Football
Colin Sheridan: O’Mahony kept the faith in a football life less ordinary
“After Mayo lost to Cork under Johno in 1989, there was an iconic photo of him on the field surrounded by Mayo fans, one of them holding a banner that read JOHN SAYS KEEP THE FAITH. Not long after, as if in an act of defiance, John’s wife Gerardine put up a sign outside their home that simply read ‘Keep the Faith.’ It was like something you’d see in deepest Texas in a town obsessed with high school football.
“The message required no explanation. Mayo was always a football-mad county, and that 1989 championship run gave belief to a team and a people that had endured decades of heartache and no little hardship.
We are a funny race of people. We want it all, but not in the way you think. We want to be successful, but we don’t want to be asked about it. We want love, but we loathe the idea of expressing it. We only remember the people who don’t go to funerals, not those that actually do. Unlike Cristiano Ronaldo, say, we are the epitome of “look at me, don’t look at me.”
A fellow Mayo man once told me he’d rather see Galway lose an All-Ireland than Mayo win one. I’m not kidding. The source of our joy is rich and varied and often a little confusing.
Still, we are nothing if not original about the route we take during our relentless pursuit of happiness. It must be confusing to be in love with us, as it’s impossible to know how to keep us happy.
Except when it comes to vainglorious England, and her perpetually embattled footballers. We often pretend otherwise, but Christ, do we love to watch them lose. That immature affliction is not innate, but learned behaviour.
My earliest memories of England are Paul Gascoigne weeping and Gary Lineker giving Bobby Robson the “he’s f**ked, gaffer,” side-eye. I liked that team.
Our emergence at Italia ‘90 felt in no way compromised by their presence and progress. I was 10, so I guess the whole 800 year thing wasn’t such an issue. And it wasn’t until adulthood that it became so.
Even when Michael Owen scored against Argentina in 1998, I could appreciate that here was a man, the same age as myself, who had just scored a goal we all dreamt of scoring as kids. I was capable of that duality of thought. What changed?
Well, whatever changed, I best brace myself for the prospect of England winning this summer’s European championship. This England. An England made in the image of their manager, Gareth Southgate. Dull. Boring. Harmless. Utterly forgettable.
Against Switzerland on Saturday night, they gave a performance so laboured, you almost wanted them to find a winner in normal time, then extra-time, just to save us the inevitable shootout victory.
There was a time you could rely on England, much better versions of England, to screw up a penalty shootout, thereby guaranteeing us the smug sense of justice being served, that taste of “that what Empire gets you, plonkers.”
Graham Taylor, one of the more likeable characters of England’s tortured past, one lamented “Napolean once said give me a lucky general. I don’t think he would’ve worked with me.”
Oh, that he might’ve wished for some of Southgate’s luck. Brace yourself, people, England are the broken clock who are about to tell the right time. You’d delete your socials. This will not be pretty.
I played one hole of golf with my son and daughter last week. Our first together. It took about an hour (no, Patrick Cantlay was not in the group ahead), and was populated by many moments of frustration, ecstasy, agony, and about two dozen cartwheels on exquisitely manicured greens.
Already concerned about how quickly he could get his non-existent handicap down to scratch, I preached patience to my son, insisting that patience was a virtue more relevant in golf than talent.
As we packed up the car, the silhouette of Liam Nolan, the Galway amateur destined for the Open Championship at Royal Troon in a fortnight appeared on the horizon. Head bowed in concentration as he hit putt after putt.
I wonder if he asked the same questions, share the same doubts, do the same cartwheels when he started out? The beauty of sport, and the small community we all share.
Remember there was a wild rumour many months ago that the FAI were considering an approach for Marcelo Bielsa to succeed Stephen Kenny as manager? No. Neither do I.
Things never got that exciting, but I wish they did, because as much as it’s the hope that kills, having no hope whatsoever is much worse.
Bielsa’s Uruguay won on penalties on Saturday night as he guided La Celeste past Brazil and into the last four of the Copa America. The man is walking fairytale who once said: “Football is about bringing joy to those who find joy hard to find.”
Those words should’ve been enough to guarantee him the Ireland job and whatever salary he wanted. Instead, we continue to climb into dumpsters looking for that same joy. What might have been.