It looked like Mayo would be on the end of another defeat when David Clifford – widely considered one of the greatest players of his generation, perhaps even of all time – netted to put Kerry in control in the early stages.<\/p>\n
But Mayo dug deep and fought back, and trailed by a single point at half-time.<\/p>\n
Things changed four minutes after the restart when Darragh Beirne finished off a flowing move to put Mayo into a lead they would not relinquish. <\/p>\n
Kerry, as great champions do, never folded and there was a late scare as the pressure grew, but Mayo were not to be denied in a three-point victory. <\/p>\n
The tears and emotion at the final whistle meant everything.<\/p>\n
Manager Andy Moran, a former Mayo player and in his first year in charge, went to his wife and family in the stands.<\/p>\n
The new generation, such as Beirne and the superb Aussie Rules-bound Kobe McDonald, soaked in every moment on the Croke Park pitch.<\/p>\n
There was over 80,000 people in attendance, and for those in green and red, plus the many neutrals in attendance, there was barely a dry eye in the house.<\/p>\n
While the so-called ‘curse’ is one thing, Mayo also wore a special white jersey in a final for the first time since 1951 due to a clash between the green home kit of Kerry. Perhaps it was fate.<\/p>\n
“To every man, women, boy and girl in Mayo, wherever you are, dream big things,” said captain Jack Coyne, who delivered one of the all-time great speeches before lifting the Sam Maguire.<\/p>\n
“Anything is possible and we’ve shown it today. I’m over the moon.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It looked like Mayo would be on the end of another defeat when David Clifford – widely considered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-569722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}