History offers plenty of warnings for the champions as they move from chasing the prize to carrying the expectations that come with it.
00:46, 07 Oct 2026Updated 00:49, 07 Oct 2026
Kobe McDonald helped Mayo reach new heights in 2026 but can they do it without him in 2027?(Image: ©INPHO/Tom O’Hanlon)
There was one line in Andy Moran’s interview with the Irish News GAA podcast that summed up the peculiar problem now facing Mayo.
“You can plan for everything but you can’t plan for success,” said the Mayo All-Ireland-winning manager.
He is right.
Because everyone else has already started planning for 2027. Mayo are still celebrating 2026.
There is a team holiday to organise. Visits to National and Secondary Schools around the county are pencilled into the diary until December 21. There will be trips to clubs throughout Mayo.
Then there is Chicago. London. It sounds wonderful. It is wonderful.
It is also a hell of a way to prepare for another All-Ireland campaign.
Success has a funny habit of creating work. And Mayo have discovered that winning the thing they spent 75 years trying to win does not actually make life easier. It just changes the nature of the problem.
Galway are waiting. Twice All-Ireland finalists this decade, they now have Eamon Fitzmaurice as manager and a renewed sense that the title should be coming back across the border.
Roscommon will be waiting too. They beat Mayo by ten points in this year’s Connacht Championship. They will not need reminding of that result. Nor will they need reminding that Mayo are now the team everyone in the province wants to beat.
And then there is Kerry. Donegal. Tyrone. Dublin.
The list is long enough without adding the teams who will inevitably emerge from somewhere nobody is currently watching.
But the biggest opponent Mayo face in 2027 may not be any of them.
It may be Mayo.
This is what happens when a famine ends.
The relief is enormous. So is the danger.
Down waited 23 years to win an All-Ireland in 1991. Then Derry had their number for the next two years meaning the best team in Ireland in ’91 could not even call themselves the second-best team in Ulster.
Donegal won their first All-Ireland in 1992 and waited another 20 years for the second.
Their third has still not arrived.
Derry won in 1993 and made history. Since then, history has been rather less generous.
Galway ended a 32-year wait in 1998. The following year they needed a replay to get past Sligo and were then knocked out by Mayo — in the days when losing actually meant going home.
Armagh won in 2002.
Tyrone followed in 2003 … beating Armagh in the final.
Joe Kernan understood the problem.
“Winning once is hard, defending it is harder.”
That is the part nobody puts on the poster.
Tyrone were the exception. Cormac McAnallen’s death in 2004 and injuries in 2006 might have derailed them, yet they came again, winning in 2005 and 2008.
Sean Cavanagh had an explanation.
Youth.
Look at the age profile of that 2003 team, he said. Many had only just come out of the Under-21 ranks. They could come again. And Mickey Harte and his management team provided continuity.
Mayo have those two things.
They have youth. Three teenagers played for them this year.
And they have the option of keeping Moran.
That matters.
But so does this: the Mayo team that spent years chasing has now become the Mayo team getting chased.
Every opponent will arrive with the same motivation.
Beat the champions.
Every Mayo player will hear the same question.
Can you do it again?
Every mistake will be interpreted differently.
Every defeat will be bigger.
Every draw will be a crisis.
Every promising youngster will suddenly be expected to become a star because he played well in an All-Ireland final.
And the celebrations — however deserved — have to end sometime.
That is the cruel little trick of sporting success.
The prize you spent your entire life pursuing becomes the standard by which everything that follows is judged.
Mayo no longer have to prove they can win an All-Ireland.
They have to prove they are capable of being comfortable as All-Ireland champions.
There is a difference.
The first required them to believe they could get there.
The second requires them to believe they belong there.
They have finally got what they wanted.
Now comes the bit nobody can plan for.