reported his concerns to the revenue commissioner in early 2024.
It’s rarely good when you’re in the business pages and not the sports supplement. While most county executives address annual conventions in recent weeks lamenting rising costs of running multiple teams replete with an ever-growing list of performance enhancing demands, Mayo find themselves “awash with cash.” In 2019, yesterday's reporting tells us, Mayo had just €58,000 in the bank. In 2023, it had €2.6m (including €1.12 held in GAA central council.). Queue chin-scratching emojis.
There’s more. Mileage and catering expenditure are way down on 2019, while gate receipts are exponentially higher. That may explain the surplus, but within that explanation, many more explanations will need to be forthcoming.
Last week, Tipperary CEO Murtagh Brennan warned that the county is facing “a challenging period ahead” regarding the increased financial burden of preparing multiple teams across many fronts, all amidst rising costs.
“We have found ourselves in a perfect storm regarding financial and facility shortfalls,” Brennan said ahead of the county convention last night. “These have coincided with the reformatting of all intercounty competitions into a round-robin system which consequently increase the amount of games taking place at all levels, lengthen each respective season, put added pressure on limited facilities and increases costs.”
One would imagine that the challenges Brennan speaks of are consistent with literally every other county across the GAA, given the rising cost of living, materials, and logistical support (especially hospitality and catering). Fans generally understand these constraints, especially when they are communicated in such a factual and erudite manner. The Mayo County board has long adopted an adversarial approach to media, local and national. Even when the news was good it was communicated in a combative way. Now that it’s potentially bad, there is hardly any communication at all.
Which brings us to Tim O’Leary. The businessman emerged as a potential force for good in Mayo football in 2018 when he donated hundreds of thousands of euros to the county at a time when they laid claim to the dubious honour of being the second-best team in the country behind an all-conquering Dublin. His high profile investment was initially seen as the missing link; while Mayo could not dip into a transfer market and purchase the aforementioned scoring forwards it so badly needed, O'Leary's money at least presented an opportunity to level the playing field in terms of preparation and logistics. A foundation he established pledged €250,000 to set up a Centre of Excellence, going some way to future-proofing the footballing health of the county.
The subsequent fall out between O’Leary and the Mayo County board was as brutal as it was undignified. O’Leary’s demands that a financial review of the county finances be conducted and made public have long seemed reasonable. His methods in expressing his frustration, less so. That he is once again a character suddenly so central to this developing story is inevitable.
Those with even half an ear cocked to the constant noise around Mayo football will find little surprise what they are now reading. It’s in everyone's best interests that the facts are laid bare and resolved, once and for all.
And so it is. Just like they said it would be. Saudi Arabia were last week announced as hosts for the 2034 Men's World Cup by governing body, FIFA. Their bid was uncontested. The Faustian pact complete. The game of football will be grown, apparently, and make no mistake, that growth will be fertilised by gallons of blood spilled in the sand, and thousands more human lives will be lost before a ball gets kicked in Riyadh. As well as the 2034 World Cup, Saudi Arabia will host the 2027 Asian Cup, 2029 Asian Winter games, 2034 Asian Games and - get this - has ambitions to host the Women's World Cup.
It has been recently reported that over 21,000 Indian, Bangladeshi, and Nepalese workers have died in Saudi Arabia working on Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman’s Saudi Vision 2030. More than 100,000 migrant workers have “disappeared.” One hundred thousand. Over 20,000 indigenous have been forcibly removed. Earlier this year, Amnesty International reported the country had recorded the highest number of executions in decades (198 as of late September). Meanwhile, the Saudi state presents a green, sustainable vision for all our futures, claiming it’s taking a “leading role on climate and environment efforts.
“Action is in our nature,” so goes their social media posts, and I guess the families of the 21,000 dead migrant workers can speak to that. Whatever we feel in nine years about a World Cup in Saudi Arabia, we can’t say we didn’t know. They have been awarded this tournament in the context of absurd human rights abuses that are not consigned to some dark past, but are very much in the present, and undoubtedly in our future. It is nothing short of a bloody disgrace. A stain on all our consciences that such grotesque disregard for human life is rewarded. Ireland, as a member of UEFA and FIFA, has a voice in all of this. That we say nothing is worse than any on field performance we’ve delivered in our history. But, say nothing we compliantly will.
Bill Belichick, now 72, had recently left the New England Patriots, a franchise he had guided to five Super Bowls, cementing his legacy as one of the game's great coaches, began dating 24-year-old Jordan Hudson. After a brief stint as an analyst, Bill has taken another step back towards his youth by accepting an offer to become head coach at University of North Carolina, signing a five-year, $50million contract for his first job at the collegiate level of the game.
'I've always wanted to coach in college football, it just never really worked out,' he said earlier this week. 'Had some good years in the NFL, so that was OK.' As for fans' concerns that he might leave quickly for the next NFL job, Belichick said: 'I didn't come here to leave.'
Everybody loves a comeback, I guess.
On the eighth page of Edwin McGreal’s epic opus on Mayo club football “Our Finest Hour,” there is a colour-coded map of North Mayo parishes, and the GAA clubs therein. Bonniconlon, Moygownagh, Knockmore, Ballycroy, Kilfian. It barely takes up half a page, but it contains multitudes, not least the geographical spread of a landscape wild and rugged, and desperately passionate about one thing - Gaelic Football. McGreal, a journalist himself of some repute, has produced a beautiful book that - while Mayo specific - transcends county boundaries in the universality of its message - every club has its day, and those days live forever. The concept of the book is simple. McGreal visits 54 football and hurling clubs throughout the county and -with the help of club members and volunteers - brilliantly captures one glorious day for each one. In doing so, he depicts the essence of what the GAA means to people, far from 84,000 in Croke Park in high summer, many of the famous days retold here were borne out in front of modest crowds on dirty, winter days. ‘Tis the season. I couldn’t recommend this stocking filler enough.