![\"Mayo's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Z4A6OM5VINALGNPGMLTQDSPDSA.jpg\")
Mayo’s Kobe McDonald celebrates after scoring a point against Monaghan. Photograph: Tom Maher\/Inpho <\/p>\nI had the privilege recently of hosting an event celebrating the three adult county titles my club, Milltown in Co Galway, have won in our history \u2013 the county junior title in 1961 which won us promotion to the senior ranks, and our two senior titles in 1971 and 1981. <\/p>\n
The county junior final was actually played on New Year\u2019s Day, 1962, and our victory was the first GAA result ever announced on the new State television station, Raidi\u00f3 Teilif\u00eds \u00c9ireann, which had launched the previous night. They\u2019ll never take that one away from us.<\/p>\n
We were honoured to have quite a few players from that team present, and in talking to two of them in the run-up to the event, a strange kind of symmetry presented itself. One, James Saunderson, was a cadet in the army at the time, and the other Fr S\u00e9amus Flannery, was in All Hallows studying for the priesthood. The timing of that county final was the only thing that allowed them to play. They were both home for Christmas, otherwise they would have missed out.<\/p>\n
James would go on to serve with distinction for his entire life and retire as a brigadier general and one of the highest-ranked people in the Irish Defence Forces, but that county final was the last game he ever played for Milltown. He was a magnificent footballer, an All-Ireland winner with St Jarlath\u2019s and with the Galway minor team. But that was that.<\/p>\n
Mayo’s Kobe McDonald celebrates after scoring a point against Monaghan. Photograph: Tom Maher\/Inpho <\/p>\n
Likewise Fr S\u00e9amus would soon have to give up football for the priesthood. That night I met his brother, Fr John D Flannery, and he told me the best footballer he\u2019d ever seen was Fr Peter Tierney, an older brother of the immortal Noel of the Galway three-in-a-row team of the 1960s. Fr Peter played with Dunmore before Milltown GAA club was formed, and he would have more than held his own against \u201cThe Master\u201d, Tuam\u2019s Se\u00e1n Purcell, in county finals in the 1950s. But of course, in the Ireland of the time, the priesthood took precedence over football.<\/p>\n
They were just a few of the footballers that we inevitably had to say goodbye to in the 1950s and 1960s. Many more were on a boat from D\u00fan Laoghaire before they were 18. That was how it was in the country at that time, most acutely in the west. \u201cYou can\u2019t eat scenery\u201d is a common refrain in Galway and Mayo, and football wasn\u2019t going to put food on the table either.<\/p>\n
Maybe it\u2019s the freshness of those conversations in my memory that has me feeling wistful about Kobe McDonald<\/a>. There\u2019s a kind of pre-grieving that\u2019s been going on since his coruscating 18-minute debut for Mayo<\/a> against Monaghan<\/a> on Sunday.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve probably already seen it. But five touches for 1-4, and a beautiful assist for another point. He is a generational talent, and he\u2019s a star with it. The goal was glorious self-expression (where had we seen that raised single-finger celebration before?), and it was genuinely joyous, regardless of your county allegiances. And soon, he\u2019ll be gone.<\/p>\n Keith Duggan of this parish wrote the greatest GAA book of them all, House Of Pain \u2013 Through the Rooms of Mayo Football, and through it runs a strain of pathos a mile wide. From the loss to a stellar medical career of the Flying Doctor, P\u00e1draig Carney, in the 1950s, to John O\u2019Mahony\u2019s lonely phone calls at 5am in the morning to a flat in Chicago trying to convince Ger Geraghty (\u201cthe best Mayo player I ever played with\u201d according to Kevin McStay) to come home for the 1989 season, all the way through to Pearse Hanley and latterly Ois\u00edn Mullin in Australia, Mayo are used to this feeling.<\/p>\n What is different about Kobe is that Sunday was both his debut and the start of the long goodbye. Mayo fans didn\u2019t even get one season of the beautiful, useless feeling you get when watching a great one emerge \u2013 when the future is unwritten, and there are no limits on where you think this guy can take you. The alarm clock is already set to end the dream of Kobe.<\/p>\n![\"Mayo's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/OMZAM4EMFXDOJNMBQTN5RHWJUA.jpg\")
Mayo’s Kobe McDonald celebrates after scoring his side’s second goal of the match. Photograph: Tom Maher\/Inpho <\/p>\n