{"id":570566,"date":"2026-07-27T15:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T15:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/570566\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T15:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T15:12:08","slug":"mayo-beat-75-year-old-curse-to-become-gaelic-football-champions-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/570566\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayo beat 75-year-old \u2018curse\u2019 to become Gaelic football champions | Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

The hex is broken, dispelled, banished, and a story that bewitched Ireland<\/a> for decades has ended in fairytale: Mayo are all-Ireland champions.<\/p>\n

Seventy-five years after a supposed curse condemned its Gaelic men\u2019s football team to endless defeat<\/a>, the county prevailed and uncorked a wave of emotion that engulfed even its rivals.<\/p>\n

The team will return to the west of Ireland<\/a> for a euphoric homecoming on Monday evening after winning the senior football championship, a victory that thrilled Ireland and Mayo\u2019s diaspora, including Joe Biden, Mark Carney and Noel and Liam Gallagher.<\/p>\n

Most pundits favoured Kerry to win but there were jubilant scenes when underdogs Mayo triumphed in Dublin instead. Photograph: Brian Lawless\/PA<\/p>\n

\u201cMayo 1-20, Kerry 1-17. Chisel it on the gravestones, scribble it in the sky,\u201d the Irish Times exulted. \u201cCroke Park untethered, the whole place afloat for an hour on a lake of the sweetest tears that were ever cried.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most pundits had favoured Kerry to win the 138th all-Ireland final and write another chapter of Mayo woe at Sunday\u2019s contest at the Dublin stadium. Instead the underdogs triumphed and even some Kerry fans wept at the catharsis.<\/p>\n

Mayo is the third biggest of the island of Ireland\u2019s 32 counties but sparsely populated, with just 130,000 people. Photograph: Horizon International Images\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Few seriously believed in the curse \u2013 it was said no member of the last winning team from 1951 would live to see another \u2013 but there was no doubting the drought that followed, with 11 defeats in 11 finals since 1989. A book about Mayo\u2019s quest \u200bwas titled House of Pain.<\/p>\n

Whenever the county made it to a final, a frisson gripped television viewers and the 82,000-strong stadium crowd: was this the day they would witness the end of the hex? On Sunday it was.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo every young boy and girl across Mayo and our diaspora across the world, never stop dreaming, stick your chest out and be proud to be from Mayo,\u201d the team captain, Jack Coyne, declared as he held aloft the trophy named after Sam Maguire, a legendary player. \u201cThe wait is over. Sam is home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Authorities had provisionally estimated a crowd of 40,000 would greet the team at McHale Park in the county town of Castlebar on Monday but that looks conservative, Gerry Bourke, the homecoming committee chair, told RT\u00c9<\/a>. \u201cAfter what I saw in Croke Park yesterday, I think we\u2019ll have to revisit the plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mayo, a landscape of bogs, rocks and Atlantic cliffs<\/a>, is the third biggest of the island of Ireland\u2019s 32 counties. It is sparsely populated, with just 130,000 people, but players and supporters have a reputation for fervency in the Gaelic Athletic Association, the sport\u2019s governing body.<\/p>\n

Mayo fans were delighted to put an end to 75 years of defeat, which legend had it was down to a curse. Photograph: Brian Lawless\/PA<\/p>\n

According to lore, the young victors of 1951 were on their way home to celebrate when they passed through the village of Foxford and failed to pay their respects to a funeral, prompting the enraged priest to utter the fateful words: \u201cFor as long as you all live, Mayo won\u2019t win another all-Ireland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liam Gallagher, who has family ties to Mayo, was among those celebrating the win on social media. Photograph: Ireland West Airport<\/p>\n

Seven decades later, the last surviving member of that team, Paddy Prendergast, told friends<\/a> he would willingly \u201croll over and die\u201d if there was any truth to the curse, but that it was a myth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was supposed to have been a funeral in the local church; I don\u2019t know whether there was or not. I saw people standing around the church but we didn\u2019t get off the truck because we couldn\u2019t get off the bloody truck,\u201d he told an interviewer in 2017.<\/p>\n

Researchers who probed church records, press cuttings<\/a> and other sources failed to find any verification of the supposed curse, which gained currency in the 1990s. The legend, however, is intact: Prendergast died in 2021, aged 95, two weeks after Mayo lost the final.<\/p>\n

Biden \u2013 who concluded a 2023 presidential visit to Mayo<\/a> with the rallying cry \u201cMayo for Sam!\u201d \u2013 congratulated his ancestral home county. \u201cToday, the dream becomes reality,\u201d he posted. \u201cYou earned this victory. Enjoy every minute.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carney, the Canadian prime minister who made his own ancestral pilgrimage to Mayo last month, echoed the joy. \u201cThe curse is broken,\u201d he posted. The Gallagher brothers of Oasis, who also have family ties to Mayo<\/a>, expressed pride. \u201cFinally!! Up Mayo!!\u201d Noel posted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hex is broken, dispelled, banished, and a story that bewitched Ireland for decades has ended in fairytale:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-570566","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\/570566","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=570566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}