4 Cover story 2004, when he was beginning his sec- ond term as Mayo manager. By September, he had the county back in an All-Ireland final, when Kerry defeated his young team. Like most GAA counties, the network of names and connections within Mayo football are impossibly dense: you could fill the entire print edition of this newspaper mapping them. For instance: Martin Carney, who played with Donegal and Mayo, is a nephew of Jackie Carney, a player on the 1936 team and trainer, along with Gerald Courell, of the 1950/51 champions. Conor Loftus, who played on Sunday, is a grandnephew of Dr Mick Loftus, another of the 1950/51 class, who went on to serve as president of the GAA. John OMahony was a teacher and coach of Andy Moran at St Nathys. Morans first year with Mayo was 2004. Maughan would often collect him at Ballaghaderreen ahead of training and was a natural raconteur behind the wheel, usually involving Mayo football stories. Sixteen years later, freshly retired, Moran would recall, on these pages, a lost trip to Kildare for some pitch opening Charlie McCreevy was coming in on a helicopter and cutting a ribbon. Maughan, the newcomer sensed, was giddy on that drive. He kept saying he had a treat and managed to contain his excitement no further than Tulsk. Ciarán Mac, he announced, is back. There has always been a flamboyant streak running through Mayo football. The 1970s was in some ways defined by Ted Webb, the imperious young star from Ballyhaunis who was tragically killed in a car accident in February 1976. The previous summer Henry Wills took a stunning image of Webb in full flight: it remains one of the imperishable Mayo football images. In the late 1980s, luring Ger Geraghty one of the many young Mayo people who moved to Chicago became a primary mission of OMahonys. He would later refer to Geraghty as the missing link in that period. The late 1980s and 90s had Liam McHale, the sallow, languid 6ft 6in basketball prodigy. Liam Mac was the best on that team I played on, McStay said when asked about Geraghty. Ger was a good bit better than Liam. And Ciarán McDonald, sinewy and tattooed and blond-haired at a time when conformity was demanded on GAA fields, seemed to embody everything that made Mayo different. At his best, he was liquid gold on the field. McDonald made his debut for Mayo in 1994 the year OMahony guided Leitrim to a historic Munster championship. McDonald had made his club senior debut, with Crossmolina, in his mid-teens and kicked 0-4. He continued to play with his club team well into his 40s, besotted with the game. Through all that time, he seldom gave interviews. A rare exception was a fascinating sit-down television interview with Second Captains a decade ago. Number one Id be a shy person, he said with a laugh when asked by Eoin McDevitt why he remained silent. Id be introverted I wouldnt be extrovert, no matter what people said about me. But that night, he opened up about his feelings for Mayo football in a way that was thoughtful, painfully modest and scrupulously honest. Oh, its pretty raw, he said of his three All-Ireland final defeats. Youd have the mad illusion in your head youre still good enough to play inter-county football, with the hope of getting an All-Ireland title. They are defeats . . . but it was great to be there. Would it be great to have an All-Ireland title at senior? Course it would. When Paddy Prendergast, the last of the starting team from 1951 and a man of extraordinary warmth and charisma, died in 2023, Ballintubber club chairman Tony OConnor whose sons Cillian and Diarmuid won All-Irelands on Sunday drew a line under the so-called curse. They were a very religious group THE IRISH TIMES Weekend Saturday, August 1, 2026 Top:Tensof thousandsturned outinCastlebarto welcomehomethe winningMayo team.Above:Mayo managerAndy Moranandcaptain JackCoyneholds SamMaguireafter gettingoffthetrain inCastlebar. Photographs:Enda ODowd of players, who got Mass every morning when in collective training, he told Seán Moran on these pages. So, the idea of this curse is a load of rubbish. A group of players more likely to respect a funeral you couldnt imagine. Poor Paddy. It was basically hurting him that this was going on. As he said himself, if there were any truth in it, Id roll over and die, but he said there wasnt an iota of substance to it. It was grossly insulting and very unpleasant. Through all that time, it wasnt so much the fictive curse that Mayo teams had to fight through as much as the burden of those accumulative defeats, and the weight of Time itself. Mayo people we are different. I can say that now, Andy Moran said on these pages shortly after he retired. There is a cultish element to us. But we love football and if the team is getting attention, I think that is a good thing for us as a county. Everyone now knows how the story ends. Mayo lost the coin toss for jersey preference. Rather than the more neutral blue, they chose to wear the all-white strip designed as a commemorative honour of the 1950/1951 team. It was a risk: had the match gone badly as many forecast it could do those shirts would have become symbolic of another bleak day. John OMahonys death, in 2024, cast a deep shadow over the west of Ireland. I just thought he was brilliant, how he treated people, James Horan, the former player who led Mayos second rush after becoming manager in 2011, once said of his manager. As it happened, the silver jubilee of the Galway All-Ireland winning team, which OMahony had managed in 2001, took place on Sunday. His wife Geraldine represented him on the pitch for the presentation before the crowd. Andy Moran, in his first season, went for broke with his high-pressing tactics. Significantly, they liberated themselves through pure Mayo football traditions high-octane adventurism and the imposition of organised chaos. A very young team was transformed into Mayos history boys over the course of the afternoon, joining the ranks of those three fabled years. Ciarán McDonalds son Kobe, an extravagant talent bound for Australian rules football, was one of three first-season players to win an All-Ireland. Moran admitted that in those agonising last two minutes he said a silent prayer to his former teacher. Id be lying if I said at 69 minutes there I didnt say a little prayer to Johnno, he told RTÉ. Johnnos team was here, it was 25 years, my mentor, my friend he tried twice with us. I have to say, I said a little one, I said, Johnno, if I need you, its now. In those dazzling white shirts, the young Mayo team, on the threshold of becoming All-Ireland champions again, looked like an apparition. But as Mayo people around the world will remind themselves all winter: it was real. You carry your wounds with honour. KeithDuggansbook,HouseofPain: ThroughtheRoomsofMayoFootball, wasoriginallypublishedin2007by Mainstream DavidSedarisontheseriousbusinessofcomedy.Page8 WalledtownsofIreland:RositaBolandvisitsWexford.Page10 PatrickFreyne:GlenHansardwasIrelandsbandleader.Page5 WEEKEND THE IRISH TIMES Saturday, August 1st, 2026 A WOUND IS HEALED Afterdecadesofheartbreakandnearmisses, Mayofinallyhasitsmomentinthesun By 2 Cover story A HOUSE OF PAIN NO MORE MayosAll-Irelandtriumphreleased75yearsof pent-upemotioninoneunforgettableafternoon ByKeithDuggan M acHale Park in Castlebar has always been best suited to those Saturday-night matches in winter, when the season is young and the promise uncontained. An ideal Cover story meme, the jokes came thick and fast. Through all that, Mayo footballers and supporters never shied away from speaking about it, nor returning to All-Ireland finals. Maybe we make too much of the football, Fr Leo Morahan, the former county board executive, said back in 2007. Mayo has the 4 Cover story 2004, when he was beginning his sec- ond term as Mayo manager. By September, he had the county back in an All-Ireland final, when Kerry defeated his young team. Like most GAA counties, the network of names and connections within Mayo football are impossibly dense: you could fill the People GLEN HANSARD WAS OUR NATIONAL BARD TheFramesfrontmanwasIrelandsbandleader, anditfeltlikehewouldbedoingthejobfor alongtime ByPatrickFreyne I n the 1990s, I wasnt convinced by The Frames. They felt a bit mainstream. A bit major label. I was a young idiot. Later, a friend convinced me that I 6 Music THE PIANIST WHO PLAYS WITH ONE HAND ONLY Freya Terris is the first pianist to pass their Grade 8 piano exam playing solely with their left hand ByJohnOConnor L ike countless other young musicians, Freya Terris discovered her love of music at the piano stool. Yet her journey has been anyt People 7 Fearkeptmefrom doingwhatIreally wantedtodoorsay Q&ARevJanetBroderick The Donegal-based priest on childhood games with her brother actor Matthew Broderick, how people react when she preaches sermons, and who could play her in a biopic Howagreeableareyou? I think life has made me agreeable 8 Interview I DONT LIKE EXTREMISTS. BUT I FIND THEM THRILLING AS CHARACTERS TheUSwriterandhumouristtalksabouttheseriousbusinessofbeingfunny onthepageandathislivereadings ByPatrickFreyne WEEKEND INTERVIEW DAVID SEDARIS A few days after I interview David Sedaris, I receive a thank-you postcard fe Interview 9 I just tried to get through my days [at school] without being found out as gay. Im 69, so no one even really imagined then that anyone could be anything that awful back then DavidSedaris: Idontknowhow tobuyaplane ticket.Idontopen anymailthat doesntlooklike fanmail. Photograph: Leonardo 10 Feature HISTORY EMBRACES US EVERY DAY IN WEXFORD In the first of a four-part series on Irelands walled towns, we visit Wexford, where history is quite literally in peoples back gardens ByRositaBoland I f Billy Colfer talked to you about history, youd sit up and listen, Paul Walsh tells me. W Feature field. We discovered that Sparrow was a surname of ship owners back in the 1830s, Hussey says. Hussey brings me out into their back garden to show me where, more than a century ago, a house was built against the other side of their wall. The medieval wall thus became a party wall. It towers 12 Photo essay Formedtotacklethe siltingissueintheriver Liffey,thereservenow extendstotheentirety ofthebay WILD AT HEART Photographs: DaraMacDónaill andEndaODowd Words: EndaODowd O f the 797 Unesco biosphere reserves across 147 countries, Dublin Bay is the only one to include a national capital Photo essay DublinsNorth BullIsland,partof theDublinBay Unescobiosphere reserve,isnow hometo180 differentspeciesof bird.However, conservationists warnthat,asworks tostopcoastal erosionareerected alongthecoastline, theirlong-term impactonthe ecologyand landscapemaybe difficulttopredict. Photographs: 14 Feature TWINS PEAK WERE PROBABLY MIRROR IMAGES OF EACH OTHER Whetheritsthehighsofalwayshavingcompanyor thelowsofsensingtheotherspain,thebestpartof beingatwinisneverbeingstuckforafriend ByJenHogan I relands birth rate may be falling, but the incidence of twin births continues to rise, with al Feature 15 Its sometimes fun and its sometimes not, because they could steal your stuff had a friend beside you. In fact, the twins only really went their separate ways when they went to college and that was a major shock, Emma says. Rebecca says there are lots of upsides to being a twin, but the T 16 Essay he vintage front page shows a street full of Dublin holidaymakers smiling at the camera, sitting on the kerb, waiting for the bus in the sun. But these early queues soon dissipated. Bank holiday spoiled by weather, announces the reusable headline. The citys thoroughfares were WEEKEND E Essay 17 Governments might fancy deploying bank holidays to foster cohesion and goodwill, but that doesnt mean everybody has to play along crashing out of the Fifa World Cup was that Friday, July 24th, became the bank holiday that never was. Would Keir Starmers mooted last act have applied across 18 Feature BE LIKE JOHN LENNON AND BUY AN IRISH ISLAND Four islands for sale off Mayo, Donegal, Tipperary and Galway, with bidding starting at 299,000 ByJessicaDoyle W hen you attract screaming fans everywhere you go, what do you do to get some peace and quiet? You buy an island, of course. Tha People 19 SARAH MOSS Teenage dieting made me an expert in mental arithmetic I bofin. It is suitable for grazing and features two natural freshwater lakes. The island measures 1.2km by 0.4km and rises to a maximum height of 63.3m above sea level. It is a Special Protection Area under the EU Bird 20 Environment TOMAÍ Ó CONGHAILE Our beautiful, troubled planet needs a skilled reconciler T he World Cup may be over but the fallout continues: Trumps unwanted interventions; Germanys early exit; football not coming home; Argentinas post-final petulance. Not to mention, of course, that banner. Environment 21 British navy, spent several days imprisoned in the Tower of London on corruption charges, and died of smallpox before reaching 40. Initially, a strait running between the two main islands was named after him and, by 1765, the Falkland Islands had become the English name for the entire 22 Obituaries FIRST WOMAN DIRECTOR OF A NATIONAL INSTITUTION, LIBRARIAN AND ACADEMIC Patricia (Pat, Patsy) Donlon Born: January 28th, 1943 Died: July 23rd, 2026 Patricia (Pat, Patsy) Donlon, who has died peacefully aged 83 at Blackrock Hospice, Dublin, was a leading light in that remarkable generat Obituaries 23 RENOWNED ORNITHOLOGIST AND COMIC ACTOR WHO STARRED IN THE GOODIES Bill Oddie BillOddiewasamemberofcomedy trioTheGoodies,whoseanarchicTV sketchshowairedinthe1970sand 1980s.Photograph:IanGavan/Getty Born: July 7th, 1941 Died: July 25th, 2026 Bill Oddie, who has died aged 85, was a mul 24 Last word DAVID McWILLIAMS ThefirstvictimofAI? Theeconomy W e are in an era of great technological advances, or so say all the tech bros who are championing not just AI, but a whole host of technological innovations from finance and healthcare to supply chain management and communications. In